Patanjali Electric Scooter Launched With 440 Km Range? Exposed!
'Patanjali, known for revolutionizing India’s FMCG (Fast-Moving Consumer Goods) and healthcare markets, has launched an electric scooter that claims to deliver 440 km range.' At least some of you might have come across this news in the past few days. The reported price is just Rs 14,000. Yes, the deal will seem too good to ignore. You would have opened the link and read the (fairly convincing) article as well. As they say, 'if it is too good to be true, it probably isn't.' Let's explore the truth behind this viral news article...
This article was carried by several micro-news portals and hyperlocal websites. One of these, called HBTU, has the most amount of information. The article is so elaborate and authoritative that most people will fail to recognize that it is well-packaged fake news.
Let's Fact Check...
Even though the larger picture could look convincing ( to both search engines and humans), fact-checking the specifics will debunk the news. The article talks in detail about the Patanjali scooter's specifications. It says that the electric scooter will be able to deliver a range of 440 km per charge. This could sound like a solid deal to the common man, but is also something that exposes the falseness of the article right away. Why?
Well, in today's electric two-wheeler landscape, packaging a battery pack that would deliver real range of 440 km into a scooter would be difficult. 440 km range will require a battery capacity of at least 8 kWh. Look at the electric scooters that are already on sale here. Most of them have battery pack sizes in the range of 2.5- 4 kWh.
The Simple One would probably be the electric scooter with one of the highest range figures in India- 248 km per charge. It, however, comes with a 5.0 kWh battery pack. Fitting anything larger than 6-7 kWh into a scooter could be tough. The UV Tesseract offers 261 km from its 6 kWh battery pack. But the battery placement here, is more motorcycle-like than scooter-ish!
The Ola Roadster X electric motorcycle has a 9.1 kWh version on offer, with a claimed range of 501 km per charge. This becomes possible due to the packaging efficiencies of OLA's new 4680 Bharat Cells and the larger accommodation offered by the motorcycle body style. The same could hardly work for scooters- definitely not for the vehicle shown in the picture being shared! The article conveniently avoids any mention of the battery size or capacity.
The next big drain of authenticity is the claimed price. The article says that the scooter has an introductory price of Rs 14,000! It will never be financially viable for any manufacturer to sell an electric scooter at this price point, even if they were to completely shift to 'battery as a chargeable extra' model and offer just the rest of the powertrain!
The possibility of a battery pack as large as the assumed 7 kWh unit, would only make this sum sound all the more Utopian. No matter how much localisation you put in, an electric scooter with a 7 kWh battery and a 14,000 price tag will not be feasible! The website further does a price comparison between the Patanjali scooter and its rivals from OLA, Ather, TVS, Bajaj and more.
It further says that the company plans a phased launch for the product with deliveries commencing first in UP and Uttarakhand, and that people can register their interests via a mobile application. It even claims that a complete rollout is expected by the end of 2025.
Summing it up...
Despite its detailed nature and convincing diction, the news about Patanjali launching electric scooters is fake!