[TusharK]

Pune-based Northway Motorsport has launched an EV conversion kit for the Maruti Suzuki Dzire and Tata Ace.



For the Dzire, the company offers two conversion kits - Drive EZ and Travel EZ, with a range of 120 km and 250 km, respectively. While the Drive EZ kit takes 5-6 hours to recharge, the charging time for the Travel EZ kit is 8-10 hours. The top speed is restricted to 80 km/h (commercial use) and 140 km/h (private vehicles).



The company has not announced the exact price of the EV conversion kits for the Dzire, but it is said to cost around Rs. 5-6 lakh. Bookings are expected to open soon, and customers will be able to order the kits by paying a token amount of Rs. 25,000.



For the Tata Ace, the company offers the Shaandaar and Damdaar kits, with a maximum range of 80-100 km and 160-190 km, respectively. It takes 5-6 hours to recharge the battery in the Shaandaar kit. It can be recharged in just 2 hours using a fast charger.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sv6f4smmhg

The Damdaar battery pack can be recharged in 6-8 hours. Initially, the company will only take orders for the Shaandaar kit. It costs around Rs. 4.5-5.0 lakh.

According to the company, these are plug and play kits and don't require any modifications. That said, the internal combustion engine has to be removed to install these kits.

Northway Motorsport has also partnered with Bhartiya EV to set up charging infrastructure across India. It plans to set up a dealer and charging network in Maharashtra in the next 3-7 months.

Link to Team-BHP News

[Sran]

I have no idea who is going to do that. Buy a new dzire at 8 lakhs and then add 5 more lakhs to make it electric or buy a nexon ev right away. Buy an old dzire for 4 lakhs and then add 5 lakhs or buy a tigor ev right away. Buy a dead engine/accidental dzire at 1 lakh and add 5 lakhs or buy a tiago ev.

But there will always be few people who will take the plunge and I appreciate them for being the lab rat so that the technology can be refined. Maybe one day this EV kit can become universal like the CNG kit and we will see the rise of legendary Ambassador in all its glory, converted to an EV with passengers sitting in its supreme rear seat.

[RedViper]

I have a 15-year-old Santro Xing that has clocked 175000 KMs. When such conversions are available for Santro, I might consider this. This might just work well for office commute and city runabouts. I also have a Creta CRDi for those road trips.

[procrastinator]

A good initiative but it would have been wise to become a supply chain company, selling parts and EV kits to different manufacturers as per their design.

They may want to keep this approach for future.

[AkMar]

We have a thread about this on Team BHP! https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/elect...ctric-car.html (Swift Dzire EV - Systematic conversion to an electric car!)

[Shreyans_Jain]

Northway has been discussed in detail in other threads on this forum. The person behind this company drives an EV converted Chevy Beat himself. They key differentiator between his design and what Tata does is that he uses the car’s OEM gearbox. This allows him to get good range and higher top speed without having to go for a substantially more powerful motor. But the driver needs to operate the gears like any regular manual transmission. While his proof of concept vehicles seem to be successful, how this setup behaves in real world conditions on a production scale remains to be seen.

[condor]

I think this may be an interesting option for people with older cars, who want to retain it for the body shape/style, but are not really concerned about staying true with the original functional drive of the car. Will help them get around the new scrappage laws.

Would be good if costs of conversion come down a bit.

[gollabhat]

Originally Posted by TusharK

Pune-based Northway Motorsport has launched an EV conversion kit for the Maruti Suzuki Dzire and Tata Ace.

That's one fantastic looking Dzire by the way. . The wheels & the stance of the car look fantastic. Is it only me who feels so or are there others as well?

[serious_maniac]

While the maths doesn't work in favour of this particular conversion, but there are some positives here and there's some market as well

a) this is first of the kits. I am sure there are many more to follow. Somewhat like CNG kits. Overall good for electric ecosystem. On the flip side there will be poor conversion kits as well in the transition phase.

b) Yellow board vehicles which run 100k km per year depreciate significantly. For them this may be a good option.

So this may not have any significant sales but bodes well for the ecosystem.

[rpmmachine]

Very good initiative and wish them all the success but 5 lakhs is too much for someone to invest in this.
One can run approx 1Lakh KM more on Diesel ( less on petrol) itself with this amount of money and no need to charge for 6-7 hours. Anyways it is all about preference and choice.

Any inputs on how the RC will be altered/updated and will the vehicle be allotted a Green plate or what needs to be done further to change all this?

They can always tie-up with Maruti or other companies and the result will be low-cost EV for Mass market.

[Shreyans_Jain]

Originally Posted by rpmmachine

Very good initiative and wish them all the success but 5 lakhs is too much for someone to invest in this.
One can run approx 1Lakh KM more on Petrol itself with this amount of money and no need to charge for 6-7 hours. Anyways it is all about preference and choice.

Agree, 5lakhs is pretty steep for an untested retrofit. But with petrol at Rs105+ in most of the country, (let’s assume 100), you get 5000 liters of petrol for 5L. That means you can drive 60000km at 12kmpl. That’s it. Add to that whatever you’ll spend on maintenance. The cost of petrol has really changed the cost calculations, man. Heavy users can recover the cost in a couple of years.

Another way to look at this is that the price difference between a mid spec Nexon petrol manual and an equally specced EV is also about 5L. Don’t think this retrofit kit is eligible for any government benefits or subsidy.

[starke]

Interesting to see how far Retro-fitment travelled to reach some good packaging and on a mass-production level instead of protos.

I'm concerned about the regulatory approval for these vehicles since the entire vehicle powertrain has been swapped (well it is very similar to engine swap which itself is a bottleneck in India)

Apart from the homologation headache, practically it may assist few cab owners and some private vehicles, but in the long run investing 5 lakhs or more on an old car (obviously none will convert their new/average old cars with this much investment) remains a mystery considering the wear n tear of other parts (even this model requires the stock gearbox)

Let's hope for the best, once the battery cost comes down - maybe we will have some cheap homologated retro-fitment centres approved by govt. for the masses.

[condor]

Originally Posted by serious_maniac

b) Yellow board vehicles which run 100k km per year depreciate significantly. For them this may be a good option.

Like we have the Tata Ace now in petrol, EV versions will catch up soon. The new LGV/Mini GV group will be covered. However, if some one can come up with kits for older vehicles, there is likely to be a decent market, IMO. But may not happen since these kits look to use the ECU of cars .. (only new models are listed in Northway's website). Or will it be easier to convert older, non-electronic vehicles into EV's ?

[warrioraks]

If these guys can do it for 5 lacs, is there a reason for Maruti not to have Dzire EV in their portfolio. With Maruti’s scale and experience, the outcome should turn out to be way cheaper and significantly more reliable for customers. Cabbies will buy it left, right, center and Maruti can laugh all the way to the bank.

Coming to this company (Northway) - I am lost on what’s the target customer base here. The kit is too expensive. My guess is, they need to sell it at a fraction of the advertised cost to get any decent numbers. Their main competition is the CNG conversion kits available in the after-market which sells for less than a lac typically.

Not sure if this is a viable business in the current scenario.

[prasanna.vps]

How road legal will this mod be? I use the word "Mod" as I believe that is how the RTO will look at it. Will RTO allow the drive train change to be notified in the registration, if not this is a good project which potentially an OEM can acquire, dont see this becoming mainstream.

That is unless he has found a way to already make this road legal.