The Automobile Industry is one of the giants in the global economy. It has been around forever and has gone through its fair share of changes and innovations over the years, however, one of the most influential and sustainable innovations is that of Electric Vehicles.
And although this concept floated since its invention by Robert Anderson in 1832, it was put into the mainstream spotlight by Tesla in 2008 with its first Electric Car, the Tesla Roadster. No major company thought of taking up this concept before it was in many ways made cool by Tesla despite it being incredibly sustainable and way ahead of its time.
Many experts in the industry have speculated about the EV Concept and as a result, Automobile Industry as a whole would not have been such a hot topic if Tesla was not the driving force behind it.
Although Tesla has not seen a profitable year yet, it has had many profitable quarters and sticks to its vision of making Electric Vehicles affordable for almost everyone.
On 1 July 2020, exactly 17 years after its incorporation, Tesla became the world’s most valuable automaker with a market capitalization of $206 Billion, surpassing Toyota. But how did Tesla start? Who was behind it? What makes this futuristic company different from the rest? Where will it be after 10 years? Let us find the answer to these questions.
The founders of Tesla- Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning
Originally known as Tesla Motors, Tesla was co-founded and incorporated on 1 July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. The influence behind Tesla was GM’s failed attempt at EVs in 2003 despite the vast potential and high efficiency of battery electric cars.
The third employee was Tom Wright and in February 2004, Elon Musk whose name today is almost synonymous with Tesla contributed $6.5 Million and became the chairman of the BOD. Martin Eberhard was appointed as the CEO and JB Straubel joined in May 2004. After a lawsuit settlement in September 2009, all three original employees can call themselves co-founders.
Tesla’s initial goal was to start the production of premium sports cars for early adopters and after securing a respectable customer base, move into the mainstream vehicles like sedans, Trucks, and luxury cars. The first car produced by Tesla was the Roadster in 2008.
Musk’s Four Round Investments
Elon Musk- the current CEO and the largest investor in Tesla
First Round
The Series A Investment in February 2004 included Company Technology partners along with different ventures and private investors.
Second Round
The second round investment was worth $13 Million and it included the addition of Valor Equity Partners to the funding team.
Third Round
The third round investment was co-led by Musk and various technology partners. It consisted of $40 million in May 2006 along with Tech Partners. This round also included investments from Google, and eBay among others.
Fourth Round
The fourth round of investment included another $45 Million in internal investment and the total investment went up to $105 million through private financing.
Marketplace and Stocks of Tesla
Tesla launched its initial public offering (IPO) on NASDAQ, the second American car company after Ford Motor Company to do so.
Tesla became the world’s second most valuable automaker with a market capitalization of $104 Billion and on 1st July 2020 the most valuable by reaching the milestone of $202 Billion.
Despite the above milestones, Tesla has not seen an overall profit in any financial year. At the end of 2019, it posted a loss of $862 Million on revenue of $24.6 Billion.
However, this fact is often overlooked as Tesla leans towards a societal concept rather than a profit-making one.
Different Strategies Implemented by Tesla
Business Strategy
Tesla follows a typical business strategy like the technological sector, i.e, targeting early adopters with a high price and gradually lowering the price as they move on to the bigger markets. For example, Tesla’s First model, Roadster was of a lower volume and higher price compared to Model X and Model Y.
Production Strategy
Like Musk’s other projects, Tesla’s production strategy includes high degrees of Vertical Integration which is rare in the automobile industry, as companies outsource most of the components from their suppliers.
Sales and Marketing Strategy
Instead of a conventional dealer network, Tesla opts to sell its vehicles online through company-owned showrooms. It offers the customers an option to customize their desired vehicle. Tesla does not rely on a heavy advertising policy Elon Musk with his massive Twitter following is an unofficial marketing manager.
Technological Strategies
Tesla relies on heavy electrical technologies to get its production done. As a vertically integrated company, they design batteries, motors, glass, and innovative models like Autopilots.
As of 2020, Tesla sells three car models, Model S, Model X, and Model Y.
The Unveiled models include Roadster 2020 and the highly awaited Cybertruck. These products have different versions to them based on affordability. Musk said that there will be more innovative models down the road which would be more affordable than the current ones.
The Journey of Tesla to Emerge as the World’s Most Successful EV Brand
There are several car manufacturing companies found across different parts of the World. However, when we talk about Tesla, it does stand out from the rest of the companies due to the initiation of something different.
Tesla is quite popular for its EV model cars which have created a path for Tesla to emerge as the World’s most successful brand.
To achieve this tag, Tesla made every step resourceful. Tesla brand was started with a sample model featuring cars with a high cost and few models. This invention was to just ensure that myth revolving around the EV cars can find their dissolving points. For the start, Tesla manufactured just 500 units in a year and was responsible for many revolutionary programs.
The next model introduced by Tesla was about changing the manufacturing units to a greater scale and on contrary, it decreased the price of the model. This model was a great way to give head-on competition to the other luxury brand models.
Tesla also connects directly with its customers rather than depending upon the franchisee network. Tesla sells its products directly to customers and has a web-type global network to get it settled as a global brand.
Tesla mainly focuses on the customer buying experience to get more recognition from people. Several showrooms and galleries are placed at multiple locations by Tesla to have a much-organized system.
Tesla Showroom
Apart from this, Tesla has a good marketing strategy and a well-developed plan to sell its brand. Tesla also has a good financing backup and a few well-known investors. All these things make it possible for Tesla to emerge as the World’s most successful EV brand.
How Tesla Is Dominating the Ev Industry?
We can assume that Tesla is dominating the EV industry based on the fact that the EV sales of Tesla are approximate 2.3 times higher than that of other brands as per Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas. The rate of growth observed by Tesla in the EV industry is almost double that of any rival brand.
If we look at the Tesla market in the US, it is safe to say that the EV market in the US is highly dominated by Tesla for years now. For that instance, the EV cars of Tesla accounted for 79% of the overall rate of new cars registered in the US during 2020 and 69.95% of the newly registered car for the year 2021.
If to believe the available facts and data, it can be estimated that Tesla will still keep on dominating the EV industry for a few more years but with the condition of increasing competition.
US Electric Vehicle Sales
Problems With Tesla Models and the Future Ahead
A 2025 Tesla Model S
Despite having an innovative approach and putting customer satisfaction ahead of profits, Tesla has come up short on various aspects.
The durability, handling, and repairs cost are some of the quality-related problems that come with a Tesla model. The repairs and maintenance costs are very high and as a result, so are the Insurance costs. Apart from this, Tesla repeatedly comes up short in meeting deadlines regarding production, but this can be attributed to their decision on Vertical Integration.
Whatever the case may be, the company fixes some of its flaws with every new model and with its futuristic.
Tesla is the first brand to introduce electric vehicles on the roads. The models designed by Tesla also stand out from others due to their characteristics. Tesla created a safe way for the EV models to run on roads and also made them available at cost-effective prices.
With its uniqueness, Tesla is now dominating the EV industry and has successfully evolved as an EV brand across the world. The above article contains information like the history of Tesla, Investors and stock shares of Tesla, strategies planned by Tesla, the future of Tesla, and a few other basic information.
FAQs
Who are Tesla’s competitors?
Tesla’s competitors are Rivian Automotive Inc. (RIVN), Lucid Group Inc. (LCID), XPeng Inc. (XPEV), Li Auto Inc. (LI), etc.
Why is Tesla so famous?
Tesla is majorly famous because of its cutting-edge technology involving battery technology and electric powertrain.
Is Tesla the biggest car company?
The company is the biggest in the world and can be defined in many aspects. If we talk about the profit, then yes, Tesla is counted among the eight largest car companies across the world.
What is the rank of Tesla in the world?
Tesla falls at the rank of 65 on the “Fortune 500” list for the year 2021.
With batteries contributing to 40%+ cost in modern EVs, there is anxiety around their longevity and performance (charging time, safety, etc) that require more than just local safety protection. ION Energyis an Advanced Electronics & Software supplier for EVs & ESS. It is focused on building technology that will improve the life and performance of lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles and energy storage systems.
ION Energy is accelerating Earth’s transition to an all-electric planet. With a cutting-edge battery management system, advanced analytics software, and artificial intelligence-powered platform, ION is enabling electric vehicle and energy storage space providers the power of data to make faster and smarter decisions.
Read this article to know about ION Energy, funding, CEO, founders, turnover, products, business & revenue model, investors, awards, challenges, and growth.
July 2, 2021 – ION Energy raises a total of $3.6 million in pre-Series A funding round led by retail giants Amazon, followed by angel investors YourNest Venture Capital, Riso Capitol, Venture Catalysts, and others. The funding round was initiated by the eCommerce behemoth’s Climate Pledge Fund, which is set aside by Amazon to support promising sustainability initiatives of startups.
About ION Energy and How it Works
ION Energy has pioneered a disruptive battery intelligence platform – Edison Analytics, that is designed to improve performance and extend the life of Lithium-ion batteries. Edison leverages battery data, software analytics, and AI to remotely monitor, predict, and improve battery life. Battery pack manufacturers, OEMs, and electric mobility fleet operators around the world use ION’s platform to optimize their battery management systems (BMS) and build world-class batteries.
Edison Analytics Features
Both the Founders Akhil and Alex are ardent believers of the first principle thinking and aim to build for the futureand plan to shepherd the gradual and seemingly inevitable shift from fossil fuels to electric energy, more importantly in a developing yet booming economy like India. They emphasize the importance of educating and mobilizing the masses about the new alternatives of energy to change the prospect of EV as a niche concept to a mainstream.
ION Energy – Target Market Size
Battery storage may be the biggest disruption to the energy sector: Globally, the advanced energy storage market is forecast to grow from an annual installation size of 6GW in 2017 to over 40GW by 2022. In some markets, the improved performance and decreasing costs of batteries are already seeing them displace natural gas from the energy mix.
The company’s success in international markets have enabled them to sell 25,000 BMS that have been used with 100MWh of batteries last year. ION’s battery technology platform is leveraged by 60+ companies in 12 countries like India, France, Germany, Austria, Poland, North America, South Africa, UK, etc. to optimize their battery management systems (BMS) and build world-class batteries.
Despite Akhil’s graduation degree in Finance, he was interested in energy and software, since he was much younger. While he was managing the growth strategy at Haptik as its CPO in 2015, Akhil became intrigued by the launch of the Tesla Model S. The interest piqued further when his father was about to sell his Skoda Superb car and he had suggested converting it into an electric model.
While doing some research, ION energy Founder Akhil realized that replacing an internal combustion engine with an electric engine would cost him more than half of the car’s cost, i.e. a car which is in the range of INR 50 lakhs would require a battery amounting to INR. 1 Crore! Given the challenge of the exorbitant battery cost (the most expensive component in an EV), Akhil recognized that there was a pressing need to make the batteries affordable and accessible so that it lasts longer, performs better, and eventually, significantly reduces the cost of the vehicle.
Identifying the gap that no other company in India was catering to this space, ION energytook birth in 2016 in Mumbai. By the next year, ION Energy acquired Freeman SAS, an almost decade-old French company building Battery Management Systems, to boost its core competency. This led to Alex Collet transitioning from his role as a Founder of Freeman SAS to ION Energy’s Co-Founder and marked the international foray of ION Energy with an office in France.
ION Energy – Product/Services
ION Energy is an advanced battery management and intelligence platform. A BMS consists of a microcontroller and a bunch of sensors on the hardware so the technology involved is interfacing with this microcontroller through all these sensors and then interfacing this BMS with the battery pack. The core functions that a BMS performs include – data acquisition, protection, storage, and communication.
Battery Management System Hardware
In terms of the software used, there are various algorithms that run inside the microcontroller which is used to compute certain parameters of the battery such as the state of charge, state of health, range, etc.
The BMS that’s present in the battery pack has substantial information stored inside it and then there is the cloud that is powerful enough to compute, assess, and analyze. The startup is currently building a telematics unit that can transmit this information via the internet, but in its absence, it is using ION Lens, a telematics gateway unit.
ION Lens collects information from the BMS through Bluetooth over your phone and uses the phone’s internet connection to transmit information to the cloud in real-time. There is also a PC utility tool called CANView which runs on your laptop through a wired medium to the BMS called CAN. It connects, then your laptop sends info to the cloud in real-time, through the PC.
The intelligence layer on top of this is Edison Analytics. This is where the data is analyzed on the cloud. The insights are based on the data and the initial calculations that are being done by the BMS placed along with the battery pack locally, without the cloud.
Get Real Time Alerts with Edison analytics
Edison Analytics is designed to improve performance and extend the life of Lithium-ion batteries. Edison leverages battery data, software analytics and AI to remotely monitor, predict and improve battery life.
Advanced battery management and intelligence platform, ION is focused on building technologies that improve the life and performance of lithium-ion batteries used inside of electric vehicles and energy storage systems. ION also leverages advanced electronics and software that accelerates the effort of engineering teams.
In 2018, after acquiring an 8-year-old French Battery Management System (BMS) developer – Freemens SAS, ION came out of stealth mode and unveiled its first product UDYR, an easily swappable battery for electric scooters and started commercializing its flagship BMS platform. UDYR’s battery management would allow it to enhance performance and increase battery life by up to 200 percent.
Electric vehicles are expensive, primarily because of the lithium-ion batteries that power them. The cost of a battery amounts to 40% of the total vehicle cost. While the upside of using lithium-ion batteries is their high energy density, relatively low self-discharge, and low maintenance, on the other hand, they have a limited life. On average, the estimated life of a lithium-ion battery is up to 3 years or 500-700 charge cycles, after which, they need to be replaced.
This helped them pivot to improve performance and extend the life of lithium-ion batteries that are used inside EVs and ESS with its flagship BMS. ION’s unique advantage is its intelligent ecosystem – BMS + Edison Analytics, that blends advanced electronics, machine learning software, artificial intelligence, and data science with deep domain expertise in energy storage.
ION Energy o-founder Akhil Aryan explains, “The key differentiator – our battery intelligence platform Edison Analytics, uses real-time simulations and visualizations designed to extend battery life by up to 40% and reduce the overall ownership cost, thus boosting ROI.
ION Energy was founded by Akhil Aryan and Alexandre Collet in 2016.
ION Energy founders
Akhil Aryan – Akhil Aryan is the Co-Founder and CEO of ION Energy, one of the world’s most advanced battery management and intelligence platform. Akhil has been recognized as one of the Young Achievers of 2020 in the coveted ‘30 Under 30’ Forbes Asia (Industry, Manufacturing, and Energy), and Forbes India (Technology) list, and he has also been featured in Entrepreneur India’s ‘35 under 35’ list. Akhil’s objective is to identify missions and build an environment that helps unlock the full potential of his team.
One of the most unique things about Akhil is his versatility and ability to get on steep learning curves to understand markets and evaluate business opportunities. ION is a great example of how he converted his childhood fascination into a business, without an engineering degree. He graduated from the University of Mumbai with a degree in financial markets, but Akhil always says that his laptop is his gateway into the world’s largest repository of knowledge and degrees should not be held as assets that create entitlement.
In his last company – Haptik, one of the world’s largest conversational AI platforms – Akhil led the product team from the start, managed user acquisition and conversion, helping it skyrocket from 100k to 1.5 million users. In 2016, Haptik raised $12M and was on track to become one of India’s largest AI companies (acquired by Jio for $100M). Akhil was instrumental in building a complex Natural Language Processing engine to power the enterprise’s Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence efforts from the ground up.
ION Energy Team
Alexandre Collet – Alexandre Collet is the Co-founder and CTO at ION Energy, a company that is dedicated to reducing carbon footprints and building sustainable cutting-edge technology for lithium-ion batteries with a focus on electric mobility. Alexandre is chiefly responsible for designing and streamlining the technological innovation and product development at ION. A highly proficient engineer, he completed his masters in Power Electronics and Embedded Systems from the University of Grenoble, France.
Alexandre had a plethora of professional experience before his current electric endeavor at ION energy. In 2011, he founded Freemens SAS, an industry leader in battery management systems, that was acquired by ION Energy in 2018. Freemens SAS was powered into existence on his groundbreaking inventions and scientific research in power electronics architecture, lithium-ion cell aging factors, and state identification at the University of Grenoble, France.
ION Energy Team
Inside the company, ION Energy’s CEO Akhil’s role goes beyond the usual responsibilities of product, technology development, and business expansion. As a big believer of first principle thinking, his focus is on turning the green warrior narrative into a business opportunity and exploring ways to reduce the planet’s dependence on fossil fuels.
ION Energy Co-founder Alexandre seeks to concentrate on the software side of things with an increased focus on developing and scaling Edison Analytics, the world’s first and finest AI-powered state of the art battery data analytics software for all Battery Management Systems. He wants to make ION a household name and the face of advanced battery management and operating systems to unleash an electrical revolution in the world.
While Akhil is known as a software entrepreneur, he have always been innately curious about the nature of electrons. It never ceases to fascinate him that adding or removing even a single electron changes the properties of the nucleus of the atom, and hence the overall object! Such altered atoms that have gained or lost electron(s) are called IONs. This is how IONs form the basis of energy itself. The overpowering nature of IONs led to the name of as ION Energy.
ION Energy Logo
“I strongly believe that building, maintaining and optimizing the Energy Ecosystem is the greatest opportunity of our generation. Not only from a financial unit economics point of view, but also environmental impact. As a founder I will ensure that ION Energy remains at the forefront of this movement”, says ION Energy Co-founder Akhil Aryan.
ION Energy – Business Model
ION’s full-stack approach blends advanced electronics, IoT, analytics, and AI with deep domain expertise in energy storage. ION’s platform leverages a two-way communication gateway that enables businesses to:
Identify factors that are contributing to abnormal degradation of the battery’s health and the magnitude of contribution
Take appropriate actions like configuration changes over the air, drive profile changes, or environment changes to continuously improve the life and performance of the battery.
Optimize costs and acquire better ROI through all stages of the battery life cycle.
This is deeply integrated with a license to Edison Analytics, its battery intelligence platform that is offered as a SaaSproduct. With this core differentiator, ION is overturning the unexceptional rigid, one-time configuration approach adopted by other electronics suppliers.
ION Energy – Revenue Model
The company earns its revenue by following three business models:
The first one is the BMS sale where a bunch of companies buy its battery management system.
The second is the BMS platform license which means companies can use the platform to accelerate their BMS development by two-three years and save million dollars expenses.
Thirdly, the subscription to the startup’s software analytics platform which the companies use for diagnostics and warranty validation.
Akhil Aryan – “Being a startup, we’ve always made it a point to be transparent with our customers. Our communication with our customers has built trust in our company and our platform. At ION, good news can always wait, but if anything goes wrong, we communicate at the earliest and work on correcting our mistakes. At ION, it’s our mission to do whatever we can to make our customers successful. That’s why our first 10 customers are still our strongest customers today and brought many more clients to our company”.
ION Energy – Startup Challenges
It’s so difficult to capture all the challenges one faces in the early days of a startup. It’s almost always at the intersection of Market, Product, Team & Traction. For the team of ION Energy, the challenges were mostly around timing their product with market maturity and ensuring they’re investing both in product and customers that can help them create short term revenues but also those that have the long term potential for market penetration.
“Initially when we began operations, one of the biggest challenges we faced was grooming technical talent in-house. There weren’t many engineers who had expertise in the EV sector and the number of engineers who had knowledge in AI and analytics was low as well”, recalls ION Energy co-founder Alexandre Collet.
When a new market starts shaping up, the talent pool is not mature and so it’s difficult to make significant progress on technology unless there is senior leadership in-house grooming talent. Thus, the company had to train them from the ground up and provide knowledge as well within the sector.
This helped in creating the core team that today also helps train any new engineer that is hired by the firm. Founders hope that in the future, there will be more experts in the EV sector in particular with colleges like Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU), College of Engineering – Pune and the Cummins College of Engineering for Women and institutes like IITs beginning courses specifically to EVs.
Explaining the concept to investors at a time when there was low awareness of the need and the technology, inadequate infrastructure, lack of push for electric vehicle adoption and localization of technology by regulatory authorities in the country are some other challenges faced by the company.
ION is India’s largest BMS company with 30%+ market share in the 2/3W space, 10 Crores in revenue and offices in India & France.
The company has customers like Exicom Tele-Systems Ltd., IBS, Tork Motors, Wamtechnik, Electro-Mechanique Industries (RGM), Swincar, TYVA Energie, and Yotta Solar.
ION Energy – Funding and Investors
The initial ION Energy funding came from Akhil (Co-Founder). There are also some seed investors that include Astarc Ventures, Advik hi-Tech and executives from Salesforce, Tesla, Haptik, Nippo Batteries, and Dentsu Aegis. The funds have helped ION Energy in product development and bring the technology closer to mass manufacturing.
The latest fund, as disclosed by ION Energy, is led by eCommerce behemoth, Amazon via the Climate Pledge Fund, worth $2 billion that the firm set aside to support sustainability initiatives of the startups around the world. Along with Amazon, the other companies that joined the round were YourNest Venture Capital, Riso Capitol, Venture Catalysts, and more, which helped ION Energy to raise around $3.6 million in its pre-Series A funding round.
ION Energy – Advisors and Mentors
ION Energy is a part of Shell’s E4 Programme and is mentored by Sushil Jiwarajka, Chairman of OMC Power and founder of Nippo Batteries.
ION Energy was founded in 2016, and within a year of its inception, ION Energy acquired an 8-year-old French Battery Management System (BMS) developer – Freemens SAS, in a first of its kind cross-border acquisition.
ION Energy – Recognition and Achievements
Akhil has been recognized as one of the Young Achievers of 2020 in the coveted ‘30 Under 30’ Forbes Asia (Industry, Manufacturing, and Energy), and Forbes India (Technology) list, and he has also been featured in Entrepreneur India’s ‘35 under 35’ list.
ION Energy – Future Plans
The next 5 years are going to be pivotal, not only for ION Energy but also for our planet and the human species. If the company manages to make the e-mobility transition holistically, it will go down in history as one of the largest positive recourse that humanity has made. The move away from fossil fuels will define the generations to come. ION Energy has a major role to play in this transition and they take this responsibility seriously.
Over the 5 year horizon, the company sees itself managing 10% of all Li-Ion batteries deployed in the country. To make this a reality, they will scale to 100 engineers by 2021 and leverage India’s strength in electronics and software to overcome the lack of lithium resources.
“We aim to Deliver to the Key Customers with 10x Reliability in – Product + Technology. In the next 18 months, we envision quadrupling the impact and delivering 10x by 2021 to 1GWh under management and $20M in revenue“, says Akhil while talking about future plans.
Dev Gupta
Rishabh Rathi
Harshit Verma
