Building hardware is hard. Building it with a misaligned team is fatal. We engineered a fully functional EV on a small budget, only to watch it stall at the finish line. Here is the honest documentation of what exactly happened.
We weren't building for EV enthusiasts. We were building for the school & college peeps, delivery agents, senior citizens and the small business owner from tier-3 city keeping economics, durability and easy functionality in mind.
We didn't just build a pitch deck. We built an actual, rideable electric bike.
Our next goal from this point was to build 5-6 improved units, a formal on-campus pilot run on IITK campus, then going forward for EV & Battery certifications and legal clearances.
I've thought about this honestly. A few things converged.
The founding was purely accidental. We built it because a grant appeared from Hyundai Motors, not because either of us were losing sleep over this problem ! That difference matters a lot. Passion is the fuel for the unsexy and dull weeks where nothing moves. We had genuine interest in the idea; we lacked obsession in the problem.
The team didn't hold. We started with 5–6 people. By the end it was just the two of us and a professor. Our faculty mentor was excellent on the EV and battery side, but business execution was never going to come from him, and we wrongly leaned on him for things he couldn't deliver. And between me and my co-founder, we weren't misaligned on the idea, we were running at different intensities. When a VC guy came to campus to review and advice startups, I was excited and thought of giving it a shot. He wasn't ready. The ironic part is, he invited me to join this project at the first place !
Staying in stealth was also a mistake. We told that we'd go public once we had something real. What it actually did was remove all external accountability. No one was waiting for us or watching us, so slowing down had no cost. The next step after the pilot was clear. We just never took it. We lost the ‘‘motivation’’ eventually and got enlightened about the fact that this ain't going to work and the bike-ride came to a halt.