Nepal’s first electric bike, “P-0” by Yatri MotorCycles

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Designed and Developed in Nepal, ‘Project Zero’ fulfills the dream of Nepal.

Yatri Motorcycles: P-0 is a dream project, a story or you can say an emerging brand story which has the potential to inspire any young entrepreneur. Initiated everything in Nepal.

In an interview the founder of Yatri Motorcycle Ashim Pandey told in an interview about the purpose of starting the Yatri MotorCycle- “EV is fundamentally a better tech but in current market these product is not really capable to attract the customer due to lack of performace.
So, the whole story behind the Project-Zero is to give the user freedom of travel with electric mobility. The idea is if user switch to electric mobility then they don’t have to make any compromise.”

The founder of Yatri Motorcycles

Ashim Pandey has done under-graduation and post-graduation in Aerospace Engineering from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. During his study also he had worked with Forze Hydrogen Electric Racing, aQysta, Formula Student Team Delft and Donkervoort. Sometimes life takes a turn while having professional experience. The same happened with Ashim also. Earlier he was woking with Donkervoort where he was involved in manufacturing hypercars. But very soon Ashim realised that the same work can be done in his home country Nepal with the help of a good team.

That was the turning point in his life when he came back from Netherlands to Nepal in 2017. He studied the Nepal market and finally decided to build a high performance electric bike. For the same purpose the new tech company ” Yatri Motorcycles” started back in 2017. At present a small team of young engineers has come to the final stage of their project with Yatri Project Zero.

P-0 Design & Development

To innovate something and to validate the same for the real world uses is the major challenge for any engineer today. P-0 or Project-Zero was the same task. To address all the issues of any electric bike and to make it superior in terms of performance than any gasoline bike, Yatri team decided to build many of the components of the bike from skretch.

The company also used the 3D printer to manufacture functional concepts, micro jigs and prototype components to speed through the development process. Design, development and testing everything were done in Nepal only, but due to the manufacturing constraints, some of the parts were needed to be sourced from other countries. Finally the team is on the final stage of releasing the production drawing to manufacture 50 numbers of Yatri P-0.

P-0 testing and validation

Yatri Motorcycle’s engineers worked so hard to validate their flag-ship bike ‘P-0’. Each newly designed parts are first validated with the help of CAE softwares then then accelerated testing was also performed to ensure the durability of every component and sub-assemblies. Vehicle level testing also done in-house as well as the 24 hour endurance test was performed in November’2019 in an airfield in Chitwan (a district of Nepal). So, the Yatri team is putting all the effort and engineering to make the P-0 a very robust and reliable product.

Performance figures of ‘P-0’

A performance is one of the fundamental pillar of Yatri Motorcycle. Project Zero eBike is a premium ebike with powerful performance. Made up with carbon fiber body panels. It’s the result of the hard works put together by the team in last 2 years and one more year for the prior research.
Claimed range is 230 km
Battery: 06kWh
Motor: 30Kw- 40hp power
0-60 mph in sub-four seconds

Battery used in P-0 electric bike

The battery is the one of the main things in any electric vehicle. Now maximum companies are just importing it as a complete package or in the form of cell from China. Some of the startups are working parallel on the battery technology and BMS. In project zero (Nepal), engineer’s have imported the battery pouch and assembled it locally. In an answer to a question on reddit Asim Pandey wrote “We use very expensive and robust battery “pouch” cells. They are quite large compared to cylindrical cells like 21650 for example. However, one of our goals of 2020 is to fabricate our own cylindrical cell battery pack that will allow us to make the pack into almost anything we want to. We have yet to see if we have to reduce the range if we opt for the cylindrical cells“.

Battery Charging

We are aware of the lack of EVs infrastructure and all the EV market facing this issue. The big players have enough to bet-on so along with making EVs they are also involved in the setting-up charging infrastructure. The Yatri team is now just focusing on to deliver a world class quality product to its customers. And to address the issue of range anxiety Yatri had done things-
– High battery range: Yatri P-0 bike comes with 230km range
– On-board fast charger: Project Zero’s on-board charger connects to a standard wall outlet to fully charge the battery in just 2 hours.
– DC fast charging capability: P-0 will be equipped with level 3 DC fast Charging capability, adding 3-5 km every minute or two.

P-0 electric bike gallery

My Words

Now the time has come to go for the greener transport medium and infrastructure. But still need to do a lot to switch from conventional vehicles to electric one. Nepal just imports electric vehicle from China or India. But this is the first time when a world class high performance electric bike has been designed and developed in Nepal. The Yatri MotorCycle team has proven themselves and made the difference. This whole process of Project Zero has been since December 2017 it is a success story.

Coming with all the hope and expectation of whole country ‘Project Zero’ made the history. The team is working tirelessly to meet the delivery target of 50 limited edition ‘Yatri P-0’ in summer 2020. All the very best from to the team Yatri Motorcycle from ‘Electric Vehicles_(India).

Other startups

There are Other emerging tech electric two-wheelers in the neighbor country of Nepal. Specially in India you must have looked over these mentioned startups. Orxa Energies-Mantis ebike, Ather Energy- Ather 450 electric scooter, Emflux Motor – Emflux One.