Audi and startup Nunam are using e-tron battery modules to build the ultimate electric rickshaws.
What do you do with an electric vehicle’s batteries once the life of the car is up? You can recycle them for use in a new car. Or you can do what Audi has done and put the second-life cells into another form of sustainable transportation: an e-tron rickshaw, the first-ever Audi tuk-tuk.
Bringing the Classic Rickshaw Into the 21st Century
![Audi e-tron rickshaw Audi e-tron rickshaw](https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.gearjunkie.com/uploads/2022/06/A223225_large.jpg)
Self-powered rickshaws have long been a staple in countries where roads are far too crowded for cars and where the average person can’t afford their own vehicle anyway.
Moving people, commerce, and recreation, they’re usually powered by very old-tech gas or diesel engines that can put out more smoke than they do power. The high levels of pollution they leave are why countries like India are pushing hard to move to electric rickshaws to replace fossil fuels.
India has millions of e-rickshaws on its roads already. But the vehicles — called tuk-tuks in many countries — aren’t as green or as good as they could be. Most of them use lead-acid batteries. The same batteries used in your gas-powered car, in this application they can have a short life. They also can’t store much power and are extremely harmful to the environment if they aren’t properly recycled.
A startup called Nunam is working with Audi to give e-rickshaws more advanced EV technology.
Why This Instead of Recycling Cells?
![Audi e-tron rickshaw Audi e-tron rickshaw](https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.gearjunkie.com/uploads/2022/06/A223214_large.jpg)
[EV] batteries are designed to last the life of the car. But even after their initial use in a vehicle, they still have a lot of their power. For vehicles with lower range and power requirements, as well as lower overall weight, they are extremely promising. In our second-life project, we reuse batteries from electric cars in electric vehicles; you might call it electric mobility “lite.” In this way, we’re trying to find out how much power the batteries can still provide in this demanding use case.
Green Power Charging Solutions Part of Project
![Audi e-tron rickshaw Audi e-tron rickshaw](https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.gearjunkie.com/uploads/2022/06/A223218_large.jpg)