Tuk-tuks are not the most refined or sophisticated type of vehicle on the market, and they are decidedly are not in line with what is expected from an Audi product, one of the builders premium most respected in the market. However, electric mobility has changed a lot, which has led manufacturers to pay attention to all the ways of moving potential customers around large urban centers, silently and without polluting.
Audi recently announced that the commitment to electric vehicles is total. From 2026 it will stop launching vehicles powered by combustion engines, which includes hybrids and plug-in hybrids.. It is clear that the range that is then on the market with engines that burn gasoline and diesel will continue to be produced, especially since, as expected, it will continue to be the type of engine most desired by the majority of customers. But everything will stop being manufactured in 2033, the year in which the manufacturer with the four rings will exclusively produce models with electric motors.
The certainty that it will have, increasingly, a greater number of old batteries -many of them manufactured with current technology, obsolete in a couple of years- led Audi to think of a output for accumulators whose materials will be less interested in recycling to make new batteries. That is why the idea of tuk-tuks is a good alternative, especially since they too have to change their old combustion engines for new electric units.
To materialize this project, Audi has partnered with Nunam, a start up German-Indian woman who wants access to end-of-life batteries to power tuk-tuks in India. According to Nunam co-founder Prodip Chatterjee, even batteries that are no longer suitable for cars, which are more demanding in terms of autonomy, easily satisfy tuk-tuks, with lower consumption and less need to travel long distances between recharges. .
Access to old Audi batteries will also allow electric tuk-tuks to forgo the accumulators they traditionally use, the heavier and lower energy density 12V lead-acid batteries. Not just tuk tuks become lighter and therefore more efficientsince the autonomy increases with the use of lithium ion batteries.
Source: Observadora
