Keywords: micro-mobility, electric vehicles, last mile logistics, Pi Beam Labs



This thesis explores how micro-mobility electric vehicles can address some of the pressing environmental and economic concerns that are currently occupying businesses dealing with short distance operations. Based on the work done at Pi Beam Labs Pvt. Ltd., I elucidate how micro-mobility vehicles suited for specific usage can cater to a wide market, including Last Mile Logistics (LML), where corporations stand to gain billions of dollars from untapped resources. I further explore how the micro-mobility electric vehicles developed by Pi Beam can really economize short-distance travel and prove to be a valuable enterprise in an age where the micro-mobility market is witnessing a steady growth with forecasts of being worth five hundred billion dollars by the year 2030.



There are multiple chances of improvement with how short-distance operations are conducted in India - in the fields of passenger commute, last mile delivery, garbage collection among others. Overcrowding in cities and traffic congestions are resulting in reduced mobility and shorter areas of travel. Vehicles running on bio-fuel prove costly and inefficient for these short commutes. Manual methods of carrying load, such as pedaled tricycles, also put a tremendous amount of load on a worker’s body, causing serious long-term damages. The work captured in this thesis looks to resolve these issues.



I provide a history of electric cars, and show how recent developments that have made them economical can lead to their widespread use in the micro-mobility industry. An overview of the global micro-mobility market shows us the key concerns of the industry, such as shared mobility, ride-sourcing platforms, commuter experience, product innovation and data-driven decision making. In elucidating how, the products from Pi Beam prove resourceful in addressing these requirements, I discuss the specifications of the three Pi Beam products, the Pi Beam E-03, the PIMO, and the Pi Kart, and the wide range of applications they cater to, retaining both general usability and specific applicability. I explain the key philosophy of the current designs, providing the logic behind the selection of each component. Easier to maneuver, these vehicles boast of a wide loading space, low cost of operation, and additional features such as GPS tracking, Geo tagging, GPRS, battery monitoring and cloud connectivity that help in gathering LML. The importance of LML has risen with deliver-to-home services and bike sharing applications. The integration of the Pi Beam vehicles with the Intelligent Vehicle Control Unit (i-VCU) enables each vehicle to collect pertinent data that help in the purposes of logistics.



I then discuss the economics of owning Pi Beam products, and show how our electric vehicles have a much lower total cost of ownership (TCO) than the other options available in the market. I provide an overview of the product development models available in the market, and how the scrum model that is generally used in the Information Technology industry proved to be the best fit. I also provide a description of the Pirate model that we created from the scrum model to fit our specific requirements.



I then move on to discuss the after-market research we conducted for making utility vehicles for logistical purposes, and provide the case studies, such as the optimization of garbage pickup by the Greater Chennai Corporation - both in terms of trips and physical stress to the laborers, the use of Pi Kart to deliver essential items to apartments, and our collaboration with Ninja Cart, a last mile delivery service. I conclude the thesis with the hope that these vehicles, already utilized for different applications like advertising, food trucks, waste management, material handling, shared mobility, and more other business models that are emerging across different segments, will ensure that in future our world will be micro and sustainable.