MUMBAI :

Orxa Energies unveiled India's first fully electric naked sports motorcycle, Mantis, at India Bike Week, in Goa, recently. From building battery packs to designing it, everything has been done in-house by their young team members and the bike sure has turned out to be a headturner. 

TOS: Tell us about the Airbus Biz Lab Program and about graduating from it. 

Ranjita Ravi: Airbus Bizlabs is the accelerator program of the global Aerospace giant. They have four centers across the world and Bangalore, India, is one of them. We got selected in 2017 for Season 3 of the program, and we graduated in 2018. We’re currently working on an advanced R&D project with the Airbus team. For us, the experience of working with such a prestigious firm has been great – we are excited about our R&D project as well.

There are strong synergies between Aerospace and Motorcycling – volume constraints, weight constraints and of course, strong emphasis on high performance. We’ve translated these synergies between our work in Aerospace and our development for the Mantis and our battery packs. 

How did the name Mantis come about?

Dr. Sabnis: The vehicle is inspired by the Stealth Predator, the Mantis. Our first prototype was the Mantis Trike, with 2 wheels in the front – and this reminded us a lot of the Mantis insect. The theme stuck. The idea is the same – we want our vehicles to be silent, ambush predators on the road, with a quiet aggression that doesn’t need to be shouted. 

TOS: Could you give us details about the type of batteries that will be fitted onto the Mantis an dthe kind of work that has gone into it?

Dr. Sabnis: Orxa’s battery packs are completely designed and built in-house at Orxa Energies. Each of Orxa Energies’ packs are Modular, Stackable and Swap-ready! This is important as our ambition is to rapidly electrify all transport. The electronics systems, battery management systems, etc. have all been developed completely in-house. The packs are designed to be stronger, lighter, with a much better performance. Ruggedly built – the packs have been put on pilots in Delhi in summer and on goods carriers. 

This in-house tech is what allows us to put the massive 9 kWh battery packs in the Mantis – It’s two to four times more in capacity than other 2W EVs out there. 

TOS: What is the core focus of Orxa Energies, bikes or batteries?

Ranjita Ravi: At Orxa Energies, we rapidly electrify all transport. By all, we mean all – our battery systems have already been validated on pilots on five different vehicle platforms, and also in aerospace. 

Our main raison d’être are our Motorcycles. Our intent is to create engineering-driven, performance-oriented, and customer-validated motorcycles. Everything we design is geared towards performance – The frame of the Mantis is all-aluminium, great amount of detail has been paid to the weight, the handling and the ease of throwing the bike around turns – this, despite the massive 9kWh battery pack. It helps that my co-founder, Prajwal, is a Ph.D. in Material Sciences! 

We were bootstrapped for a long time. This taught us a lot of financial discipline. We thus made this an opportunity to develop clients with a number of paid pilots of our Battery packs. Our packs have been validated on five different automotive platforms and on aerospace platforms as well! Our customers are very important to us – we work with them very closely & intensely on an R&D level. This has also led to a number of patents on our battery tech in-house!

TOS: The design of the Mantis is striking, who are the designers and where have they looked for inspiration? 

Ranjita Ravi: Well, as the name suggests, the main inspiration of the Mantis motorcycle is the mantis. The vehicle is India’s first fully electric Naked Sports motorcycle. With an aggressive stance and mean, muscular looks, the vehicle’s design lines draw strong inspiration from the sharp angles of the mantis insect. And like the mantis insect, Orxa’s Mantis is an ambush predator, a “silent killer” if you like. 

The complete design and development has been done by the Orxa team. We have polyvalent team members – they build custom motorcycles, their own karts, BAJA cars, solar cars and some are even training to race. And of course, all are bikers. Such a polyvalence is key for a young lean team like ours and helps a lot in inspiring their own work on the Mantis.

TOS: Could you throw some light on the Mantis’ architecture and how different will it be from a regular 4-Stroke ICE bike?  

Dr. Sabnis: The Mantis is a performance electric motorcycle. It is a Naked Sports Street Motorcycle. It is designed to be a “No-Compromise” and a seamless shift from ICEs to EVs. 

We have approached the vehicle architecture ground-up, with keen interest in exploring alternate materials and manufacturing methods. The frame of the Mantis is all-aluminium, great amount of detail has been paid to the weight, the handling & the ease of throwing the bike around turns – this, despite the massive 9kWh battery pack! From the wheels to the handlebar and from the dashboard to the swingarm have been designed and developed by the Orxa team. 

The ride experience is also important. The Mantis will give the riders 200 kms of range on real riding conditions (not idealized). This is important when we want to be a “no-compromise” EV alternative for our customers. The Mantis aspires to refocus attention on to the joy and the escape that a motorcycle traditionally represents.

TOS: Are you planning to launch the Mantis by the Festive season next year? Now, that the Mantis has been unveiled, what’s next from Orxa Energies’ stables?

Ranjita Ravi: We will target to do so, yes. A lot of it will depend on us getting the final refinements and the certifications done. 

Over the next few months, we will increase our customer engagement and our outreach. The idea is to involve their feedback in the final refinements of the product. We have just done one Performance Preview recently, on Nov 10th. The response from the professional bike racers and the serious riders was great, gave us a lot of validation on our vehicle engineering. 

We will continue to do more such events in the next few months to reach more Bikers and EV enthusiasts alike. We’ve opened a signup form for this on our website – so request people to sign up for the track days there. Our major focus next few months will be working on getting the Mantis into our customers hands and on the roads.

The future vehicles from the Orxa stables will be also announced soon. 

TOS: The Mantis is a premium bike and considering it is a performance electric bike, who is the Mantis going to be targeted at and what is the price bracket that you have in mind for it?

Ranjita Ravi: We want to provide a credible and seamless electric alternative to serious bikers. The Mantis is built for those who ride performance bikes regularly, and serious bikers looking for a reliable city alternative for their heavier/ICE bikes. Also, people looking to move to a higher performance motorcycle for their daily commute within city, without any compromise on their lifestyle or on the performance. 

We’ll be targeting a price range of INR 3 to 4 lakhs. 

For Electric Vehicles costing, there is an industry thumb rule – if the price of the EV is 20 to 30% greater than an equivalent ICE vehicle, then that’s a good price for the EV. This is because of the way the maths of upfront vs. lifetime cost of electric vehicles work as compared to ICEs. Buying an EV with a big battery pack is like buying 10 years of petrol with your ICE vehicle. Consumer awareness is, definitely, increasing about how EVs work vs. how ICEs work; but there is still a long way to go. 

TOS: Where are you planning to produce the bike and what is the capacity that you have in mind?

Ranjita Ravi: We are still finalizing the production, but since we’re based out of Bangalore & our first city of launch will be here, we’re most likely to finalize on a location in or around Bangalore.