Rapid fire round with the Ultraviolette Automotive founders: All your questions answered

In the latest episode of our ‘Boss Talks’ podcast, the Ed Sirish has interviewed Narayan Subramaniam and Niraj Rajmohan, founder and co-founder of Ultraviolette Automotive. Apart from talking about Ultraviolette’s progress so far, what the company has been up to, its international expansion plans, dealership growth, and more, the Ed also did a rapid-fire round and got them to answer all the your questions which came our way.

Sirish Chandran: Why does your motorcycle not have an onboard charger?

Niraj Rajmohan: It has to do with the weight of the vehicle. It would go up by at least six to seven kg. If you see any electric two-wheeler in India today, doesn't come with an onboard charger and it's a matter of optimising for the right reason for us, because we’re a performance motorcycle brand. While you're riding it, you want to be as minimal in terms of the weight and that was a big consideration for us.

Narayan Subramaniam: It's not the cost here because we're giving the charger with the vehicle. It's more about packaging the right volume and the weight aspect.

SC: But six or seven kg doesn’t seem too much to add on to a motorcycle which already weighs 207kg

NS: Yeah, so what we've done is also provide support in terms of bags, panniers, etc. And that can easily facilitate your standard or the boost option.

SC: Are we getting cruise control in the future software updates?

NR: Some aspects can be covered in the software and there are certain other requirements in terms of the keys or the buttons. I think certain parts of it can get covered. So we’ll have to check and come back on that particular feature.

SC: What do you think of self-balancing tech in two-wheelers?

NS: I mean, if it's an autonomous vehicle, we’re all for it. But if you're on the vehicle, riding it, I think part of the experience is your ability and control over the vehicle.

SC: Full autonomy, are you for or against it?

NS: Depends on the use case. I think all the delivery segments today, I think we share a very strong view on that. A human brain is not required to move these types of operations. At some point, we wish it could be, or if possible, play a role in automating the transport of goods from A to B, both micro and long-range travel.

SC: What accessories do your customers ask for?

NR: There's a whole bunch of accessories as a part of the racing kit, the lever guards, the aero discs. We've got tank grips, which we are now offering from the feedback from all the journalists, to augment your ride experience. So that is something we double down on the design team to fill up in three months. From a touring perspective, we’ve got bags and also panniers coming up as well.

SC: Will you ever put speakers on your motorcycle to make noises?

NR: There's a speaker to give you beeps and feedback in terms of the menus but in terms of making it sound like a 400, 600 or a 1000cc bike is highly unlikely.

NS: It goes back to the fundamentals of the aviation aspect. One of the very important philosophies there is functional honesty. And we appreciate the sound of the F77 and I think that the aural experience needs to be further amplified in any way or form, so we will try to do that through the drivetrain and not a speaker.

SC: When does the production of the F99 start?

NR: We had earlier mentioned that it would start in 2025, but we'll commit a closer time when we’re ready.

NS: The race platform should start to go live sometime in the 2025 window.

SC: Upcoming projects from Ultraviolette, can we expect a bike priced below Rs 2 lakh?

NS: It comes down to stripping away features, tech and innovation and we are not up for it. It's not so much about a price point. If there's a particular vehicle or something that fits that price point but is still top of the line with performance, tech and features, then probably, but we are already at a point beyond them with the current motorcycle platform.

SC: Will the F77 Mach two be getting future tech updates?

NR: Yes. All of our Gen 1 customers, of the bikes that they bought last year, are automatically getting all of the upgrades, performance and regen related, with no change in the hardware. So they’re getting a 10-level regen update, four-level traction control, Violette AI, and ACWS, every feature is reverse compatible. Even the hardware. We made the tank flap. Some feedback that came in from the media and the consumers was that they’d like a more robust tank flap. That was plastic earlier. Now it's completely aluminium. That alone required us to change eight other interface panels under the tank to facilitate that magnetic tank flap to fit into the Gen 1's as well. And that took six months of extra effort, not just on engineering, but the whole stack up right from the supplier ecosystem to the final output.

SC: A viewer asks, can I get the bike in Indore?

NR: Yes, there's already a bunch of bikes there and we'll have more stores and outlets very soon. By the end of the year, we will be present in most states in the country and people should be able to get the bike. Currently, they can just buy it online and we will ship it to them.

SC: Are there plans to have new console themes showing the power and torque outputs?

NS: Yeah, we just announced it with the F77 Mach 2. The first theme is also available, you can on the app or the display, switch between themes one and two. But it requires a lot of testing because these are safety-related aspects as well. You can't be too bright, you can't be too distracting. So a lot of user experience research and design goes into it and multiple loops for internal validation. Then we have a group within the squadron groups, which is also a group for beta testing of some of these features. It goes through that loop and then it makes it into production.

SC: You collect a lot of information on the motorcycle. Any plans to expose customers to that?

NR: The data that we collect is inherently very geeky stuff, voltage, current, temperatures etc. In the app what we see today in terms of the statistics, and the ride analytics, we do expose aspects of it that are summarised, which is your trip data and the rider analytics part of it and we plan to with Violette AI also put out certain aspects of the riding or how the riding can be. However, the raw data in itself is usually very comprehensive. It needs to be insightful before we share it and that's the process we do on the vehicle.

SC: Another question to add to that. All the data that you collect, now suppose tomorrow somebody gets into a crash for instance and the government wants the data of that motorcycle from you and that data implicates the rider and their insurance becomes null and void, so what do you do in that case? And if I buy a motorcycle and I decide two months later that I don't want to share any data with you, can that be done?

NR: From a regulatory standpoint there is a necessity to be able to share that data with police or with government authorities. That applies to any of the tech products that you want to use. Even software companies usually these are put these in the user license agreement or in all the things that we all take and accept and it is a necessary part of operating a vehicle like this and it's a necessary part of collecting data that it has to be by law it is required to be shared with the government, then yes we will share it. And yes, we do have what is called an incognito mode on the app which once you enable I think several aspects of the data just stop being shared especially if they have to go with personally identifiable information. There is still diagnostic data which is critical for us to ensure that you have a warranty on your vehicle. From that perspective, there's still some data shared but the personally identifiable aspects are not.

SC: What is your resale value? Do you all do buybacks and exchanges?

NR: This is an evolving market, the best thing that we can do is facilitate a very high value in terms of the vehicle and we do that by having things like an 800,000-kilometre warranty and the warranty also is transferable to the next owner. Not too many companies are providing this ability. If someone's got an 800,000, 8-year warranty that shows its ability. We do facilitate some buybacks because some third-party companies facilitate and provide them. So if a new rider is interested in exchanging their ICE vehicle, probably it's already happening. We are also formally going to announce a partnership on the exchange program to have a very transparent exchange system that is both digital and on the ground with our experience sectors

SC: When can we expect the next product and what is it going to be?

NS: The R&D is constantly churning out new ideas, and new concepts but internally our focus is on scaling up the presence of Ultraviolette across the globe. And we are not a single product or a motorcycle company. We already discussed the four or five formats of motorcycles. We should be across most of them but post a certain amount of time that is gone into the distribution of the F77s and Ultraviolette itself.

SC: When in the design process does the team say, all right, this is the final design?

NS: Many times. If you look at the folders on my laptop, I'll have a final, final underscore, final, final, finalist. There are so many versions of files and this often happens because design has to work very closely with engineering. So maybe we narrow down to a key concept or key sketch version of what we envision. Then it goes into clay modelling, and further refinements happen. Then you have the scan data of the 3D from clay that goes into meshing it with engineering data. So we build out surfaces and interfacing brackets. Then it goes into aerodynamics.

A lot of it also has to do with reality and constraints with suppliers. We expect a certain outcome and that doesn't happen. Feedback comes in from suppliers and often if it impacts the look and feel of the vehicle, comes back to design and goes back through every loop of structural simulation, aerodynamic simulation, manufacturing feedback and then the final sign-off. I think the final time where they say, okay, design is frozen, frozen is six months before launch. Because once tooling has happened, you can't make any more changes.

SC: Will you make an ICE bike? Why not hydrogen?

NS: From an Ultraviolette perspective, we're looking at something being very sustainable and exciting at the same time. There are good ICE vehicles out there. But as a company, our advantage is not in that domain and we will double down on new forms.

The distribution of hydrogen is still a challenge, and we’re happy to consider it. Whatever is logical and rational, we'll do those things. Our DNA is to keep experimenting on anything that circles.

SC: How much can we trust the aftersales service?

NS: Quite a lot because we've taken our time with it. We’ve spent about a year just getting all edge cases addressed from ownership and an after-sales perspective in Bangalore. It requires production to be aligned. It requires fairs and service support to be aligned. It requires service professionals to be trained, not just on replacing certain parts, but on engineering aspects of the vehicle. It requires a different team to have onboard diagnostics and a back-end dashboard of whatever is happening on the ground as well. So when we say service, we are trying to build a more proactive model and today the industry is reactive. When I say proactive, you’ve got the app as a norm. A lot of the alerts of something performing sub-optimally can come to you through the app as we develop that side of the ecosystem as well. So we are heading there and we are taking our time. The intent is to build a very transparent trust, trustable brand from an ownership perspective. I'd say the easiest way to verify this is to talk to the owners of our vehicles. And this is something we're so confident about, because we've seen it evolve over the last year, that if you talk to anyone who owns the F77, you'll get a real sense of what it's like. We don't have to do that bragging or anything of that sort. The reality is out there for anyone to find. And we are very hands-on people, both of us, no matter how much, how many projects or dependencies are happening in parallel, when it comes to a consumer experience, we are on the ground. So when we go back to talking about a one-to-one understanding of today's and tomorrow's customers, I think we will continue to be heavily invested in that aspect.