Piaggio Ape E City

February 2, 2022: Piaggio Ape is a popular three-wheeler brand in India with famous cargo and passenger auto-rickshaws. The company is now offering equally compelling and reliable e-rickshaw. The Ape E-City is the passenger carrier electric three-wheeler for all daily mobility needs.

Piaggio Ape E City Price: This all-electric e-rickshaw starts from an attractive ex-showroom price of ₹ 2.84 lakh.

Piaggio Ape E City Payload & GVW: The Ape E-City despite being an e-rickshaw is 689 kg of GVW and payload of 390 kg. You can take a comfortable 3-passenger comfortable seat that has generous cabin space and a cosy, wide passenger seat.

Why Piaggio Ape E City? Piaggio Ape E-City offers you some key benefits of performance, battery quality and overall customer support for peaceful ownership and making sure you earn a high return. The Ape E City is an all-electric passenger carrier for your mobility business that offers compelling operating economics against the IC engine auto-rickshaw. You can explore this new electric auto by reading here. 

Piaggio Ape E City USPs: This EV 3W gets dual-tone design and contemporary features, including safer doors, blue vision lamps for better night-time visibility. Piaggio claims that the owner doesn’t need to worry about battery cost or charging while using this vehicle.

Piaggio Ape E City Battery: This Ape E City runs on modern swappable batteries, which can be interchanged by just swapping at any nearest charging station. The customer can find the nearest charging station at any given part of the city only using the mobile app. The app will offer all the details on charging status, distance to empty, nearest station, and well as wallet balance. 

Piaggio Ape E City Benefits: Ape E City is economical to operate with nominal registration, free permit, and no road tax. It gets an advanced digital display for the first time in any 3W for all the vehicle information. This EV has no clutch and gear and can start by switching to start without any noise and vibration. It gets powerful motors for superior performance, zero maintenance, no oil or filter change, and no battery maintenance.

Piaggio Ape E City Warranty: Piaggio offers 36 months or 100 000 km of warranty and three years schedule maintenance free and a comprehensive AMC promise for three years. 

Piaggio Ape E City Competitors: You can check out similar products such as Mahindra Treo, E-Alfa mini, Kinetic Safar Smart, Lohia Comfort, and Atul Elite Plus.

Overview

Piaggio is India’s leading auto-rickshaw maker, the Ape branded auto-both in passenger and cargo segments are popular among customers. Ape has been serving Indian last-mile people and cargo needs for decades, and the brand continues to evolve by offering fuel-efficient, profit vehicles to price-sensitive customers. Ape auto-rickshaws are a source of livelihood for micro-entrepreneurs by offering them an employment opportunity. Over the years, Piaggio has expanded its portfolio of vehicles by adding all-fuel options, payloads, features etc making Ape even more compelling, value for money vehicles.

As the last-mile vehicle segment is making a shift towards alternatively powered vehicles, Piaggio wants to stay ahead by offering not only CNG and LPG vehicles but also full-electric auto. Thus, the company has already launched key EV auto-rickshaws in passenger and cargo segments that promise greater value to its customers. The Ape E-City is a full-electric version of its famous Ape City auto-rickshaw that caters the last-mile mobility needs. Piaggio already offers the conventional auto in the IC engine such as the Ape City and Ape City Plus. To address the growing needs of customers, the Ape E-City is launched in both fixed and swappable battery options. With this full EV offering, Piaggio promises to enhance the earning potential of its customers with totally environment-friendly vehicles with zero pollution. Can you buy the Ape E-City? We help you find the answer.  

Exterior and Interior

One of the major factors of the electric avatar of Ape branded three-wheeler is that while they maintain the key design architecture, look and feel of the IC engine sibling, at the same time you find the EVs differentiating them on the key external factors. Take a look at the Ape E-City, and you won’t miss the striking Italian design and distinctive styling. The attractive front look with blue-vision headlamps and contemporary decals attract your attention. Then you see the appealing chrome branding and dual-tone seats.

If you peek inside, the Ape E-City has a lot on offer. The first thing you noticed inside the driver cabin is the full digital cluster- which indicates key vehicle information like different drive modes, service alert, battery status, speed, battery charge indicators, energy regeneration, etc. Then the driver and passenger seats are quite comfortable with dual-tone and softer fabrics. There are doors to the passenger cabin for added safety, and you would find the cabin is quite spacious for 3-passengers with enough leg and headroom. 

Despite being an EV, there is no compromise on either space, practicality or features in the Ape E-City. The vehicle dimensions are 1930 mm of wheelbase, 1370 mm of width, length and height of 2700 mm and 1700 mm respectively. The ground clearance is 163mm (200 for swappable battery variant). You hardly see anything missing, which means Piaggio is offering you everything you expect in terms of the exterior and interior of this auto-rickshaw. 

Performance

The electric avatar of the Ape E-City makes sure you earn higher profit by spending less on the running cost. Since no engine and transmission, you get a far superior driving experience and the passenger would also feel quite comfortable in the noiseless vehicles. To ensure superior performance of this electric Ape E-City against the IC engine powered auto-rickshaw, Piaggio is offering quite a lot of features and value-added services to make it an attractive vehicle to own. 

The performance is ensured by a 48V voltage lithium-ion type battery which comes with 5.44 kW of peak power, with a rated battery capacity of 7.5 kW (4.5kW for swappable battery). It produces a reasonable 29Nm of torque with a longer range. Piaggio claims 110 km of real-life driving range on this vehicle (68 for swappable variants). Besides you get higher pickup with the boost mode, and the gradeability of the E-City is higher with a hill-hold assist feature. 

According to Piaggio what makes the Ape E-City the most compelling product is the lowest operating cost of 39 paise per km, extremely low maintenance, zero road tax and nominal registration and no permit cost. Further to make your ownership experience easy, you get three years of free maintenance, and assured warranty service across Piaggio’s widest network spread across the country. Ape E-City 713kg gross weight vehicle with battery (689 kg for swappable variant). The top speed of 45 kmph and gradeability of 19%. 

With the fixed battery variant, you get a 48V, 3000W off-board charger, and the full charge of the battery takes about 3 hours and 45 minutes. In the swappable battery variant, you have multiple advantages like no worry of running out of charge with instant battery swapping, no battery replacement cost and anti-theft GPS enabled batteries. Piaggio also has an easy to use mobile App that helps you with all the necessary user-friendly features. 

Verdict

Well, the Ape E-City is an alternatively powered auto-rickshaw but it seems a lot is going for it. It is quite evident that Piaggio has developed this excellent three-wheeler keeping in mind Indian customers' needs, and what they expect from an electric auto. Given the company’s extensive experience of the local market, the electric auto that is on offer takes the Ape brand to the next level. As more and more customers are embracing EVs as the rising fuel prices make their business unviable, Ape E-City is a perfect option out there.

So, if you’re among those customers who want to buy an EV auto-rickshaw but are not sure which one, you shouldn’t be missing out on Ape E-City. You’re getting a fully-loaded vehicle with the most trusted brand out in the market. While it may cost you a little higher initially, you certainly would recover the money a lot faster. So, brace yourself for a new EV world, and check this promised vehicle that could potentially alter your business forever..for good!