{"id":3430,"date":"2025-07-19T11:48:20","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T11:48:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.electronthemes.com\/insightev\/insightev-weekender-week-29\/"},"modified":"2025-08-11T11:26:40","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T11:26:40","slug":"insightev-weekender-week-29","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.electronthemes.com\/insightev\/insightev-weekender-week-29\/","title":{"rendered":"InsightEV Weekender: Week 29"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Greetings and welcome back to the InsightEV Weekender. <\/strong>Here, I like to focus on things we did not cover during the week. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Stark Shows What is Possible<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

…when you do things right, that is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This week was all about Spain-based Stark Future’s quarterly results. For Q2 2025, the Barcelona-based company reported revenue of EUR 47m and EBITDA of EUR 4.5m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s hardly eight years of the bike manufacturer’s existence. As the media pointed out<\/strong><\/a>, Stark has achieved in less than half the time what took Tesla 17 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Importantly, Stark achieved this mostly with just the Varg, a non-street legal high-performance, premium motocross. The street-legal EX has recently joined the range.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/
Stark EX is street legal and is now available <\/strong><\/b><\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This is a shot in the arm for the entire electric motorcycle industry as it solidifies the potential of electric motorcycles, if the product market fit is worked out well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

India-based Royal Enfield had invested in Stark Future<\/strong><\/a> in December 2022 at a near EUR 500m valuation. The Indians put EUR 50m in Stark at that time, and Siddarth Lal, the Chairman of Eicher Motors (RE’s parent company), also sits on Stark’s board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That investment seems like a good bet now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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SOL is Coming<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"\/
SOL Pocket Rocket <\/strong><\/b><\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Through our years of following electric two-wheelers, we have come to find many interesting product ideas that show up, create a buzz, win a couple of Red Dots, and then become vaporware.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frankly, we thought SOL was one of those. Mea Culpa!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, Micah Toll of Electrek reports<\/strong><\/a> that the SOL pocket rocket is headed for production and will be hitting the streets soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Energica is coming back<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

High-performance electric motorcycle brand Energica went bust last year.<\/p>\n\n\n

\r\n \r\n
\r\n \"Energica\r\n <\/div>\r\n
\r\n
\r\n Energica is gone! – InsightEV <\/div>\r\n
\r\n Electric traction and large lifestyle motorcycles don't play well together. The tech hasn't reached the point yet. Now, Energica is bankrupt. <\/div>\r\n
\r\n \"\"\r\n InsightEV – Global Electric Mobility<\/span>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/a>\r\n <\/figure>\r\n\n\n\n

Over the last few months, the courts have tried to auction the assets multiple times but with little success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, media reports indicate<\/strong><\/a> that a group of Singapore-based investors<\/strong><\/a> has stepped in to take control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More details will become clear in the near future, though it is likely that Energica’s core team will be at the helm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most importantly, once the restructuring process is completed, it would be interesting to see if Energica has a new product strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hanoi to ban ICE two-wheelers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Hanoi, one of the most crowded cities in Asia, is set to ban ICE two-wheelers<\/strong><\/a>. The ban is less than a year away, being enforced from July 1st, 2026. Post that, ICE two-wheelers would not be allowed in the central districts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s welcome news for electric two-wheeler manufacturers in Vietnam. However, that industry is still fledgling and nowhere near capable of meeting the demand that this may generate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ola Electric Q1 FY 2025 Results Throw More Questions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Ola Electric announced their quarterly results this week, and while the India-based manufacturer would like to paint them positively by twisting statistics on a quarter-on-quarter comparison, we found not much to cheer about.<\/p>\n\n\n

\r\n \r\n
\r\n \"Ola\r\n <\/div>\r\n
\r\n
\r\n Ola Electric Q1 FY 2026 Financials – InsightEV <\/div>\r\n
\r\n The company paints a positive picture, and there is a big improvement from last quarter, but the financials have deteriorated on a year-on-year basis. <\/div>\r\n
\r\n \"\"\r\n InsightEV – Global Electric Mobility<\/span>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/a>\r\n <\/figure>\r\n\n\n\n

On an annual comparison, EBITDA (loss) has deteriorated from INR (650) million to INR (960) million. EBITDA margin has also deteriorated from -6.8% to -11.6%. This was on the back of revenues declining from INR 16,440 million in Q1 FY 2024 to INR 8,260 million in Q1 FY 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, even more concerning was Ola revising all previous numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The numbers reported in the shareholders’ letter for Q1 FY 2025 had all been revised for both revenues and EBITDA. In some cases, especially EBITDA, the variation was more than 70% in certain quarters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We did send a query to the company, but received no response or explanation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In certain cases, audited results tend to vary from unaudited ones to some extent, with the margins within 5%. Such wide variations are unprecedented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Honda Needs to Course-Correct in India<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In our weekly analysis this week, we looked at Honda’s lukewarm impact in India. It is still early days, but we are not getting confidence from Honda’s product fit and pricing strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Honda is still the market leader by far in the ICE scooter space, even with products that are outmatched by the competition. However, it is the electric scooter segment where Honda is lagging and may have gotten its pricing strategy wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\r\n insightev.com <\/div>\r\n
\r\n \"\"\r\n insightev.com<\/span>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/a>\r\n <\/figure>\r\n\n\n\n
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That’s a wrap for today. This newsletter will be back next Sunday. The posts on the website are more frequent. This is your editor, and you may view my LinkedIn profile here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stark reports outstanding financials, SOL is alive and ready for launch, Energica finds a spark, Ola continues to bleed heavily, and Honda’s strategy may not be working in India<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3420,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[209,206,282,210,356,260,329],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energica","category-honda","category-newsletter","category-ola","category-sol","category-stark","category-weekender","pmpro-has-access"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.electronthemes.com\/insightev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.electronthemes.com\/insightev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.electronthemes.com\/insightev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.electronthemes.com\/insightev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.electronthemes.com\/insightev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3430"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wp.electronthemes.com\/insightev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4089,"href":"https:\/\/wp.electronthemes.com\/insightev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3430\/revisions\/4089"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.electronthemes.com\/insightev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.electronthemes.com\/insightev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.electronthemes.com\/insightev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.electronthemes.com\/insightev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}