Understanding the relevance of Yanti’s Reliability-as-a-Service offering for electric vehicle fleets

Post-deployment reliability is the most dangerous blind spot of EV use, says Romesh Gupta – Founder & MD – Yanti Innovative Electromotive Solutions, based on his work with battery pack failures experienced by EV fleet operators. In this exclusive interview, he shares insights into their observations of EV fleet performance and the relevance of EV aftermarket services.

What is Yanti’s business model, and to which stakeholders in the EV ecosystem does it provide services?

Yanti Innovative Electromotive Solutions operates in the EV aftermarket, closing a crucial reliability gap across India’s electric 2W, 3W and 4W electric vehicle segments. We specialize in reviving batteries that fail during or after warranty—especially in high-usage commercial fleets where km based warranties often lapse within 18–24 months, even though the battery still holds recoverable value.

Instead of replacing the entire pack—an option that can cost ₹4.5 lakh or more for a 22 kWh system—we target only the degraded modules or cells using field-validated, chemistry-aware revival methods (LFP, NMC, LTO) that have been honed over seven years.

We serve a diverse set of stakeholders, including EV OEMs, NBFCs, fleet operators, dealer and service networks, and institutional buyers seeking to extend asset life. Most battery packs are returned to active duty within 2–3 working days, often with 30–40% cost savings compared to OEM replacements.

Yanti’s Battery Revival Unit, Gurugram — showcasing real time cell-level diagnostics

As India scales electric mobility, Yanti ensures EVs don’t exit the ecosystem early due to battery failure. We bring them back to life—reliably, affordably, and sustainably.

How prevalent are battery failures in commercial EVs?

Battery failure in commercial electric vehicles is more common than generally acknowledged, especially in India’s high-utilisation fleet segments like ride-hailing, logistics, and last-mile delivery.

The above figures are based on our lab intake data and direct interactions with fleet operators

Based on our experience servicing 2W, 3W, and 4W battery packs over the past seven years, we have found that a significant percentage of commercial EV batteries begin to exhibit issues within 18–24 months, well before the end of their advertised 5–8 year warranty period. This is largely because warranties are capped by kilometres, not just years. Vehicles crossing 1.6 lakh kilometres in two years often age out of coverage quickly.

At Yanti, we’ve seen that a significant portion of EV batteries marked as “failed” can be safely restored to service—if diagnosed early and revived using the right methods. Without localized support infrastructure, India risks scrapping high-value assets unnecessarily. Building scalable, data driven revival capabilities is essential to protect uptime, affordability, and investor confidence in electric mobility.

What are the primary causes of battery failures you’ve noticed?

In our revival and diagnostics work across 2W, 3W, and 4W EVs, we’ve consistently found that most failures are the result of progressive degradation or system-level imbalance, not sudden breakdowns.

The following are the most common causes we observe:

• Cell Imbalance and Voltage Drift – Cell mismatching, whether due to manufacturing variance or uneven aging, leads to voltage drift across parallel strings. Over time, even a single weak cell can trigger protection cutoffs via the BMS (Battery Management System).

• Increase in Internal Resistance (IR) – As cells degrade, their internal resistance rises. This causes heat generation, voltage sag under load, and reduced energy delivery, eventually leading to performance drop and pack shutdown.

• Thermal Stress – In India’s hot and humid operating conditions, packs without active cooling degrade faster. Heat accelerates both electrolyte breakdown and BMS component wear, leading to early failures.

• Mechanical Vibration and Shock – 3W cargo vehicles and e-rickshaws often operate on rough roads. Physical vibration causes connector fatigue, loose busbars, and damage to sensing wires or internal sensors.

• Charger–BMS Communication Errors – We regularly encounter packs that are fully functional internally but fail to charge due to CAN protocol mismatches between the charger and BMS— especially in fleet scenarios with multiple charger vendors.

• High Cycle Count in Fleets – Commercial vehicles often undergo 2–3 full cycles daily. This high cycling compresses usable lifespan, especially in cell chemistries not optimized for such duty profiles.

In our experience, 70% of packs marked as ‘failed’ can be revived, provided diagnosis is performed at the module or cell-string level. Targeted revival strategies help avoid premature replacement and restore vehicle uptime in a cost-effective manner.

What is your course of action once a battery failure is reported to Yanti?

When a battery failure is reported to us, typically by a fleet operator, financing partner, NBFC or Dealers—we follow a structured and field-tested recovery process. Our goal is to determine whether the battery can be restored without full replacement.

Step 1: Field Intake | We document the vehicle and battery specifications, understand the nature of the issue (e.g., sudden shutdown, charging failure, BMS error), and record basic health indicators. This helps us decide whether the pack should be opened or treated externally.

Step 2: Technical Evaluation | Our engineering team performs diagnostic checks using specialized tools to assess the pack’s health at both the system and sub-system level. These checks help us pinpoint issues such as imbalance, degraded cells, thermal damage, or communication errors.

Step 3: Targeted revival or Revival | If the pack is deemed revivable, we carry out targeted interventions—often at the cell or string level—without disturbing the original BMS or harness. This method allows us to preserve the original architecture while restoring functionality.

Step 4: Validation & Performance Assurance | Each pack undergoes a quality validation phase before return, including performance benchmarking under load conditions. We provide a post-revival certificate and assurance report.

How does your role change based on battery warranty status?

There’s a common assumption in the industry that service providers like us only come into the picture after a battery is out of warranty. In practice, that’s only partially true.

In fact, 60–70% of the batteries we service are still within the warranty period—but come to us due to gaps in the support ecosystem.

Why In-Warranty Batteries Come to Us – There are three common scenarios:

• OEM Turnaround Time (TAT) Is too long – Some fleet operators cannot afford to wait several weeks for pack replacement or evaluation, even if it’s free. We’re often brought in to bridge the downtime while still complying with safety and quality expectations.

• Battery OEM is non-responsive or no longer operational – In several cases, the battery supplier is no longer servicing the Indian market—or has exited altogether. Even if the vehicle OEM remains active, they may not have in-house capacity for triage or revival.

• Warranty is aborted due to operational exceptions – Many batteries lose warranty coverage due to causes that are often out of the operator’s control:

– Water ingress from poor enclosure sealing

– Deep discharge during idle fleet months

– Mechanical casing damage while in use

Despite being within the original warranty window, these batteries are often deemed ineligible for OEM service—and reach us as the next viable path to restoration.

OEM and Fleet Collaboration

In some cases, the vehicle OEMs themselves refer us officially, especially when our turnaround time or lab-based diagnostics provide quicker clarity than their central team can offer. In other cases, we act as a trusted backend service partner to help validate the root cause or assess safety readiness post-incident.

While our public perception is “post-warranty revival,” in reality we are deeply involved during the warranty period itself—often because the support system isn’t fast, responsive, or local enough for high-utilization EV fleets. This hybrid role gives us a unique vantage point into real-world battery performance—and the service gaps that still need to be addressed as EV adoption scales.

Can you share an example of uptime improvement achieved for a fleet operation?

We have handled many cases where our intervention directly prevented EV fleets from being permanently grounded. One of the most impactful examples involved a major NBFC-backed fleet of electric three-wheelers powered by LTO chemistry.

Case 1: LTO Fleet Resurrected After Battery OEM Exit

The battery supplier for this fleet ceased operations unexpectedly, leaving hundreds of commercial vehicles idle across multiple North Indian cities. These were fairly new packs—technically sound in chemistry—but had developed faults due to CAN communication breakdowns, imbalance, or BMS lockouts.

Without OEM support, the vehicles became stranded assets for both the fleet operator and financier. Our team conducted batch-wise intake and diagnostics. Over 4 weeks:

• We revived over 80% of the failed LTO packs through targeted revival and string-level calibration.

• In many cases, restored performance to factory benchmarks, enabling redeployment without the need for pack replacement.

• Provided post-revival validation reports and documented traceability to satisfy NBFC audit teams.

• This allowed the financier to avoid a substantial write-off and the fleet to resume commercial operations within weeks.

Case 2: TAT Reduction from 6 Weeks to 4 Days (Ongoing 2W OEM Collaboration)

We also work as a third-party service provider for a major 2W electric OEM. In this role, we handle diagnostics and pack-level triage in select regions.

Where typical pack service time used to average 5–6 weeks, our localized revival and validation model has brought that down to under 4 working days, including quality assurance. This partnership has significantly improved:

• Customer satisfaction at the dealer level

• Turnaround time for warranty resolution

• Cost control for the OEM

Our goal at Yanti is to ensure that even when systems fail—whether due to OEM exits, policy gaps, or thermal abuse—the battery remains in service, the fleet remains operational, and the investment remains productive.

You call post-deployment reliability the most dangerous blind spot of EV use. What are your recommendations for OEMs, fleet operators, and financial stakeholders?

Post-deployment reliability is one of the most overlooked aspects of EV adoption. While great attention is paid to range, certification, and upfront cost, the real test of electric vehicles begins after 12–18 months of use, especially in commercial fleets. Many of the failures are not due to chemistry or abuse—they result from design oversights, slow response infrastructure, or fragmented service models.

Common Reliability Breakdowns in the Field

• Non-interoperable BMS: When a BMS fails, thousands of otherwise healthy packs become unusable because no fallback or replacement path is available.

• Warranty denial for system failures: Deep discharge and water ingress are often blamed on the user, despite being caused by weak enclosure design or poor BMS logic.

• Unrealistic service timelines: We routinely see warranty service take 4–6 weeks, during which vehicles sit idle, drivers lose income, and NBFCs face rising NPAs.

• Use of non-EV-grade cells: Despite BIS certification, many vehicles use field-grade cells that degrade faster under commercial cycling, shortening usable life.

Recommendations for OEMs:

• Design for serviceability and revival, not just disposal

• Enable certified third-party BMS replacement when original vendors exit.

• Standardize CAN protocols to ensure long-term pack operability.

• Offer RaaS (Reliability as a service)-style uptime guarantees, not just hardware warranties.

Recommendations for Fleet Operators:

• Track uptime and cost of downtime, not just mileage.

• Create service logs to pre-emptively catch failures.

• Work with independent diagnostic partners to reduce dependency on OEMs for every fault.

• Maintain a second-service pathway for faster turnaround, especially post-warranty.

Recommendations for NBFCs

You don’t just finance an EV—you underwrite its engineering. And when reliability collapses, it’s the financier who absorbs the shock, not the OEM. NBFCs must now use their leverage to reshape the EV market—by making funding conditional on uncompromising technical standards.

• Interoperable BMS architectures with fallback modes and open diagnostics

• Performance transparency – Live SoH, real-time degradation tracking visible to the end user

• Cycle life guarantees based on full-load simulations, not just lab test data

• Cell-level traceability: Manufacturer, grade, batch—even thermal and IR profiling

• Mandatory Made-in-India cell sourcing for long-term cost control and accountability

• Repair and diagnostics access—without which the vehicle becomes a black box post-warranty

When NBFCs start funding only those vehicles that are transparently diagnosable, repairable, and built with real-world reliability in mind, the entire ecosystem rises. And the NPA crisis that’s quietly brewing under the EV hype? It won’t stand a chance.

Recommendations for Public Sector Programs

Deployment volume is not impact. Lifecycle performance is. A 2-year fleet that dies because one battery string failed does not serve the circular economy. Reliable, revivable batteries should be at the heart of every EV tender, subsidy, and policy discussion.

In EVs, the real product isn’t just the vehicle. It’s uptime. If India’s EV transition is to scale responsibly, reliability must be engineered, financed, and governed—not just hoped for. Reliability as-a-Service (RaaS) shouldn’t be a premium add-on. It must become the baseline.

This interview was first published in EVreporter July 2025 magazine.

Also read: Powering the future: Why India must localise EV battery production