India’s electric rickshaws are leaving EVs in the dust

Each month, this upskilled team produces bodies and chassis for nearly 5,000 three-wheeler EVs, locally known as e-rickshaws, for the New Delhi-based YC Electric, India’s second-largest manufacturer in the segment. In 2023, YC Electric alone sold over 40,600 e-rickshaws, while 82,500 electric cars were sold in the country.

Even as India awaits its first Tesla, these humble e-rickshaws made by workers like Baran are powering an EV revolution in the country. 
Each month, this upskilled team produces bodies and chassis for nearly 5,000 three-wheeler EVs, locally known as e-rickshaws, for the New Delhi-based YC Electric, India’s second-largest manufacturer in the segment. In 2023, YC Electric alone sold over 40,600 e-rickshaws, while 82,500 electric cars were sold in the country.

Even as India awaits its first Tesla, these humble e-rickshaws made by workers like Baran are powering an EV revolution in the country. 

The Sonipat plant where YC builds its e-rickshaws is a joint venture with the company’s former Chinese import partners Jiang Li and Xue Jian Nan, who hold a 49% stake in the facility. “The link [with the Chinese suppliers] became so good that they also believed in us, invested money with us, and shared technology with us,” Kakkar said. Chinese engineers stayed “for days” to train welders like Baran when the factory first opened, he said.
His company’s ethos, according to Kakkar, is “Make in India, but technology from China.”

CHECK OUT THESE METALLIC CHROME BAD BOYS

(Via Rest of World)

Oh hello there. Online course on solarpunk coming up at the Brooklyn Institute starting in April.

This course will focus on the philosophical and imaginary turn towards radical optimism in the face of climate change. We will delve into the art, theory, and fiction associated with solarpunk, in order to think about problems of technology, nature, and productive human society—and how nature and material life can be integrated beyond systems of exploitation and oppression. We’ll consider the uses of utopia, the attractions of science fiction for non-capitalist thinking, the meaning of sustainability, debates over growth and degrowth, and the philosophical and cultural significance of affects of optimism and pessimism. Is contemporary pessimism a form of realism, or a lack of imagination? Readings will include works and excerpts from Ursula K. Le Guin, Kyle Powys Whyte, Andreas Malm, Rebecca Solnit, Becky Chambers’s Monk and Robot duology, and emerging literature within the solarpunk movement—both theoretical and literary.

junaidrao:

#Design The recently completed “Seoullo 7017” Skygarden, an abandoned overpass turned elevated park modeled after the High Line in NYC, Jung District, Seoul, South Korea [2000×1334]

Designed by Rotterdam-based practice MVRDV, Seoullo 7017 is a 16-meter-tall steel-and-concrete former overpass that is now a plant village and public park. It is literally translated as “Towards Seoul,” and the park runs above Seoul Station, connecting Namdaemun Market with the neighborhoods of Malli-dong, Jungnim-dong, and Cheongpa-dong. Newly constructed bridges and stairs connect the highway with hotels, shops, and gardens.

..

In the future, the park will act as a nursery and produce plants for the surrounding districts.

(Via Old highway becomes public park with 24,000 plants in Seoul)

The Seoullo 7017 project is an actual realised project by the Srchitectural Practice MVRDV and super cool. 

MVRDV are also the Studio behind the P15 Ravel plot proposal in Zuidas Business District Amsterdam which I am sure some solarpunks are all familiar with this proposal visualisation:

You can check MVRDV out at https://www.mvrdv.nl/en/home

Its cool to see The Seoullo 7017 project realised and think about what an impact it must have had on the residents of the city.

However I think Solarpunk as a broader scene is sometimes guilty of swallowing a “bright green” concrete neoliberal eco-modren architecture vibe - especially showcasing images of super clean render cities and buildings with no people living in them!

The ‘retrofitted future’ vibe has always had far more of an appeal (to me) than a clean rendered future which has an implicit ideology buried within it. 

Perhaps between us Solarpunks, we need to develop a keener sense of visual literacy?

Heres a picture of urban ag in Cuba

Or the Queens Rooftop Farm

This looks like Solarpunk to me. Not Shining white skyscrapers with trees on them. Think of the poor abseiling arborists with chainsaws and stuff! Nightmare.

Awful’s Gas and Snack (Swing Shift Collective, 2019)

Awful’s Gas & Snack is a life-size fake gas station from the year 2119, designed to help people imagine a positive future after the climate crisis. Offering “AUTHENTIC 20th and 21st century artifacts from the Golden Age of Gasoline,” it’s both a love poem to roadside America, and an obituary for a way of life whose time has come and gone.

Mounted at Burning Man 2019 with 100% renewable energy and repurposed building materials.

A radical analysis of problems and barriers to change may lead to overwhelming pessimism about any radical program; the hardness of a radical analysis can produce political quietism, with radical programs left to the politically naive. To be radical in both senses requires a theory of how this world, for all its problems, contains and is fostering the beginning of another, very different world. Williams labored mightily to hold together these two kinds of radicalism, to keep alive the idea that the many damaged lives he remembered and wrote about would find secular redemption in a transformed world, and that seeking partial solutions and temporary mitigations is not the best that people can do.

We’re a 10-acre urban farm in Phoenix, Arizona on a mission to turn “garbage” into food.

We use the power of Red Wiggler Worms,  Black Soldier Flies, and hot compost piles to turn Valley waste into natural gardening products, vegetable starts, and produce.  

What I appreciate about this video is that the whole process is delivered by someone who has obviously hosted this tour many times. His delivery is so clear and informative.

Despite the repetition, his enthusiasm for worm shines though the whole time!

Indonesia’s e-bike shops are building their own batteries

Dharmawan Kusna Handoyo spends his workday in a 2-by-3-meter cubicle, soldering batteries. He has been building DIY battery packs since 2009, when he installed one in his own electric bike — but in the past few years, it has become his main source of income. He sells the packs for hundreds of dollars apiece, luring back customers with the promise of a longer-range battery capacity. 

Hearing reports from the Figma guy that SOLARPUNK IS IN.

How the UN is Holding Back the Sahara Desert

Permaculture instructor Andrew Millison journeys with the UN World Food Programme to the Northern border of Senegal to see an innovative land recovery project within the Great Green Wall of Africa that is harvesting rainwater, increasing food security, and rehabilitating the ecosystem.

(Source: youtu.be)

southernsolarpunk:

ALT

New art!!!! I’ve been getting back into graphic design recently! 2024 is going to be my draw whatever I want without stressing era (I will probably stress)