Jose Aguilar lost his job due to the pandemic. For 18 years he worked at an executive transportation company, which closed in the midst of confinement, when thousands of people stayed home and did not need a vehicle to get around. So Aguilar uploaded his profile to a job board and shortly after he was called to apply for one of the vacancies required by Beat, a transportation service app that needed drivers to launch its new Beat Zero project.
Aguilar was hired to drive one of the electric Jac J7s , which the app acquired in late 2021 to expand its fleet of electric vehicles. Now, the Chinese models join the hundred branded Teslas that have been circulating for a year and a half in CDMX.
Mexico is the first market in Latin America in which the company of Greek origin launched an electric mobility service, as part of its commitment to grow in the main macro-cities of the region. “And CDMX is the largest in Latin America,” says Alejandro Arbelaez, regional manager of new verticals for Beat. 700 people work in the operation, including drivers and administrative staff.
Aguilar drives an electric J7 for eight hours a day. Something he never thought to do. “My first car was a Volkswagen sedan, with a manual transmission and gasoline… I am 50 years old and I never imagined that I would drive an electric vehicle… But technology advances,” he said.
Jac first unveiled the electric version of his J7 in December 2021, almost two years after launching the gas version. Thanks to the Beat project, the model was positioned among the five best-selling electric cars in Mexico during 2021.
The J7 is a liftback – a type of body in which the trunk lid includes the rear glass – whose dimensions are similar to those of a Passat. It’s roomy in the second row, with good trunk space and a tablet-sized screen sitting upright right in the middle of the dash. The electric version has the same design, but instead of having a gasoline engine, it has an electric one with 243 lb-ft of torque and a 55 kW/h lithium-ion battery, which give it a range of up to 500 kilometers per liter in economy mode and 400 kilometers in normal mode.
Beat chose this model for its new Zero service, which will be more affordable than Teslas. “The rate will be closer to that of a conventional fleet,” explains Arbelaez.
Unlike the traditional mobility service, Beat owns all the electric models and the drivers are on the company’s payroll.
An underground operation
The entire operation of the new service is set up underground, on the -9th floor of an office building in Polanco, on the west side of CDMX. There are three chargers from the Chinese brand Grasen with two hoses, which allow up to six vehicles to be connected simultaneously, which are recharged in less than 45 minutes.
Aguilar’s day -and that of all the drivers- begins with the detection of his biometrics and with the taking of temperature. Each day they are assigned a different unit, previously washed, sanitized and with the battery charged to 80%. The company keeps a record of which unit is assigned to each driver and each unit has a camera installed that monitors the vehicle.
Although he has been a driver of executive fleets for 18 years, he received a training where he was explained the technologies that the electric model incorporates, such as regenerative braking, which takes advantage of the energy generated when braking or decelerating, to convert it into electricity, same which is used by the battery.
Based on the first trips made, Aguilar calculates that the autonomy of the vehicle is enough to make between 16 and 24 trips, depending on distance and traffic, during his eight-hour shift. “More or less 7% of the battery life per hour is consumed,” he says. In the weeks he has been piloting the electric he has never run out of battery. Generally, he always returns to the operations center with 30%.
Arbelaez believes that making a reliable and affordable electric vehicle transportation service available to customers will accelerate the adoption of the technology. Aguilar has already made the leap.
