Selex Motors CEO: Quit working at Viettel to raise the dream of building an electric vehicle ecosystem in a 10m2 abandoned room

At the end of November 2022, the startup Selex Motors held a launch ceremony for the first time. Surprisingly, as soon as they were “revealed” to the public, they claimed to be the first optimal electric motorcycle ecosystem for transportation in Southeast Asia.

Dr. Nguyen Huu Phuoc Nguyen – founder, CEO of Selex Motors said: “Previously we worked in a situation where almost no one knew. It will now turn to a new page with greater pressure, like a river about to pour into the sea.”

He obtained a PhD in the US, was working as the director of a defense technology product project at Viettel, he suddenly quit his job and started a business in the field of electric vehicles. Why?

The job at Viettel is stable and promising, it’s just that defense products are things that I don’t want to have to use. I am interested in things that make a big impact and sustainable development, so I often think of starting a business in a field that is good for the environment and has a high gray matter content. A company with a depth of technology can develop into Hyundai or Samsung, contributing to the quality growth of the country.

Maybe I’m just a swallow, but I’ll always need those wings.

In 2018, one day, on my way home from work in the smoke and traffic jam, I remembered Tesla and asked the question: Why are electric cars still not popular in Vietnam? I took a week off from work to stay at home to research this issue, then envision a future of green traffic, smart traffic, not just stopping at electric cars anymore. I found it to be a very worthwhile thing to do. I didn’t know at first, but I can research and do it myself.

So within a week, I decided to start a business.

In your opinion, why are electric cars still not popular in Vietnam?

There are two core problems.

The first is the convenience of recharging. With petrol cars, when you run out of gas, go get gas. With electric vehicles, when the battery runs out, charge it. But if you have to charge every 3 – 8 hours, the obstacle to use is too great, especially for transport businesses.

Second is cost. With comparable quality, electric cars are usually more expensive than petrol cars. In particular, the battery accounts for half of the vehicle’s cost and is difficult to bring to a competitive price. If buying an electric car with a battery, it is like buying a gasoline car with a large can of gasoline to use for 5-10 years. Very unreasonable.

That’s why I thought of the battery swap model. This model solves both the problems of convenience and cost, but it would not be possible without the ecosystem.

Starting from zero in terms of electric vehicles, but we chose the hardest path to build an electric vehicle ecosystem consisting of 4 main components: Smart electric scooters – Highly compatible batteries – Automatic battery exchange stations Dynamic – Management platform using IoT technology.

In which, the battery exchange solution is considered to be the focus of the ecosystem. Users will rent a battery and then exchange it for a dead battery, get a full battery at Selex’s battery exchange stations. The process of changing batteries takes less than 2 minutes for 150km and the cost of changing batteries is 25-35% lower than gasoline prices for the same distance traveled.

In particular, Selex Motors has researched and developed patented technology to produce highly compatible batteries that are good for 70% of electric motorcycles circulating on the market. This advantage allows customers of many other electric vehicle manufacturers to share the same battery exchange network, opening the opportunity to build a common energy infrastructure for electric motorcycles.

It’s a risky problem, but I think it’s the only right way to solve the tram problem.

Solving the problem of convenience and energy costs, electric cars are only on par with gasoline cars but still not superior to make users switch to using them, sir?

That’s right, so it needs to have a 3rd value – those are the new values ​​that come from the combination with the latest technologies such as IoT, big data, AI…

The electric vehicle revolution is not only about electric vehicles, but also at the point of transfer – transferring from one generation of transport to another. The transition from internal combustion engines to smart electric vehicles is like jumping from Nokia to iPhone, it is a qualitative change.

It is the intelligence of the system, bringing new experiences and new non-traditional values. With mobile phones, the traditional value is making calls, while the non-traditional value is the new experiences it brings such as listening to music, watching movies, email… For electric cars, non-traditional values ​​are applications to we have more new experiences such as integrating maps, locating the car on the phone so that we can search for the nearest battery change point, or manage the entire service for the car… Or from the data collected from In the ecosystem, we can know how much or how little the driver of that vehicle travels and how he/she uses it, thereby providing more personalized services.

Back to your start-up story, how did Selex Motors start?

I, Mr. Hai – a friend who is a lecturer at the University of Science and Technology (Hanoi) and 2 other friends started developing a tram project in an abandoned room waiting for a dam to be rebuilt. . It is about 10m2 wide, we clean up as “headquarters”.

With a small initial capital from savings and borrowing from relatives, we were able to develop several versions of the car and the first battery products. We do everything by ourselves, from design, mechanical processing to assembly. Car is finished, tested, running… as usual. At this stage of development, it took us many months to make a car, costing up to hundreds of millions of dong for a product.

Thus, soon the initial capital is also spent. Who were the first investors to “inject capital” for him?

Still family and friends. At that time, they only had faith in us, but the company didn’t have anything, they didn’t even fully understand what I was doing.

By early 2021, we have raised 2 million USD from the investment fund of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and a Korean fund. With this money, we can build a factory and produce cars.

In what segment did you initially plan to produce cars?

We make cars in the high-end segment, from the SH level and below. In 2 years, developing many convenient car models when Covid occurred. The market freezes. However, I had a chance meeting and it could be said that there was a predestined relationship.

During a conference on electric vehicles, I met the CEO of Lazada Logistics. During the conversation, he asked why Selex Motors doesn’t make transportation vehicles? At that time I didn’t want to work, I wanted to make a personal car, and in fact at that time did not understand anything about the transportation industry.

Until Covid, thinking back, I think the transportation is very reasonable. A shipper travels 5 times more than the average person with an average distance of 200km/day, spending millions of dong on gas in a month. With the practicality that Selex brings, every month they only need to save 1 million money in energy costs and they will switch to using it.

Lazada follows the sustainable development model, pioneering the use of electric vehicles for delivery. Faced with many obstacles, but they still persevered. When Selex Motors and Lazada cooperated during the Covid period, they first used the battery exchange service, then the car service. And now, they switched to using 100% of Selex Motors’ ecosystem.

Come to think of it, maybe I should have developed the delivery vehicle from scratch. They are the ones who need their solutions, and the best icebreakers, then the regular customers. Not to mention, it’s easier to serve a transportation business with 50 vehicles than it is to serve 50 individual customers.

Can the meeting with the CEO of Lazada Logistics be the turning point in the development of Selex Motors?

It is also true, because it gives me ideas and solutions that are really effective in the frozen market period. It is an opportunity for me to transform, but also a question mark for me to think about broader issues in the market. Thanks to that, I can now be proud that Selex Motors is the first optimal ecosystem for electric vehicle transportation in Southeast Asia.

But not when redirecting, everything is pink right away. It’s still a big risk because it also takes us 6 months – 1 year to switch products. Because Lazada uses vehicles to transport goods, requiring the vehicle to be larger and longer than before, we have to improve the models to be suitable for transporting bulky goods. Great opportunity cost, big time cost.

However, starting a business must be decisive, I cannot know everything in advance. When making a decision, in addition to analyzing as scientifically as possible, intuition also plays an important role. When we can’t be sure if one decision will be better than another, just listen to our intuition.

Have you ever felt that your decision was wrong?

Much.

When I started my business, I looked at 50 million motorbikes in Vietnam, 250 million in Southeast Asia, and dreamed of being able to accelerate the conversion of these vehicles to electric vehicles. Dreaming that I can build a company with the same depth as Huyndai.. But it’s true that I don’t know how to do it, just looking at that future to start going step by step. If it’s wrong, correct it.

With a car model, we have to redo dozens of versions, fix it when it’s wrong, and fix it when it’s wrong. There are times when I give presentations to investors, fail, I say things that should not be said and things that are worth mentioning are not said. A lot of things I did wrong that, looking back now, will think I should have done this, not that.

I also made a lot of mistakes. There are positions that are very important, with great costs, but they are not suitable, cannot promote but also slow down the organization. Had to correct mistakes quickly, leave early.

Well, Selex Motors’ culture is not afraid to be wrong. We are just afraid of “we are not wrong”, not knowing where the problem is. I still tell you that if you find things “smooth” too much, you should also be wary, because it is likely that there is a problem that has not been discovered. Once you know the problem, it’s actually easy. The spirit of the company is “I’m possible”, not Impossible. Any problem can be solved.

It is said that when starting a startup, founders are often lonely?

I find that to be true. Starting a startup is like having a dark night ahead, I know I’m going but I have to go through many mistakes, fall when trying different directions, and then I see a ray of light ahead for me to cling to and keep going. .

My family is still waiting, holding their breath, no one dares to ask questions for fear of creating pressure (laughs). But personally, I think the most important person is my wife. My wife also has to work hard and sacrifice a lot. People around know that starting a business is difficult, but do not know that the company has been close to bankruptcy many times. It’s a lot of pressure, I’m used to it, but for women, I know it will be more difficult. Fortunately, my wife is also very sharing and determined, so we still managed.

Looking back at the fundraising process, what do you find difficult to raise capital for Selex Motors?

In Vietnam and even Southeast Asia, there are not many hardware startups. Therefore, investment funds are also inexperienced, few funds have the taste to invest in hardware businesses, although the amount of gray matter and technology level in Selex’s software must also be very proud. , superior to conventional software.

So, if the chance of successfully raising capital for a startup is only 1%, it is only 0.1% for a startup to do hardware like Selex during the pandemic.

So what are the plans for next year?

The factory has been completed with a capacity of 20,000 vehicles/year, starting operation from September 2022. The battery factory is under construction, with a capacity of about 100,000 battery packs/year. By the end of the year, Selex Motors had owned 10 patents, 5 industrial design designs and 4 granted trademarks. We pride ourselves on mastering 100% of the design of our products and the proportion of locally produced components is more than 70%.

In November, we had an investment announcement ceremony with strategic investors ADB Ventures, Touchstones Partners and Sopoong and signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Lazada Logistics, handing over the first batch of electric motorbikes from Selex. and is expected to put into operation at least 100 units by 2023. We are also working with many other key partners to quickly implement the solution.

Next year’s task is to develop the market, expanding the battery exchange network in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City to 200 exchange points. In the immediate future, we still focus on transportation. In the near future we will have models for other segments as well as towards the Southeast Asian market.

Thank you for sharing these!