Pakistan's first giga factory bets on a new kind of rider

A billion-dollar fuel bill and the case for two wheels

The episode opens with Muzamil framing the conversation in macro terms. Pakistan imported $2.1 billion of fuel in April alone — the same physical volume as a few months earlier, but at twice the cost, with the Iran war driving global oil prices. Forty percent of that fuel, he notes, citing Profit magazine, goes into motorcycles. “We have spent $800,000,000 just on bikes’ fuel in April,” he says, and points out what that does to foreign reserves, the trade deficit, and pressure on the dollar.

The wedge he is interested in is two-wheelers. Solar still costs twenty to twenty-five lakh rupees. The cheapest car starts at fifty lakh. But a scooter, he argues, is the price point at which the mass market can actually move. To talk through whether that shift is starting to happen, he brings on Saad Farrukh, CEO of EVEE — the largest scooter producer in Pakistan, fifty thousand units sold over three years, and the operator of what Muzamil calls Pakistan’s first giga factory, a 250,000-unit annual-capacity plant just inaugurated in Karachi.

”We are not here to compete with the Honda CD 70”

Muzamil opens with the comparison every Pakistani buyer makes — Honda CD 70 versus an EVEE scooter, five years of fuel costs included. Profit’s numbers say a 35 km daily commute saves between 38,000 and 65,000 rupees over five years; 60 km saves over 123,000; 100 km is impractical because charging times and range collapse the use case.

Saad refuses the framing. “My real pitch is not to compete with the gasoline bike but to create a new market,” he says. The market he wants is the rider who was never going to buy a petrol bike in the first place — women, young students, people dependent on public transport or family for mobility. “Agar gasoline bike is selling two million a year,” he tells Muzamil, “we want to create an additional market of two million people.”

He is also blunt about range. The honest use case for an electric scooter today, he argues, is a daily commute that is roughly half the manufacturer’s claimed range. “Jo log sau kilometre chalate hain, as per today we talk, I don’t think electric bikes mein Pakistan mein bhi there is a good nice product.” Anything that does exist costs six lakh, which he says is the wrong price for that segment. A fair comparison, in his telling, is a sub-50-kilometre commute — at which point the math works.

The savings argument, then the experience argument

Saad still walks Muzamil through the numbers, because savings cannot be ignored. A Gen Z Pro at 2,40,000 rupees against a CD 70 at 1,60,000 starts at a 40,000-rupee premium. Over three years of a 40 km daily commute, he argues, the Honda buyer adds roughly 1,50,000 rupees of fuel and maintenance per year. By year three, the petrol bike costs the rider around six lakh in total cost of ownership; the EVEE scooter, even with a one-lakh battery swap thrown in, lands closer to four. “It’s like almost a 50% change in the product.”

Muzamil pushes back on the elephant in the spreadsheet — electricity. Saad concedes the point but argues the order of magnitude does not change. A scooter charge consumes roughly two units, around 80 to 100 rupees. EVEE’s own data across fifty thousand riders suggests the average consumer charges three times a week, putting monthly electricity cost at three to four thousand rupees. Even with batteries, electricity, and maintenance all folded in, “the saving part is gonna stay there.”

But the more interesting argument, and the one Saad keeps returning to, is experience. “Aaj manual gaadi nahin chalti mere se, kisi se nahin chalti. Aaj bhi hum kick maarte hain bike start karne ke liye,” he says. There is no kick start. There is no two-week fuel-price scramble. There is no standing in petrol lines. The 500 rupees a day you do not notice — until you do not have to spend it.

Quality, resale, and the Nokia-versus-iPhone analogy

Muzamil raises the conservative Pakistani consumer head-on. We were brand-loyal to Sony when Samsung and LG arrived. We obsess over resale value. YouTube and Reddit are full of mixed reviews of electric two-wheelers, complaints about plastic finish, and skepticism about parts availability.

Saad reaches for a phones analogy. “Nokia ko sir jitna marzi zameen par phenke, deemar mein maare, kuch nahin hota phone ko, but iPhone ko hum nahin girne dete.” The petrol bike, he is saying, is the indestructible feature phone — a twenty-five-year-old ecosystem with mechanics in every corner of Balochistan and front mudguards that cost five hundred rupees instead of fifteen hundred. “I don’t think we will be able to compete with them on that aspect” for the next three to five years, he admits.

EVEE’s defense is to own after-sales itself. Because the local ecosystem for electric two-wheelers does not yet exist, “jo hamari bikes hain woh humne hi theek karni hai bhale woh Pakistan ke kisi bhi kone mein hai.” He does not pretend this is frictionless. “Flaws honge, hote rahenge, we’ll improve.”

Why EVEE sells both graphene and lithium — and refuses to pick one

Muzamil presses on batteries. Graphene, he notes, is regarded globally as obsolete; lithium-ion is the gold standard and the world is already pushing past it. Why is EVEE shipping graphene at all?

Saad’s answer is that the battery is a consumer choice, not a manufacturer decision. “We don’t want to tell the customer which battery they should buy.” Every EVEE model is available in both. Lithium carries a three-year flat warranty; graphene carries eighteen months and degrades on a curve. If a rider’s daily commute is fifteen or twenty kilometres and they buy a 60-kilometre graphene pack, they are covered for two to two-and-a-half years before the degradation matters. If they buy the same pack and ride fifty kilometres a day, “woh decision lete pe ghalat ho gaya.”

The defense of graphene is also a defense of the Chinese market’s read on this question. EVEE started by importing scooters as samples in 2020, spent two to three years on R&D, and watched what 50 million annual buyers in China were actually choosing. Eighty percent of that market, he says, runs on graphene and lead acid. “Exactly jo China ke andar aaj consumer khareed rahe wahi batteries yahan par consumers ko mil rahi hain.” The next battery chemistry — sodium, water, whatever scales — EVEE will sell that too.

He saves his sharpest line for the social-media skeptics. “I’m sure 99% of them unhone kabhi scooter electric khareeda bhi nahin hoga, chalaya bhi nahin hoga.”

The assembler’s defense, and the long road to localisation

Muzamil asks the question that always comes up about a Chinese-partnered assembler: where are the parts actually made? Saad does not hedge. “I’m an assembler and I want to be an assembler.” Today, roughly fifteen percent of the scooter — some metal parts, shocks, plastic parts made from China-supplied moulds at local vendors — is localised.

The honest part of his answer is about cost. EVEE’s first localisation project was tyres, in 2023. A Chinese tyre cost the company fifteen hundred rupees. The first locally produced tyre cost three thousand — double — because GST applied locally but not on the import. His Chinese partners told him not to do it. He did it anyway. Three years later, a Chinese tyre lands around 1,900–2,000 rupees with cost inflation; the local tyre is at 1,600. “That’s the advantage but uske liye ek do saal ki journey humne kaati hai.”

He believes every component will eventually be Pakistani — motor, battery, controller, BMS. “There is no second thought to this.” His estimate is three years for the technical components, by which point he expects the local industry to be producing a million units a year and unit costs to start crossing under petrol-bike economics.

The giga factory as a pitch to Chinese suppliers

Halfway through the conversation it becomes clear what the 250,000-unit factory is actually for. It is not just capacity for EVEE. It is the number Saad needs to walk into a meeting with a Chinese battery or motor manufacturer and have them take Pakistan seriously.

“Hum jab bhi unse pehle baat yeh karte the ke aaye Pakistan mein milkar kuch factory lagate hain, woh inko simple hota tha aap ke yahan capacity nahin hai, kitna bana lenge hum, kitna ko bech lenge.” The factory, the inauguration, and the visiting delegation of Chinese component makers — batteries, motors, controllers, chargers, brakes — are the proof of demand. The pitch he is now making, he tells Muzamil, is direct: “Agar aap localize karne mein humari madad nahin karoge toh hum kar lenge. And it’s a best chance you have. If you want to secure Pakistan, you come and make a factory over here.”

He references Honda’s own trajectory — four to five lakh bikes a year, then two million, over ten to twenty years of vendor development. EVEE wants the same arc, compressed.

The policy ask: don’t change it

Muzamil closes with taxation. The current regime, Saad explains, is clean. CBUs carry a 50% custom duty plus sales tax — effectively unfeasible to import. Local assemblers pay 1% sales tax versus 18% on other vehicles. Custom duties on electrical components are close to zero. “I think the policy ki jo design hui hui hai that’s very good.”

What worries him is not the next budget, but the one after that. “Aapko maloom hai ke hamare yahan mulk mein zara utar charhao kaafi hote hain, policies change ho jaati hain aur poori industry jo hai woh mushkil mein aa jaati hai.” The single biggest gift the government can give the industry, in his view, is to leave the policy alone. He says the senior leadership in the relevant ministry seems serious about EV promotion — there is even a PAVE scheme — but the discipline that matters is continuity.

Muzamil agrees with the framing he had floated earlier in the conversation. He thinks of electric two-wheelers less like cars and more like mobile phones — a category where Pakistan built a real local assembly industry on the back of consistent policy, and where access to transport is now arguably a national-security question, the same way access to information became one.

By the end of the conversation, the shape of Saad’s argument is clear. The savings are real, but they are not the pitch. The Honda comparison is the wrong comparison. The factory is a pitch to suppliers as much as to consumers. The battery debate is a consumer choice, not a manufacturer position. And the single policy ask is the boring one: don’t change the rules.

“Someone has to do it,” Muzamil says as he wraps. The bet EVEE is making is that someone, at giga-factory scale, is now them.