In a year fraught with criticism for Ola Electric, the electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing arm of the ride hailing platform has announced sale of nearly 1.5 lakh EV scooters in 2022, after the launch of its two-wheeler last year.
With this, the firm is set to launch more electric two-wheelers including a mass market scooter, premium motorcycle and a mass motorcycle, in the next couple of years, the firm’s co-founder and chief executive officer Bhavish Aggarwal said in a blog post on Wednesday.
Terming 2022 the “beginning of the end for ICE age” Aggarwal said, “We have sold almost 1,50,000 EVs this year and are working towards the Mission Electric – all 2W sold in India by the end of 2025 to be electric, and all cars sold in India by 2030 to be electric.”
ICE stands for internal combustion engine.
Ola has been at the heart of criticism this year after a few two-wheelers caught fire this year, causing injuries to some customers. Some others also complained of range and quality issues.
Amidst the backlash, the IPO-bound company aims to follow a three-pronged strategy to execute its Mission Electric, launched in 2018. Under the mission, the electric mobility company had announced plans to bring one million EVs on the road by 2021.
One of its key strategies will be product diversification and global scale manufacturing, he said. “In 2023 and 2024, we will launch many more 2W EV products – a mass market scooter, a mass market motorcycle, and multiple premium motorcycles (sports, cruisers, adventure and road bikes),” Aggarwal’s blog post read.
Ola Electric currently offers two electric scooters—Ola S1 Pro and Ola S1, while a lower-priced version, Ola S1 Air, is expected to hit the roads in April next year after its launch in October.
Additionally, Ola aims to launch about six electric four-wheelers by 2027, after its first four-wheeler's launch, expected in 2024.
The electric mobility firm announced its plans to launch its first four-wheeler in India by summer of 2024 in August. The car, as Aggarwal had said, will be one of the ‘fastest’ and the ‘sportiest’ cars to be built in India, with the ability to go from 0-100 km/hour within 4 seconds and have a range of 500 km after every charge.
Ola looks to commission its cell manufacturing plant with a capacity of 5GWh by the end of 2023, in a bid to localize lithium-ion cell manufacturing, he said.
In July, Ola Electric unveiled India's first indigenously developed lithium-ion cell. The company was allocated 20 GWh capacity under the ACC PLI scheme by the government for developing advanced cells in the country, and is setting up a cell manufacturing facility with an initial capacity of up to 20 GWh, localizing the most critical part of the EV value chain.