E-scooter makers eye growth with new launches

Despite roadblocks in the form of the goods and services tax and uncertainty over continuation of the Fame schemes, electric two-wheeler makers are going ahead with their investment plans. Hero Electric will invest ~50-75 crore a year to bring in high-speed scooters, while new entrant Okinawa Autotech will invest $40 million (~300 crore). Okinawa Autotech is planning to manufacture batteries, through vendors, locally. India’s electric two-wheeler market is set to almost double from 24,000 units to 45,000 units this year. Hero Electric, which is the market leader, claims around 65 per cent share of the electric scooter market. Sohinder Gill, CEO, Hero Electric, said his company aimed to do ~1,000 crore business in the next four years, up from around ~100 crore now. Hero Electric is planning to launch at least two new scooters every year for the next few years. Each model will attract an investment of around ~25 crore. Hero Electric is not looking at electric motorcycles, which need speeds of 70 km per hour. However, it’s looking to offer higher speeds with new scooter launches to compete with powerful motorcycles running on petrol, says Gill. He added the company would also move to lithium-ion batteries. Jeetender Sharma, managing director of the Haryanabased Okinawa Autotech, said his company would launch two or three models every year and one of them would be a motorcycle. The upcoming launches include vehicles that can go up to 200 km on a single charge. The vehicles can move at a top speed of 100 km an hour. Okinawa Autotech has launched the Ridge electric scooter and claims over 2,000 of them were sold in India in the last six months. The company is expanding its dealer network to 500 from the current 50. Of these, at least 150 will be in Tier-II cities. Okinawa Autotech has a facility in Bhiwadi in Rajasthan with a capacity to make 1,80,000 electric vehicles in two shifts. It is planning an eventual capacity of 1 million vehicles. Lead acid batteries are used in Okinawa Autotech's electric scooters but from the next quarter lithium-ion batteries will also be used. The company is planning to manufacture them, through a third party, in India.

India’s electric two-wheeler market is set to almost double from 24,000 units to 45,000 units this year. Hero Electric is the market leader with 65 per cent market share