Ola’s maiden e-scooter undercuts competition
Bhavish Aggarwal against sale of petrol 2-wheelers after 2025
Softbank-backed Ola Electric took the wraps off its maiden e-scooter offerings — Ola S1 and S1 Pro — for a commercial launch on Sunday. With prices starting from ~99,999 (excluding state government incentives, registration fee, and insurance cost), the Bhavish Aggarwal-founded firm said the e-scooters are designed and engineered in India for the world and will deliver the best scooter experience to the consumer. He suggested that after 2025, sale of petrolpowered two-wheelers should not be allowed.
“It will be the best scooter ever made, not just the best e-scooter,” said Aggarwal, chairman and group CEO, Ola, during a roundtable at the Ola Electric campus in Bengaluru. “We have to make technology which is the best in the world and that's what we're doing. We've been saying we'll build our own technology. We built our own technology.”
With pricing that undercuts competition — internal combustion engine (ICE) powered scooters and e-scooters and a promise of delivering an escooter that claims superiority over rivals, Aggarwal gave a clarion call to “reject petrol and commit to electrification”.
“The only true solution for us is to genuinely completely reject petrol and commit to electrification,” he said, often interrupting himself to ask “What do you think?” He said after 2025, “no petrol twowheeler should be sold in India and it is possible to make this transition to sustainability in four years.”
In India, Ola is now in direct competition with e-two-wheeler makers, such as Ather Energy, Hero Electric, Bajaj's Chetak, and TVS Motor Company. Ola has the S1 (~99,999) and S1 Pro (~1,29,999) e-scooter models – the S1 Pro has 3.97 kwh (kilowatt-hour) battery packs, which, according to the company, have enough power for a range of 181 km in a single charge.
The S1 and S1 Pro would be available for purchase from September 8 and deliveries across 1,000 cities and towns would start in October. The company would sell the vehicles online (olaelectric.com) and through physical stores.
“Ola is priced aggressively on a par with the gasoline Activa and undercuts its EV rivals,” Aditya Makharia, analyst at HDFC Securities, wrote in a research report. With a starting price of ~85,000 in Delhi, the Ola e-scooter is cheaper than the TVS iqube (~101,000), Bajaj Chetak (~142,000) and the Ather 450 (starting at ~1,13,000). Ex-showroom Delhi prices for ICE scooter Honda Activa 6G ranges between ~69,080 and ~72,325, while the morepowerful Activa 125 costs ~72,637-79,760.
The launch comes days after Tesla CEO Elon Musk expressed hopes that the Indian government would slash tax on imported e-cars. Earlier, Aggarwal had said he was not in favour of the government paring duty on imported electric vehicles and his comment went viral. But Aggarwal, on Saturday, said that many people misinterpreted his comment that his firm didn’t want any competition.
Ola Electric had also revealed its plans to set up the world’s largest e-two-wheeler charging network. The Ola Hypercharger Network is likely to be the widest and densest etwo-wheeler charging network in the world, with more than 100,000 charging points across 400 cities.