EVs: Ola sold an e-scooter every 4 seconds; Rs. 600 cr worth sold in 24 hours
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Ola Electric said on Thursday it sold its newly-launched electric scooters worth Rs. 600 crore within the first 24 hours of sale, and saw a two-wheeler being picked up every four seconds when deliveries started on September 15.
Ola Electric, the mobility giant’s electric vehicle arm, which had to defer e-scooter sales due to a website glitch last week, opened the purchase of Ola S1 and S1 Pro on Wednesday. These e-scooters can be purchased only through the Ola app in a fully digitalized process.
Ola’s vast Futurefactory, located in Tamil Nadu, will be the world’s largest two-wheeler maker completely run by women. In the first phase, it will manufacture 10 to 20 lakh scooters and scale up as per demand to one crore at full capacity.
When the company started bookings for the two-wheeler in July for just Rs. 499, it received an overwhelming response. Lakhs of consumers booked their slots to purchase the E-scooters two variants, Ola S1 and S1 Pro. Thursday was the last day for the purchase of these vehicles in respect of the company’s existing production plans.
“Yesterday we opened for purchase and consumers responded by booking the Ola scooters in unprecedented numbers. We sold 4 scooters every second,” said Bhavesh Aggarwal, Ola’s Co-Chairman and Group Chief Executive Officer, in a blog post.
“In fact in just 24 hours, we sold e-scooters worth over Rs. 600 crore. That’s more, in value terms than what the entire 2W (two-wheeler) industry sells in a day. Make no mistake, the age of EVs is here.”
“India is committing to EVs and rejecting petrol. We sold 4 scooters/sec at peak and sold scooters worth Rs 600 crore in a day,” Aggarwal tweeted. “Today is the last day, purchase will shut at midnight. So lock in this introductory price and buy on the Ola app before we sell out.”
He said India has huge demand and a massive domestic market for e-scooters. “We must leverage this to drive innovation, a robust local EV ecosystem and make India not only a big EV market but also a global EV manufacturing hub,” said Aggarwal.
In August, Ola Electric unveiled the S1 and S1 Pro variants for a commercial launch. With prices starting from Rs 99,999 (excluding state government incentives, registration fee, and insurance cost), Aggarwal had said the e-scooters are designed and engineered in India for the world and will deliver the best scooter experience to the consumer.
Ola Electric is now directly competing with India’s electric two-wheeler makers, including Hero Electric, Bajaj’s Chetak, TVS Motor, and Ather Energy.
