Ola’s Electric Car To Hit The Road In 2024: Bhavish Aggarwal

After months of teasing and hinting, Ola Electric has finally announced its plans to build its first electric car, scheduled for a launch in 2024. It also launched the affordable model of Ola S1 Pro, the Ola S1.

The electric mobility unicorn also announced plans for expanding its production facilities and plans to mass-produce the Ola Lithium-ion cell for its range of electric vehicles.

Bhavish Aggarwal, Ola Electric’s cofounder and CEO, hosted a live stream on YouTube making the announcements. Aggarwal and the Ola team had been posting teasers for the eventual announcement for months, with the first such hint coming all the way back in June.

Ola Electric’s Car To Hit The Road In 2024

Talking about how a country’s cars carry their unique identities, Aggarwal took a dig at mainstream Indian carmakers, stating that they make ‘dull and boring cars’.

“The cars we build now are dull and boring. Indian carmakers are conservative, thinking that we only want small cars or maybe mid-sized cars. Global automakers think that the Indian market is not ready for global technology and hence sell hand-me-down tech in India. We need to change this,” said Aggarwal.

Talking about the specs of the car, Aggarwal claimed that it will be “one of the fastest cars built in India”.

The Ola electric car will go from 0-100 kph in 4 seconds, with a range of more than 500 kilometres per charge, and will feature an all-glass roof to deliver a drag coefficient of less than 0.21 (to maximise range and minimise drag), he claimed.

Aggarwal added that the Ola electric car will come with MoveOS and assisted driving capabilities while also being keyless and handleless. There was no information on many key specs on the vehicle, that is, the wattage of the drivetrain, the battery capacity of the car and most importantly, the price.

Ola Electric is aiming to launch the car in 2024.

Ola S1 To Go On Sale Today

Ola Electric also launched the lower variant of its S1 Pro scooter, the S1, starting at INR 99,999, down 28% from the original scooter’s starting price of INR 1.4 Lakh. While the S1 is built on the same platform and has very similar specs as the S1 Pro, there are a few key tradeoffs.

First, the S1 comes with a range of 128 km, almost a quarter less than S1 Pro’s 170 km range per charge. Second, S1 comes with a top speed of 95 kph, down 18% from S1 Pro’s 116 kph. Further, Ola S1 comes with a 3 kWh battery capacity, a quarter lower than the 3.97 kWh in S1 Pro.

Talking about the success of the previous variant, Aggarwal claimed that Ola Electric’s scooters have saved 3.27 Mn kilos of CO2 emissions, have travelled 112.92 Mn kilometres and have contributed to INR 31.62 Cr in fuel savings.

The electric mobility unicorn said that it has sold more than 70,000 Ola S1 Pro over the last seven months. This remains in contrast with the fact that Ola Electric has seen a drop in scooter registrations after April, following a host of safety issues and rider concerns.

Expansion Plans

“India is going to be the epicentre of the global EV revolution,” said Aggarwal, before explaining the details of plans to expand the Ola Futurefactory.

The Ola CEO said, “The two-wheeler factory, when it’s fully complete, will be the world’s largest two-wheeler factory.” He added that Ola Electric will now expand that into a ‘full EV hub’, which at full scale will produce 1 Mn cars, 10 Mn two-wheelers and 100 GWh of cell capacity every year.

One look at those numbers is enough to suggest that those are ambitious figures. While Aggarwal did not give an exact timeline to reach the full scale envisioned, there was a brief on the expansion plans in an animated clip.

Ola is planning to build three factories within its EV production ecosystem – a 40-acre two-wheeler factory, a 100-acre cell plant and a 200-acre four-wheeler factory. The electric mobility unicorn is planning to bring six different electric cars to build on two different platforms.

In terms of cell manufacturing, Ola Electric plans to have four cell variants with two different form factors, manufactured across five assembly lines of 20 GWh each.

While Ola’s plans are grand and ambitious, it could take years before we see the full extent of its EV ecosystem in action.