Ola Electric Opens Purchase Window For Ola S1 Air; Deliveries To Start Soon

A day ahead of its plans, Ola Electric opened the purchase window for its latest escooter model, Ola S1 Air, on Thursday (July 27) to give an exclusive early access to its customers.

Ola Electric announced this during a live video streaming session on Thursday, where the founder and CEO, Bhavish Aggarwal, said that the startup will begin shipping the products early next month.

“In the next 10-15 days, everybody will start slowly getting it,” Aggarwal said. This purchase window will remain live until July 30.

Ola Electric’s plans to start delivering its Ola S1 Air escooter have come almost a year after its launch announcement in October 2022.

In October last year, the startup said that the purchase window would open in February 2023, and it had projected to start delivering the S1 Air scooters in April 2023.

Currently, early ‘reservers’ would be able to book Ola S1 Air at a special introductory price of INR 1,09,999. The ex-showroom price of the vehicle will be INR 1,19,999. 

The latest escooter model is comparatively more pocket-friendly. Ola S1 Pro now costs INR 1,39,999 and Ola S1 costs INR 1,29,999.

The electric mobility major continues to announce new launches despite several odds, including the FAME-II fiasco, complaints pertaining to its existing products, and other safety issues.

After last year’s incident of an Ola escooter fire, there have been two such cases reported so far this year. In a recent incident, an Ola scooter burst into flames in Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram.

Meanwhile, the findings that Ola Electric was artificially keeping its vehicle prices lower to claims subsidies under the government’s FAME-II scheme have also cost the company heavily.

Despite these, Ola Electric has also been able to remain the leading electric two-wheeler player in terms of sales. However, there has been a severe drop in its month-on-month vehicle registration in June to 17,617 units, like most other electric two-wheeler players, due to the FAME-II issues. In July so far, the startup saw 16,089 units of escooters registrations, as per Vahan data

In Thursday’s session, Aggarwal said that Ola Electric is working on more interesting new products. The startup is expected to announce more product and business updates on August 15.

It must be noted that in August last year, Aggarwal announced the startup’s plans to also foray into the electric four-wheeler market. Ola Electric has also recently started the construction of the country’s biggest gigafactory at Krishnagiri in Tamil Nadu.

Commenting on the development, Aggarwal said, “We’ve just started constructing our cell factory. By the end of this year, we will have the factory complete. Next year, we will start putting our own cells in our vehicles.”

With more new escooter models and electric motorcycles in the pipeline, Ola Electric is eyeing a public listing early next year and is aiming for a market cap of $10 Bn.