Ola Further Delays Scooter Deliveries Due To Chip Shortages

Bhavish Aggarwal-led 2W EV unicorn Ola Scooter had until recently maintained that it would begin the delivery of its scooters by November-end. This was already a month setback from its October timeline. 

Now, yet again the EV giant plans to postpone the deliveries by mid or late December 2021. Ola Electric has delayed the deliveries of its electric scooter by two weeks to a month, due to the global semiconductor shortage. 

“Due to the ongoing global shortage of chipsets and electronic parts, there are some unavoidable delays to your Ola S1 delivery,” the startup informed its customers in an email as seen by Inc42. “We apologise for this delay and assure you that we are ramping up production as fast as we can so you can get your Ola S1 at the earliest.” 

The first batch of deliveries will now happen between December 15 and December 30, instead of the earlier expected October 25 to November 25 timeline.

Similar to Ola’s turmoil, recently the launch timeline of Reliance’s JioPhoneNext was also delayed due to chip shortages. The global chip shortage has plagued several original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in India as well as globally, including Tesla, BMW, Sony, Whirlpool, among others.

The delay in Ola Scooters treading the Indian roads will likely affect the startup’s plans to ship the scooter to the US by early 2022, as previously reported by Inc42.

On the other hand, the delay in scooter deliveries comes shortly after Ola Electric unveiled its plans to launch test rides feature pan-India. In a statement, the company announced test rides in nine cities, which will reach 1K+ cities by December 15.

“We’re now expanding test rides to 1000+ cities across India by Dec 15. This is the largest direct to consumer outreach in Indian automotive history!” Aggarwal said in a tweet sharing a video of test riders’ responses.

Currently, test rides are available in Bengaluru, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kochi, Mumbai, and Pune. The new batch of cities will include Surat, Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikode, Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Coimbatore, Vadodara, Bhubaneswar, Tiruppur, Jaipur and Nagpur.

The ride-hailing giant had announced the launch of electric two-wheelers, called S1 and S1 Pro, in July this year. Priced at 1 Lakh and 1.30 Lakh, respectively, the scooters received over 1 L pre-registrations within two days of announcement. 

Ola scooters compete with other e-two wheeler manufacturers such as Hero Electric and Okinawa, which commanded over 53% of the market space. Besides, it is also in a race with growing startups such as Ather, Revolt, Pure EV and others which are beginning to have an increased market share. 

However, Ola supposedly sets itself apart in the market with disparate features such as 181 Km true range, pick-up of 0 to 40 Km/h in 3 secs, 100K charging points in 400 cities, and more, which no other startup has been able to offer so far.

The EV startup also recently announced the launch of its own manufacturing unit, ‘Future Factory’. The 500-acre manufacturing unit is currently located in Hosur, Tamil Nadu and the construction is in full swing. However, it isn’t clear whether the unit has already begun production. 

Ola will also launch a customised subscription plan for public charging networks named ‘Hypercharger’ which will support a 50% charge in 18 minutes at the public charging station, Inc42 reported on July 8.

The IPO-bound ride-hailing platform has been aggressively expanding its business model this year. Besides Ola Electric, the startup also forayed into pre-owned car segments — Ola Cars.