The Ola Electric scooter for India has been revealed. We first got a glimpse of the scooter on local soil when it was seen testing back in January.
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Based on the Dutch-made Etergo electric scooter
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Ola Electric signs Rs 2,400 crore MoU with TN government to set-up plant
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Plant will have an initial annual capacity of 2 million units
In May 2020, we had reported that Ola Cabs had acquired Netherlands-based electric scooter company, Etergo, and now that it’s officially been revealed, we can see that the scooter is very similar to the Etergo AppScooter.
Ola Electric scooter details
A relatively new start-up, Etergo was founded in 2015 and the company’s AppScooter has won multiple awards at CES 2019 and the Automotive Brand Contest in Germany, among others. The Etergo AppScooter uses swappable high energy density batteries to deliver a claimed range of up to 240km, depending on how many battery modules are used. The AppScooter also has a claimed 0-45kph time of 3.9sec, an underseat storage capacity of 50 litres and TFT instrumentation. Ola Electric has not officially revealed specifications of its scooter, but it’s likely that it will offer similar specifications and levels of performance.
Visually, the Ola Electric scooter gets the same unusual single telescopic front suspension, but changes may have been made to the internals for our riding environment and also to keep costs low. The scooter gets a quirky, modern-looking headlight with twin-pod LEDs that are encased within an LED strip.
Sources suggest that the Ola Electric scooter can reach speeds in excess of 100kph, but we’ll have to wait for official information before we can confirm the same. The scooter is likely to have a similar banana-shaped removable lithium-ion battery pack as seen in the Etergo scooter, but what the final capacity will be remains to be confirmed.
The Ola Electric scooter launch in India is likely to happen in the second-half of 2021. The most obvious rivals will be EVs like the Ather 450X, the Bajaj Chetak and the TVS iQube, but Ola is going to be targeting popular, existing petrol scooters as well by keeping the price low. The pricing is expected to be highly competitive because Ola intends on hitting a massive level of scale for this operation.
Ola Electric factory
Recently, the company inked an MoU with the Tamil Nadu government for an investment of Rs 2,400 crore for setting up its first factory in the state. Ola claims that, upon completion, the factory will create almost 10,000 jobs and will be the world’s largest scooter manufacturing facility, which will have an annual capacity of a whopping 2 million units.
The company also says the factory will be the most modern, and most sustainable two-wheeler factory in the world, and that in full capacity, will be capable of producing a scooter every 2 seconds.