That article itself says Ola is doing better, as production is done locally and they are indiginising more components, with batter being next as they are building a battery plant. Some of the electric scooter brands will die, only 3-4 will survive. That's to be expected in new industry as part of consolidation.
Ola is not claiming FAME subsidies on imported content like the other crooks are. From what I was told about a year ago, battery is imported, hub motor is imported, headlight assembly is imported, controller unit with display is imported along with many other parts.
As for the battery factory, that is still a year away.
Ola Electric's founder & CEO, Bhavish Aggarwal, has said that India's first large-scale Gigafactory for rechargeable batteries used in electric vehicles will be operational by next year. The facility will aim to reduce the cost of electric vehicle production with the cells and batteries.
economictimes.indiatimes.com
India's first large-scale gigafactory which will be a manufacturing facility for rechargeable batteries for electric vehicles (EV) will be up and functioning by next year, revealed
Ola Electric founder and CEO
Bhavish Aggarwal in a conversation with ETNow on Wednesday.
"By early next year, we will actually make the gigafactory operational and start using our own Indian-manufactured cells and that is going to be a very important initiative to reduce cost further," said Aggarwal.
As per the CEO, the initial capacity of the Gigafactory will be 5 GWh. At full scale, the factory will have 100 GWh capacity, which will also be the world's largest battery manufacturing unit.
While talking about the cost component of the EVs, he comments on the current situation where batteries for Indian consumption have to be imported.
"We import it from Korea. It makes up for almost one-third or sometimes even 40 per cent of the EV manufacturing cost," said the founder.
He added that his company for the past two and half years has been working towards manufacturing Lithium-ion technology cells domestically.
"Not just cost, we will make sure we are self-reliant on our energy requirements," said Aggarwal on his initiatives to produce products in India.
For the next three years, Ola Electric's focus will be to double the sale of its existing products, said CEO on his future plans for the company to ETNow.
"We want every Indian to have our product as well international market," said Aggarwal.
"People have been skeptical of electrifying motorbikes but we believe there is no reason to not electrify motor bikes in coming times," commented Aggrawal.
On Tuesday, Ola Electric launched its new entry-level
electric scooter S1X with introductory price of Rs 79,999 as it accelerates its challenge to conventional engine counterparts. The company also showcased its four electric motorcycles which will be launched towards the end of 2024.
"We believe that with this kind of a pricing, consumers will find EVs fundamentally better than ICE vehicles because not only the upfront price is now equal to ICE scooters but using an EV is so much cheaper than using petrol vehicles or ICE vehicles because petrol rates only go in one direction whereas electricity is much more accessible and cheap and the EV vehicles are much more efficient," said the Ola Electric CEO on company's latest launch.
"The running cost of an EV vehicle is roughly one-tenth or lower than a petrol vehicle," he added.
"Solving climate change and having a sustainable future is important. India is at the centre of climate change. If we are not changing, then it will be hard to achieve climate goals," said the founder on the reason behind Ola Electric.
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With a 5 GWh capacity, they should be able to power close to a million Ola S1 Pro's a year.
