[TejasKinger]

And it now looks like Ola's electric dreams were rather short-lived.

According to this article in The News Minute, Ola's drivers are returning the electric vehicles as they have not turned out to be a viable economic proposition.

The main reasons being high operating costs and long wait times at charging points. Quoting from the article: "The electric cars in this project are owned by Ola and leased to drivers for Rs 1000 a day. However, drivers say that this is very high and given that they spend at least 3-4 hours a day at charging stations, they end up having to work 12-16 hours a day to make a decent living. In addition, they have to shell about Rs 500-600 a day for charging."

According to this article in FactorDaily, Ola has begun scaling back its ambitious electric fleet plans.

Quoting from the article: "Ola “wanted to play an important role in developing India as an EV nation, however, the government’s latest announcements have left plans in disarray,” said one source." Ola would instead focus on expanding international operations.

Given the latest flip-flop on the EV situation by Nitin Gadkari, we clearly have a long way to go in terms of achieving even a reasonable amount of EV penetration.