[TusharK]

According to a media report, Ola Electric has decided to suspend its electric car project. Instead, the company will focus on electric scooters and motorcycles.



In 2022, Ola Electric teased its first electric car for the Indian market and announced it would go on sale by the summer of 2024. Bhavish Aggarwal, Founder of Ola Electric, had promised an electric sports car with a glass roof that could reach 0-100 km/h in under 4 seconds.

However, the project is said to have been shelved citing a lack of charging infrastructure. It is said that the project has been put off for at least 2 years, while the company focuses on its 2-wheeler line-up.



Recently, Aggarwal even shared a teaser of what appears to be Ola’s first electric motorcycle. The image showcases a bare chassis with a battery pack and control electronics.

Meanwhile, Ola Electric is also gearing up to launch its IPO next month. The company is aiming to raise around US$ 660 million.

Source: ET Auto

Link to Team-BHP News

[Guna]

Time for auto journalists (especially AutoCar India) to re-post Bhavish Agarwal's 'burnol' tweet which was targeted at them for suggesting to fix the scooter business before venturing in to cars.

[JayPrashanth]

Originally Posted by TusharK

According to a media report, Ola Electric has decided to suspend its electric car project. Instead, the company will focus on electric scooters and motorcycles.

[/b]

Excellent move by Ola Electric. A car is a lot more complex than a two wheeler, and since Ola Electric has yet to build niggle free electric scooters, it's best that they first figure out this segment.

Remember, Bhavish Aggarwal acquired AppScooter - a Dutch EV start-up, and then began localizing it to suit the Indian market. In the car space, that opportunity doesn't seem to be there (Fisker maybe?). At least, for now.

Moreover, Ola Electric isn't really known for impeccable product engineering like say a TVS or Bajaj. Building and launching a half baked electric car would have had a deleterious effect on the Ola brand.

Then there's the sheer costs involved. Ford just lost 2.5 billion USD from their EVs. Ola simply doesn't have the deep pockets/multiple revenue streams that can help balance the massive investments that an electric sportscar entails. Besides, they're losing money hand over fist even in their electric scooter business.

Cheers,

Jay

[SKC-auto]

OLA should have concentrated on a 2 seater rugged 4 wheeler aimed at office going people. This would be easy to do, bringing in all their experience and electronics from their scooters. Simply, a Comet which is more rugged and much cheaper.

Like this car:
https://www.squadmobility.com/

[RobotMan]

Moreover, Ola Electric isn't really known for impeccable product engineering like say a TVS or Bajaj.

Or in the realm of electric 2 wheelers, Ather.

[JunkyardHunter]

Every time I hear news about this car (which isn't often), I think of that infamous Burnol tweet. Anyways, keeping this news in mind I hope to hear less of the Ola S1 horror stories.

[extreme_torque]

Whoever took them seriously has no idea how difficult it is to build an EV on scale and profitably. Very few companies have been able achieve that and not many, even the so called decade old automobile companies have been able to. Ford for example lost $150,000 on every EV sold. To put it into perspective, Ford could have bought a Model Y from Tesla and sold it to customer and it still wouldn't have lost as much.


Ola electric has literally nothing to show for it - what should have been straightforward, given the scooter and its powertrain tech was bought off a dutch company, has been mired in issues, some not so serious some really serious. I need to remind you again that this is a scooter that they did not even design from scratch.

https://www.carsales.com.au/editoria...report-145885/

[Gaur]

The 4 wheeler thing was a non-starter anyways, whoever thought it was doable was living in lala-land, particularly inspite of knowing that even the 2 wheeler produced by OLA is a rebranded product.

Now they get an convenient excuse of insufficient infrastructure.

[saikishor]

Lets be honest, even if Ola was serious about it, I am pretty sure customers wouldn't be serious about. I mean to say it would not sell at all.

Also, car R&D is not as simple and straightforward as the 2 wheeler R&D. Moreover, remember Ola bought the rights for the S1 from some dutch company. Now they had to come up with a new product from scratch? I don't think that would be possible given Ola's background. I still consider Ola as an IT company or a service provider rather than a full fledged automobile manufacturer.

[G13BB]

I feel it is a good move from OLA for themselves as it makes no sense to launch a car when their two-wheeler itself isn't sorted yet. The Internet is filled with horror stories of OLA two-wheelers and a four-wheeler from OLA? No thanks.

Also, Bhavish had mentioned that the electric car from OLA would do 0-100 in less than 4 seconds. Factoring the cost of the battery pack, the chassis, wheels, suspension and other fundamentals required to put down a time of sub 4 seconds 0-100, the cost of the car would easily cross 50L which would have made it a disastrous product. It is good that OLA has finally realised that venturing into the 4-wheeler market isn't as easy as launching a half-baked 2-wheeler. (no offence to any OLA owners/employees)

I wish OLA would sort out its 2-wheeler and become a prominent brand in the country as it is never a bad thing from a country's point of view.

[Phantom 510]

Bhavish shouldn't get carried away by the monthly sales figures and concentrate on making scooters bug free and work on improving the pathetic service centres. We have one in the family and experience has been disappointing. OLA should consider taking a leaf out of ATHER in making their so called "ICE killing machines" more reliable.They need to kill the issues first before killing "ICE" (pun intended).

[PB65]

Good for Ola. The fact is, you can get away from making a crappy scooter, but dare to do the same in case of a car, the uproar will be much greater.

Secondly, one is comfortable taking a risk worth a lakh or two, but when it comes to double digits, no; I'll definitely look at the history with the 2 wheelers first.

[priyankarb]

What remains to be seen is their pace to finetune the scooter department before it is really too late!

[1.2TSI7DSG]

Well let alone a niggle free scoot, a profitable scoot is also very far as of now.
With the IPO run-up exposing the organisation's financial health, they must focus on making things profitable.

[the.dogfather]

There is a chance that the reason can be the fallout between Bhavish Aggarwal and Microsoft (Azure decom and move to Krutrim cloud and linkedin drama). Some of the software work for the Ola car was being done by Microsoft services, and the fallout may have affected in the work and the target completion dates and cost for the car.