More Affordable Ola Scooter Incoming!

Could use Lithium Iron Phosphate battery packs, and could be priced at Rs 80,000

We recently visited Ola Electric’s FutureFactory for an event, where Bhavish Aggarwal, the company's CEO, revealed that a more affordable Ola electric scooter is underway. 

A more affordable variant that will sit in the price bracket of Rs 80,000 is something that is expected by the EV maker to rival the more affordable and price sensitive electric scooter segment in India. This will likely be done by skipping out on features available on the Ola S1 Pro, making it simpler and more utilitarian.

Apart from that, Aggarwal also mentioned that Ola is working on LFP (Lithium Iron Phosphate) chemistries instead of NMC (Nickel Manganese Cobalt) for its li-ion batteries. This will aid the company in coming out with a more affordable e-scooter as LFP batteries are much cheaper, but they have lower energy density. As compared to NMC cells, the LFP cells can be about 30 percent cheaper to produce and could drop the prices of the upcoming e-scooter significantly.

With the recent updates in the MoveOS 2.0, the Ola S1 gets an ECO mode that restricts the speed to 45kmph, resulting in range improvement, which could further lower the overall costs by altering motor and battery capacity. This would also help the lower variant to be aimed as a rival to the EV scooter offerings at the lower end of the spectrum.

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Taking the recent EV fires into consideration, the LFP batteries will be a better alternative, as even though they have a lower energy density, they are also stable and can operate at higher temperatures suitable for Indian conditions. 

The Ola S1 base variant’s production was halted earlier this year citing low demand, and now Aggarwal has confirmed that the demand for the S1 Pro variant was as much as 75% of the overall bookings. 

A new more affordable product in the company’s portfolio will go a long way in increasing Ola’s market share, as it will allow more budget-conscious riders to go green. Currently, Ola Electric’s FutureFactory is at 1000 units per day production capacity, and the company plans on increasing that number to between 3000 to 4000 units per day by the end of this year.