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India

OLA To Deploy Hypercharger Network With 1 Lakh Charging Points Across 400 Cities

Bhavish Aggarwal-led Ola Electric seems to be on full throttle to turn India into a leading e-scooter market. After setting up the world’s largest e-scooter manufacturing plant over a 500 acre land in Tamil Nadu, the company has revealed its plan for powering up its e-scooters by installing powering stations across the country.

Ola said it will offer the most comprehensive set of charging options to its electric vehicle customers through a combination of widely deployed high-speed Ola Hyperchargers and the home-charger that will come bundled with the Ola Scooter.

The company said its Ola Hypercharger Network will be the widest and densest electric two-wheeler charging network in the world, with more than 100,000 charging points across 400 cities. Ola has promised that in the first year itself, it will set up over 5,000 charging points across 100 cities in India, which is more than double the existing charging infrastructure in the country.

Further laying out the specification of its Hypercharger, the company boasted that it will be the fastest two-wheeler charging network. The Ola Scooter can be charged 50 per cent in 18 minutes which will cover a distance of 75 km. Ola Hyperchargers will be deployed across cities and will be found in city centers and dense business districts as standalone towers as well as in popular locations such as malls, IT parks, office complexes, cafes and more.

Apart from Hypercharger network, the company will also provide home charger that will come along Ola scooter. Users can simply plug in the home charger in a regular wall socket and charge up the vehicle overnight.

Announcing the plans, Bhavish Aggarwal, chairman and group chief executive officer of Ola, said, “Electric is the future of mobility and we are reimagining the entire user experience of owning an electric vehicle. Our plans to build a comprehensive charging network is a key piece of this. By creating the world’s largest and densest 2-wheeler charging network, we will dramatically accelerate the customer adoption of electric vehicles and rapidly move the industry to electric.”

The mega plant in Tamil Nadu is believed to manufacture 10 million Ola scooters at its full capacity which seems promising. However, it has to be noted that in FY20-21 India sold 236,000 electric vehicles across the segment, a 20 per cent plummet from the total figure in FY19-20. How will Ola create a demand for its Ola scooter is something we all have to wait and see.