Festive season demand drives electric 2W sales to cross 70,000 in October

EV 2W penetration for October 2023 stood at 5.1% vs 4.8% in Sept 2023.

Electric two-wheeler (EV 2W) sales in October were up 17% on a Month-on-Month (MoM) basis to nearly 70,248 units with Ola Electric leading the market with registered sales of 22,565 units mainly on the back of demand driven by the festive season, showed data from government website Vahan.

While the sales went up on a monthly basis, it degrew by 4% on a year-on-year basis on account of a high base of the early festive season in 2022, said Elara Capital in its analysis report on November 1st.

The 70,000 mark is a significant milestone that indicates that the EV market is witnessing sales that are slowly getting back to the pre-subsidy cut period.

EV sales touched the lowest number at 45,000 units in June as the government announced a reduction of the FAME subsidy from 40% to 15% on June 1.

EV 2W penetration for October 2023 stood at 5.1% vs 4.8% in Sept 2023. Overall EV two-wheeler sales for the ten months ending October 31st came to 6,88,442 units up 41% YoY.

Ola Electric retained its top spot with the highest registrations at 22,565 units in Oct 2023 with a 31.8% market share, followed by TVS Motors at 22.0%, Bajaj Auto at 12.0%, Ather Energy at 11.2%, and Greaves Electric at 5.5%.

“The festive season has been incredible for EVs and we have seen a strong uptick in sales during Navratri and Dussehra. The ongoing Ola Bharat EV Fest with exciting festive offers and a much broader portfolio of Ola scooters have led to Ola becoming the favorite choice for customers,” said Anshul Khandelwal, Chief Marketing Officer, Ola in a media statement.

Ola announced a month-long festive season offer under Ola Bharat EV Fest on October 16 wherein the company pushed offers like including a 5-year Battery Warranty (worth up to ₹7,000*), exchange bonuses (up to ₹5,000*), and finance offers including up to ₹7,500 discount from partner banks, zero down payment, no-cost EMI, zero-processing fee, and interest rates as low as 5.99%.

“With Diwali round the corner, we expect the sales momentum to further build-up, leading to a milestone year for EVs in India,” Khandelwal said.

TVS Motors is bucking up as a second large market player with October sales crossing 15,000 units. However on a month-on-month basis, TVS saw its growth at flat 0.96%.

TVS Motors is fast expanding its EV facility to gain more market share.

TVS Motor entered the electric two-wheeler market in 2020 with the iQube and its sales have crossed the 1.5 lakh unit mark as of 2023. It has also launched its second EV 2W, called the TVS X with a total capital expenditure (capex) of Rs 250 crore.

The bookings for TVS X is  planned to start as of August 24 and deliveries across 15 cities will start from November 2023 in a phased manner, the company’s managing director Sudarshan Venu told Moneycontrol in an earlier interaction

Interestingly, HeroMotoCorp with its Vida scooter saw its sales go up a whopping 255% to 1,889 units in October.

Bajaj Grew by 20% while Ather had a growth of 13% in Sales with 8,100 units in October.

Ather is also looking to expand its offerings. The EV maker on September 6 said that the firm has raised Rs 900 crore from its existing investor Hero MotoCorp and GIC, through a rights issue and said that it plans to utilise the funding towards expansion and charging infra development.

Ather’s latest launch of its affordable 450S scooter in the 125cc category will help in scooping more market share in the coming years.