Electric-scooter leader Ola says on track for first car in 2024

An Ola electric scooter during the launch at the Ola Campus in Bengaluru, India, on Sunday, Aug. 15, 2021. The high-profile Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal hopes to make 10 million vehicles annually or 15% of the world’s e-scooters by the summer of 2022 before selling abroad as well

Electric-scooter maker Ola Electric Mobility Pvt. is on track to deliver its first four-wheel vehicle in the second half of 2024, according to Chief Financial Officer G.R. Arun Kumar.

The manufacturer and ride-hailing company is focused on advanced stages of design and benefiting from the sharing of some technology deployed in its two-wheeler products, Kumar said in an interview in Bengaluru on Wednesday.

“Software, safety systems, electronics, cells, the drive train — a lot of it is common,” Kumar said on the sidelines of the India Energy Week forum. “We think we’re 30%-40% there.”

Last year, Ola’s founder Bhavish Aggarwal said the company aimed to price its first car at less than $50,000, manufacturing components such as lithium-ion cells and batteries in-house to lower costs. Ola aims to compete with the likes of Tesla Inc., Hyundai Motor Co. and local rivals such as Tata Group in India’s electric-vehicle market, which consultancy RBSA Advisors forecasts to be worth more than $150 billion by 2030.

Kumar said Ola is also making progress on its target to deliver an eventual 100 gigawatt hours of battery-cell manufacturing capacity by adding local plants.

“We should get to about 10 gigawatt hours in 18 to 24 months and to 20 gigawatt hours in 36 months,” he said.

In addition to its own consumption, Ola potentially could sell lithium-ion cells to other parties for use in vehicles, grid balancing or energy storage, according to Kumar.

“We’d be very open to selling outside,” he said. “It’s all contingent on how the demand side shapes up.”