By Nandan Mandayam and Kashish Tandon
(Reuters) – India’s top electric two-wheeler maker Ola Electric Mobility expects its newly-launched motorcycles to boost the pace of EV adoption in the world’s biggest market for two-wheelers as buyer awareness increases and the ecosystem develops.
“It took 3-1/2 years to reach 20% (EV) penetration for scooters; with motorcycles, we expect to achieve this in half or two-thirds the time,” founder and chairman Bhavish Aggarwal said in a post-earnings call on Friday, referring to industry-wide sales.
The company launched its first electric motorcycles – Roadster X series – earlier this week and plans to start deliveries by mid-March.
Motorcycles make up about two-thirds of two-wheeler volumes in India, the world’s largest market for such vehicles, while scooters form the rest.
However, most electric two-wheelers sold are scooters.
Ola Electric estimates the greener vehicles make up about 20% of scooter sales and less than 1% of motorcycles.
Increasing customer awareness about EVs, along with an established sales and service network should help boost adoption of electric motorcycles, Aggarwal said.
Earlier in the day, Ola Electric reported a wider quarterly loss, as it offered heavy discounts to lure customers and spent money to improve the speed and quality of service at its workshops.
The company, which has yet to turn a profit, hopes that manufacturing its own battery cells will boost earnings.
It estimates that its automotive business needs to ship 50,000 two-wheelers per month to break-even at the EBITDA level.
Its cell-making business would need to produce cells worth 5 gigawatt hours annually to report a positive EBITDA, the chairman said.
The company, which is under regulatory scrutiny for lapses in upkeep of its vehicles, incurred a one-time cost of 1.1 billion rupees to halve the time taken to service vehicles to 1.1 days from 2.5 days in September.
($1 = 87.4300 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Nandan Mandayam, Kashish Tandon and Meenakshi Maidas in Bengaluru; Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala)
