The first large-scale gigafactory in India that will produce rechargeable batteries for electric vehicles (EV) will be operational by next year, Ola Electric founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal disclosed in an interview with ETNow on Wednesday.
"By early next year, we will actually make the gigafactory operational and start using our own Indian-manufactured cells and that is going to be a very important initiative to reduce cost further," said Aggarwal.
According to the CEO, the Gigafactory's initial capacity will be 5 GWh. The factory's entire capacity will be 100 GWh, making it the world's largest battery manufacturing facility.
While discussing the cost component of electric vehicles, he mentions that batteries for Indian consumption must currently be imported.
"We import it from Korea. It makes up for almost one-third or sometimes even 40 per cent of the EV manufacturing cost," said the founder.
He added that his company has been working for the past two and a half years to manufacture Lithium-ion technology cells domestically.
"Not just cost, we will make sure we are self-reliant on our energy requirements," said Aggarwal on his initiatives to produce products in India.
The next three years will be devoted to doubling the sales of Ola Electric's extant products, according to the company's CEO speaking with ETNow.
"We want every Indian to have our product as well international market," said Aggarwal.
"People have been skeptical of electrifying motorbikes but we believe there is no reason to not electrify motor bikes in coming times," commented Aggrawal.
Ola Electric introduced its new entry-level electric scooter, the S1X, on Tuesday at an introductory price of Rs 79,999, accelerating its challenge to conventional engine competitors. Additionally, the company displayed four electric motorcycles that will be released by the end of 2024.
"We believe that with this kind of a pricing, consumers will find EVs fundamentally better than ICE vehicles because not only the upfront price is now equal to ICE scooters but using an EV is so much cheaper than using petrol vehicles or ICE vehicles because petrol rates only go in one direction whereas electricity is much more accessible and cheap and the EV vehicles are much more efficient," said the Ola Electric CEO on company's latest launch.
"The running cost of an EV vehicle is roughly one-tenth or lower than a petrol vehicle," he added.
"Solving climate change and having a sustainable future is important. India is at the centre of climate change. If we are not changing, then it will be hard to achieve climate goals," said the founder on the reason behind Ola Electric.
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