Billed as the world’s largest two-wheeler factory, home-grown mobility platform Ola’s upcoming 500-acre, Rs 2,400-crore manufacturing facility in Tamilnadu’s Krishnagiri district has an aggressive target: Roll out its first electric scooter by mid-June, upping it to a whopping 10 million annual capacity by 2022.
Riding on scale, Ola Electric intends to hit two million e-scooters a year capacity in months. And driving this ambitious strategy will be an equally aggressive pricing. Ola’s Chairman and Group CEO Bhavish Aggarwal would not get into specifics, but was clear the company’s market would be the world and not just India.
Beyond the dozens of excavators levelling massive tracts of land, the factory site showed signs of the big things to come: Ten production lines at full capacity, rolling out a scooter every two seconds. Instead, the first-ever media visit on Friday, Bhavish spelt out the plans in detail, pointing at strategically placed site plans.
Powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), driven by 3,000 robots and manned by 10,000 skilled personnel, Ola’s integrated manufacturing facility flipped for a name that said it all: The FutureFactory. At its centre would be the Mega-block, a 43-acre, 2 million sqft giant gobbling up the bulk of the production facilities.
This block will also house the paint shop, welding units, motor and general assembly. “There are over 250 parts in the e-scooter, sourced from more than 50 vendors,” informed Bhavish. Ninety per cent of these suppliers will be co-located within the campus, building at scale.
To power the e-scooters, a massive battery pack manufacturing unit will come up outside the Mega-block. Bhavish explained, “Since every scooter will need two packs, this facility will produce 20 million packs annually.”
Geared to galvanise India’s EV ecosystem, Ola has its export radar focussed on South and Southeast Asia, Europe and Latin America. “The 10 million annual capacity will amount to 15% of the world’s production. We will look into the three-wheeler and four-wheeler market later.”
Once the first phase is ready, Ola will hasten to complete the second phase by October 2021, the third by March 2022 and the final phase by June 2022. The company had recorded the budget sign-off in November 2020 and signed the Memorandum of Understanding with the Tamilnadu government a month later. The ground-breaking for the factory was on February 7, 2021.
Ola’s renewable energy thrust will get its place under the sun with a massive solar roof-top over the Mega-block. Opening up at its core will be a two-acre central forest, complementing the 100-acre forest space within the factory campus.
Made in 2-3 hours, the Ola E-Scooter
Equipped with two 'removable' battery packs, each weighing around 10.5-11 kgs, Ola’s e-scooter will be made from start to finish in 2-3 hours at the Krishnagiri factory. This would mean one scooter coming out of the factory every two seconds.
Designed ergonomically, this Electric Vehicle (EV) will integrate an AI-enabled dashboard with GPS, camera and even a phone-calling facility.
The AI will make it smart enough to even predict the range in real time. Maintenance and even the sales engine will get inputs for optimisation through AI. The boot space, Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal informed, would be the largest in the world for a two-wheeler.
Ola demonstrated the EV's capability on a prototype vehicle, developed at its lab. The factory campus will soon get a full test track, critical for pre-delivery approvals.