Cell technology holds the key to the future growth of EVs in India.
By B N KUMAR
BENGALURU, June 30 (The CONNECT) – Thirty seconds. Just 30 seconds. Yes, in every 30 seconds, an Ola Electric Scooter rolls out of the company’s Future Factory at Kishnagiri in neighbouring Tamil Nadu.
Soon, perhaps by early next year, there are bright chances that India’s first EV with a made in India Lithium-ion cell will hit the market with Ola burning the midnight oil to perfect the indigenous cell designed inhouse by the company.
Says 38-year-old Bhavish Aggarwal, Chairman and Managing Director, “Ola currently source cells from third party suppliers and Cells form a significant percentage of overall EV cost”.
For example, batteries for our EV scooters constituted approximately 35% of the cost for Ola S1 Pro scooters.
Aggarwal said while the construction of Ola Gigafactory for cell manufacturing began in June 2023, the R&D team has already worked on a prototype of the cell.
The company has already received the BIS certification for its cell
“We have developed cell technology around the 4680 form factor, for which testing is in progress,” he said and remarked that the company will be able to gain greater control over the quality, supply and cost of our batteries and EVs.
Ola has been awarded 20GWh capacity under the Cell PLI Scheme from the Union Ministry of Heavy Industries. This is the largest allocation among the Cell PLI recipients. The Scheme provides for a cash incentive to be distributed to the Company on a quarterly basis which is dependent on the percentage of value addition during the relevant period and actual sale of the advanced chemistry cells.
Ola will have to manufacture cells as per the committed capacity specified in our bid and achieve 1GWh capacity in the first year in Fiscal 2024, 5GWh in the second year, 10GWh in the third year and 20GWh capacity by the fourth year.
Ola’s Our R&D centres and BIC (battery innovation centre) have 200+ PhD holders, apart from engineers with electrical, electronics, chemical, mining, automotive, mechanical and engineering qualifications and automotive experience in vehicle product development, designing, engineering and manufacturing.
Ola built the Future factory in eight months, reaching an installed capacity of one million units per year by October 31, 2023.
The company recently announced new EV scooter models, the Ola S1 X (2 kWh) and Ola S1 X (3 kWh) and Ola S1 X+. It started delivering Ola S1 X+ in December 2023. It plans to commence delivery of the Ola S1 X (2 kWh) and the Ola S1 X (3 kWh) by the first half of the Fiscal 2025.
In September 2023, the company launched MoveOS version 4, as a beta roll-out, which included new features such as navigation powered by Ola Maps, call filter, ‘find my scooter’, geofencing, time fencing, anti-theft alert, fall detection, hill hold, auto turn-off indicators, ride journal and energy insights. Its EV scooters are connected to a network and designed to transmit data through the vehicle telematics systems, this enables them to continually enhance its product features and performance.
For the fiscal year 2023, revenue from operations increased more than seven times to ₹ 2,630.93 crore against ₹ 373.42 crore a year ago. For the three months ended June 30, 2023, revenue from operations stood at ₹ 1,242.75 crore.
