On June 21, 2023, Ola Electric announced that it was beginning construction on its new Gigafactory facility in Tamil Nadu, India. To celebrate, it held a ceremony and published a video installing the first pillar in its new construction on its official Instagram account.
When completed, the new Ola Electric Gigafactory facility will span 115 acres of added manufacturing capacity, on top of the company’s first such manufacturing hub, Futurefactory. If all goes according to plan, the company expects that the Gigafactory will be fully operational by sometime in early 2024.
Given the speed with which Ola Electric was able to construct the 500-acre Futurefactory and get manufacturing off the ground at its first facility, the goal doesn’t seem impossible. If that’s not enough to keep Ola Electric at the front of minds of riders (and potential riders) in India, Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal has also recently been teasing a new S1 electric scooter ahead of its July launch.
At the same time, Ola Electric’s impressive growth so far as India pursues its electrification goals isn’t without its difficulties. A quick look at Ola’s social media channels reveals quite a few customers (and probably also some bots) with complaints about service and/or products they’ve received, in multiple languages. To the company’s credit, it seems to respond to these comments quickly, with direct responses such as “Hi, please Direct Message your order ID & we’ll look into this.”
While its initial focus has been on electric two-wheelers, in February 2023, Ola Electric made additional international headlines when it announced plans to invest $920 million in the manufacture of its own electric cars, as well as batteries for those vehicles. All of these vehicles, both two-wheeled and four-, will be manufactured in Tamil Nadu.
When it’s up to full production capacity, Ola plans to make 140,000 electric cars per year. In late 2022, it also expressed interest in expansion outside of India’s lucrative EV market, looking to neighboring Nepal, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the European Union as potential future markets.
It’s not clear what the future holds, but Ola Electric’s current hashtag of choice is #EndICEAge, referring to internal combustion engines. We’ll report on any and all future developments as they arise.
