Ola Electric is looking to make headwinds in India’s highly lucrative but brutally competitive mass-market two wheeler segment. And what better strategy to enter that market than announcing a price reduction that is bound to gravitate buyers towards its electric scooter range.
Starting today, Ola has introduced a new “introductory price” for its S1X electric scooter range, offering three battery variants to suit the basic, most affordable buying category. The S1 X is available in three battery configurations; 2 kWh, 3 kWh, and 4 kWh and would now be priced at ₹69,999 (introductory price), ₹84,999, and ₹99,999, respectively.
Deliveries for the entire S1 X range will begin starting next week.
Ever since launch, Ola has primarily priced its scooters in the ₹1 Lac and above range, making it a highly premium offering in India’s two wheeler segment. As a result, the scooters remained elusive to a large category of mass-market buyers. The reduced S1 X pricing marks the company’s entry into the mass market segment. Ola Electric is also offering an 8-year/80,000 km complimentary battery warranty, making it an attractive value-proposition in the market.
Ola also said, that it has breached half a million registrations mark in less than 2.5 years, as per government data. Though it is not clear how many of these registrations converted to actual deliveries, considering the company has almost always struggled to meet demand.
While the news of these reduced pricing could bring some cheer, it is still unclear how the company aims to meet demand and its own production targets. In as recent as December last year, Ola Electric slashed its sales targets for 2023-2025 by more than half, and has deferred its goal of achieving profits by a year. The original projection of 882,000 e-scooter sales for the fiscal year ending March 2024 was revised downward to 300,000 units, while the revenue target for the ongoing fiscal year has now been slashed to $591 million from the earlier goal of $1.55 billion.
