Legacy two wheeler giants TVS Motors and Bajaj Auto are closing in on upstart Ola Electric. In November 2024, Ola Electric managed to sell 29,191 electric scooter while TVS Motors managed 26,971 units, and Bajaj Auto did 26,163 units.
All three electric two wheeler makes experienced a drop in month-on-month sales – quite understandable given the fact that the great Indian festive season has come to an end. However, Ola Electric has seen the sharpest dip in sales, dipping over 30 % while TVS and Bajaj Auto have seen more moderate sales dips of 10 % and 8 %.
Worryingly for Ola Electric, market share has dipped to 24 % in November 2024, a massive dip from the 33 % share it held in the same month last year. Total sales for the year continue to outpace rivals. Ola has sold nearly 3.94 lakh scooters this year, a 66 % increase in number from the first eleven months of last year. TVS has managed 2.02 lakh units until November 2024, representing 32 % growth, while Bajaj Auto has moved nearly 1.75 Chetak Electric scooters, a whopping 184 % sales growth.
Watch out for Bajaj And TVS Motors
While Ola Electric has a strong product portfolio that spans across budgets, from as little as Rs. 49,000, TVS Motors and Bajaj Auto have managed to narrow down the lead. TVS is just 2,000 scooters away from overtaking Ola, and Bajaj is just about 3,000 scooters away. The competition between TVS and Bajaj is quite intense now – only 808 scooters separated them, and if Bajaj continues the sales momentum, it could soon overtake not just TVS Motors but also Ola Electric. The battle lines are drawn, and the legacy players are closing in on Ola, in a big way!
All this with just about 1 electric scooter each
While TVS Motors sells the iQube, Bajaj has the Chetak Electric. Compared to Ola, both TVS and Bajaj are relying on the engineering strength of their offerings rather than steep discounting and multiple new launches. While Ola has been launching at least one new scooter or variant every six months, both TVS and Bajaj have nearly had no major launches save for the occasional new variant.
For instance, Bajaj brought in the Chetak 2901 earlier this year, giving customers a sub-1 lakh rupee electric scooter. Apart from this though, Bajaj has been very conservative, choosing to focus on only 2 other variants – Chetak Premium and Chetak Urbane. All three scooters are more or less variants of each other than all-new models. Essentially, with a single product, Bajaj has managed to come within striking distance of Ola Electric. And it’s not even that Bajaj is leveraging its existing dealership network.
In fact, Bajaj spun off its electric two wheeler business as the Chetak brand, under whose namesake there are EV only dealerships. Bajaj Auto is expanding Chetak dealerships steadily and this is adding sales momentum. Bajaj is also selling another variant of the Chetak – called 3202 – through Amazon. So, we have a legacy player using both online and offline channels to push sales.
Coming to TVS Motors now, the story is similar. The company has a single electric scooter – the iQube – but with multiple battery capacities. The iQube, S and ST variants feature battery capacities of 2.2 kWh, 3.4 kWh and 5.1 kWh respectively. The top-end ST model gets two battery pack options – 3.4 kWh and 5.1 kWh, and with the bigger battery pack, has a stunning real-world range of 150 kilometers, which is the highest that any electric scooter manages in India presently. TVS Motors will introduce a brand new electric scooter before March of 2025. That should give it additional numbers to challenge Ola and Bajaj for market supremacy.
Ola’s preparing to fight back
Ola, for its part, just launched the Gig range of last mile electric scooters, aimed mainly at Zomato, Swiggy, Zepto, Blinkit and other gig workers. Ola also launched the S1Z, it’s least priced electric scooter last month. Deliveries of these scooters will commence from March 2025. Plotting a fight back, Ola is also all set to introduce the Gen3 versions of the S1 range of scooters early next year.
Ola Roadster coming!
So, the battle lines are clearly drawn. While TVS and Bajaj take the ‘slow and steady’ approach to growing the market – an approach that clearly seems to be working – Ola is planning yet another shock-and-awe blitz. Ola Electric’s next big thing is the Roadster range of electric motorcycles that promise to bring in a level of performance and range never seen before in the Indian electric two wheeler space. Deliveries of the Roadster are slated to commence from March 2025, and bookings are already open.
Ola plans to launch 3 new electric motorcycles under the Roadster franchise. The first will be the Roadster, priced at just 1.04 lakh. The Roadster will offer 248 kilometers of certified range (which means about 150 kilometers of real world range), AI features, a 126 Kmph top speed and peppy acceleration – stuff that’s expected to blow commuter bikes from TVS, Bajaj, Honda and Hero MotoCorp out of the water, literally.
This could be yet another disruptive moment from Ola – one that changes the Indian commuter two wheeler segments forever. There are more affordable commuter bikes coming in as well – under the Roadster X line. And finally, the Roadster Pro will take aim at 250-400cc motorcycles. All in all, Ola’s ambitions seem outsized, and it’ll interesting to see how this product blitz pans out in the real world.
Circling back to electric two wheelers, #4 and #5 places in the market are taken up by Ather Energy and Hero Vida. Ather – on the back of the Rizta family scooter’s launch – managed to 1.15 lakh units for the first 11 months of 2024, a very modest 15 % sales growth. Take the Rizta out, and Ather almost seems struggling with Ola nearly selling over 4 times as much.
Vida, a new electric sub-brand from Hero MotoCorp, which has a lot of engineering influences from Ather (Remember Hero owns a large stake in Ather Energy), managed 42,625 units in the first 11 months of 2024, a whopping 347 % sales growth. And all this with a single product offering. The key to Vida’s sales growth has to do with network expansion. As the Vida brand expands to more cities and towns across India, expect sales to grow quite significantly. Vida plans to launch more electric scooters very soon, and this should add to the sales momentum.
All in all, the Indian electric scooter segment is expanding by leaps and bounds, and it’s only a matter of time before the commuter two wheeler space is overrun by electric vehicles. Why not, they’re so much more cost effective if ridden 30-40 Kms a day, and obviously hassle free, quiet and peppy. With scooter giant Honda also bringing in the Activa Electric (launched earlier this week), things are really heating up in this space.
The post Electric Scooter Sales: Ola Electric Maintains A Narrow Lead Over TVS Motors And Bajaj After November 2024 first appeared on Cartoq.
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