Ola's Dream Of World's Biggest Scooter Factory Hits A Hurdle

The Bengaluru-based company is pledging to fulfill the rest of the orders by February, but people familiar with Ola say it's making only about 150 vehicles a day.

Ola Electric Mobility Pvt Ltd., the startup that's pledged to build the world's biggest electric scooter factory, distributed a handful of brightly hued bikes to customers in December at its factory in Chennai, complete with drummers and a saxophonist to mark the occasion.

The proceedings couldn't obscure Ola's inability so far to live up to its lofty ambitions. The goal of this high-profile startup was to have the $330 million facility making 15% of the world's e-scooters by summer 2022. Bhavish Aggarwal, Ola's founder, has described the scooters as a way to spark the country's electric car industry. "It's a vehicle we've engineered ground-up so India can get a seat at the world EV table," he told Bloomberg News earlier this year.

But mass production of its e-scooters, already delayed several weeks, is likely to be pushed back to at least January, say people familiar with its operations, who asked not to be identified because the information isn't public. While the Bengaluru-based company is pledging to fulfill the rest of the orders by February, the people familiar with Ola say it's making only about 150 vehicles a day. At that pace it'll be hard to complete the 90,000 orders the company says it has on its timeline. Its body shop is running at half capacity, and its paint shop isn't operating, the people say. The issues may complicate the plans of Ola's parent, ANI Technologies Pvt Ltd., for an initial public offering in Mumbai in 2022.

India, the third-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet and home to some of its worst air pollution, has set a goal to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2070. This would require a huge shift to EVs, which make up just 1% of overall annual auto sales, compared with 30% in some parts of China.