Ola’s 70 mph electric scooters selling like hotcakes, two every second

Ola’s S1 and S1 Pro electric scooters are off to a massive start after the first day of sales, with CEO Bhavish Aggarwal claiming that the company is selling two electric scooters every second.

The original launch didn’t go quite as smoothly after a glitch in the order process delayed pre-orders by a week.

But now that the company has relaunched with an improved ordering system, the Ola S1 and Ola S1 Pro electric scooters are flying off the virtual shelves.

The company boasted 80,000 sales in the first 12 hours. To put that into perspective, that’s a daily sales rate that matches the quarterly sales rate of electric scooter industry leader NIU.

Of course Ola Electric has the advantage of targeting the largest electric two wheeler market in the world and is also riding high on months of positive press for its highly-anticipated electric scooters. This elevated sales level may soon wane as early adopters saturate sales, but the dramatic opening highlights just how excited the local market is for Ola’s new scooters.

Ola Electric is seen as one of the best hopes for converting India’s massive number of gas-powered scooters and motorcycles into electric alternatives.

Many other electric entries in the Indian two-wheeler market have targeted moped-class specifications with lower speeds and smaller batteries. But Ola has set its sights on higher power and higher speeds to effectively replace 125cc-level gas scooters and motorcycles.

The Ola S1 and S1 Pro are powered by an 8.5 kW electric motor. The base-level S1 has a top speed of 90 km/h (56 mph) while the S1 Pro can reach higher speeds of up to 115 km/h (71 mph).

The two scooters also include relatively large batteries, with 3 kWh of capacity in the S1 and 4 kWh of capacity in the S1 Pro. Those large batteries provide ranges of 121 km (75 miles) and 181 km (112 miles), respectively. However, such high ranges are usually calculated at lower city speeds.

While the scooters’ performance specs have been praised, perhaps the most notable feature of the scooters upon their unveiling was the price, which was announced to begin at just Rs 99,999 ($1,350).

The scooters are built in Ola’s new Futurefactory, a massive and sprawling complex designed to soon produce 2 million electric scooters per year. Plans are in the works to increase that capacity to 10 million electric scooters per year.

That large production capacity won’t just feed the domestic market; Ola is planning to export its scooters internationally. CEO Bhavish Aggarwal announced earlier this month that plans were in the works to export scooters to the US by early 2022.

Ola Electric has also made news for its social policies, including operating an entirely female workforce in its factory.

With Ola’s sales currently on a skyward trajectory, those workers will surely be kept busy for quite some time.