The future of transportation in India will be mainly driven by Electric Vehicles or EVs. In the forefront is India’s leading ride-hailing company Ola, who has announced ‘Mission: Electric’, a collaborative platform to bring one million EVs on the India road by 2021.
In order to achieve its bold ambition, Ola will work with driver-partners, cities, vehicle manufacturers, and battery companies to make sustainable technologies cost-effective and viable in daily mobility with Mission: Electric serving as the platform. Leveraging its scale of operation, it would bring cleaner, more comfortable, and safer products to market. In the initial phase, the company will add 10,000 E-rickshaws and Electric auto-rickshaws in its cab service in the next 12 months.
Ola has already been piloting its first electric vehicle project in Nagpur back on 26th May 2017. It’s was also India’s first multimodal electric vehicle project which brought together multiple industry players and government authorities to build an industry-first electric mobility initiative from scratch. The project includes electric cabs, electric auto rickshaws, electric buses, rooftop solar installations, charging stations, and battery swapping experiments.
More than 200 electric vehicles are currently running on Ola’s app platform in Nagpur city. This includes 100 of Mahindra’s new e2o Plus vehicles, along with Tata Motors, Kinetic, BYD and TVS, among others. This EVs have already covered 4 million km in the last one year. This pilot project has provided the ride-hailing company with valuable insight into effectively managing vehicles, batteries, and operations.
To further push its electric vehicle fleet, the company is in discussion with several state governments to create an appropriate policy environment to deploy electric three-wheelers. The company is also talking to OEM partners and EV innovators globally to bring vehicles on the road in a planned and phased manner.