Ola Electric to invest $2b to set up 100,000 EV charging points in India

India’s Ola Electric, the EV arm of local ride-hailing major Ola, announced its plans to establish a charging network for its upcoming two-wheeler products.

Photo credit: Ola

The Ola Hypercharger Network will have over 100,000 charging points across 400 cities in India, Ola Electric said in a statement.

For the first year of the plan, the startup said it’s setting up over 5,000 charging points across 100 cities, more than doubling the existing charging infrastructure in the country, it claims.

Citing a top executive in Ola Electric, Livemint reported that the EV company will invest US$2 billion in the next five years for its charging network plans.

Ola Electric claims that the Ola Hypercharger Network will be the fastest two-wheeler charging network, able to replenish an Ola Scooter’s battery to a 50% charge in just 18 minutes. It plans to set up these stations across city centers and dense business districts as standalone towers, as well as near parks, malls, and cafes.

“By creating the world’s largest and densest two-wheeler charging network, we will dramatically accelerate the customer adoption of electric vehicles and rapidly move the industry to electric,” said Ola chairman and group CEO Bhavish Aggarwal.

Ola Electric’s Ola Scooter is set to be launched in the coming months. It will be manufactured at the company’s FutureFactory in Tamil Nadu, India.

It was also recently reported that Ola Electric was in advanced discussions with investors including SoftBank, Temasek, and Tiger Global to raise US$300 million in new funding. If this pushes through, Ola Electric will be valued at over US$1.7 billion.