Pinheiro will be in-charge as Ola builds a world class manufacturing facility for its electric scooters
Ola Electric has confirmed that it will be building the world’s largest electric scooter factory in India. It may be recalled that in May 2020, Ola Electric acquired Etergo, an Amsterdam based electric company, with plans to launch its range of electric scooters in India sometime in 2021.
Ola announced Jose Pinheiro as Head of Global Manufacturing and Operations for its Electric Business. Pinheiro is a manufacturing veteran with 45+ years of leadership experience, having held the position of Vice President Manufacturing at General Motors Latin America in Sao Paulo. In this new role with Ola Electric, Pinheiro will be in-charge of setting up the world class manufacturing unit with the world’s largest scooter factory which will spread its reach to multiple facilities across the country.
Through his career, Pinheiro has managed 16 General Motors’ industrial complexes, across 9 countries, 2 continents and 5 languages. He held portfolios across Body Shop Process Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, Plant Operations and Director of Manufacturing and finally as Vice President of Manufacturing for the region.
Bhavish Aggarwal, Chairman and Group CEO, Ola is excited about Pinheiro joining the company’s leadership team and looks forward to working together to set up world class manufacturing facilities in a step towards sustainable mobility.
Ola Electric Scooter
Ola Electric, the EV arm of the ride hailing company has stated that the new e-scooter will be launched across India and in some countries across Europe in 2021. It will be priced on par with the current range of petrol powered scooters in the country and the company seeks to tap into the 20 million unit two wheeler market in India.
Etergo, founded in 2014, has developed an all electric scooter ‘AppScooter’ that uses swappable high energy batteries. It is powered by a 3 kW brushless AC motor. Peak performance is rated at 6 kW and 50 Nm allowing the scooter to accelerate from 0 to 45 km/h in 3.9 seconds. Once launched, the AppScooter will take on the likes of Ather 450X, Bajaj Chetak and TVS iQube Electric.
Based on this, Ola seeks to amass sales of a million e-scooters in the first year of launch and will pitch against players such as Bajaj Auto, Hero MotoCorp’s Ather Energy and Hero Electric that currently offer a range of electric scooters in the country.
The initial back of e-scooters will come in from the manufacturing facility in the Netherlands while Ola Electric is in talks with various state governments to set up the facility in India and participate in the Government of India’s Atmanirbhar Bharat Vision.
