OLA to Launch India’s First Electric Urban Mobility Service in India
India’s ride-hailing giant OLA is charging forward with the announcement of electric rickshaws, car and bus services on its ride-hailing platform in the city of Nagpur. According to The Times of India.
OLA’s Electric Mobility
Ola is investing Rs50 crore in the electric urban mobility platform, which include the purchase of 200 electric vehicles and the building of four charging stations at different corners of the city, with each station equipped with 40-50 charging points.
“We are literally building an ecosystem where different types of transports like buses, cars and rickshaws run on clean energy and be available to consumers on a common platform. No one has done this before,” said Anand Subramanian, OLA’s Senior Director Marketing Communications.
The E-Launch Date
The electric mobility platform will be launched on May 26 by MP and Union Minister for road transport and highways Nitin Gadkari. That day also marks three years of Modi government’s formation and is also the eve of Gadkari’s 60th birthday. The e-taxi project is perceived as a pet project of Gadkari who is been keen to promote various environment-friendly means of transport.
Registering an EV in India
Registering of electric-vehicles for commercial usage such as OLA’s taxis will be a hurdle in India, because existing rules were designed keeping fossil-fuel vehicles in mind. As per Maharashtra’s permit norms, vehicles of more than 980cc (cubic centimetres) engine capacity can be registered for commercial operation and these have to be of at least 1,400cc for high-end services.
Electric vehicles don’t fall under the cc category as they have no internal combustion engines and their capacity is defined in terms of kilowatts (kw).
However, Subramanian remains optimistic about rolling out the 200 electric vehicles on the launch date telling members of the press that it won’t be a problem.
“All vehicles hitting the road will be fully complaint with the law of the land,” he said.
Source Times of India
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