Bhavish Aggarwal takes jibe at legacy players

Bhavish Aggarwal, the founder of the country’s largest electric two-wheeler maker Ola Electric, has mocked legacy players Hero MotoCorp and Bajaj Auto for their recent announcement of entering the mid-size motorcycles with the global iconic brands Harley and Triumph respectively.

Using the Twitter platform, Aggarwal tweeted, “I can’t understand why some companies are falling head over heels to contract manufacture aging western ICE motorcycle brands in India.” This is coming from a promoter, whose shared mobility business Ola Cabs is largely run on internal combustion engines. 

Propagating the end of ICEAge or end of petrol engine two wheelers since his foray into the business, he added, “We’ll build the future of motorcycling with EVs and #MakeInIndia for the whole world.”

 He has made tall claims that the Indian two-wheeler market will transition to 100% electric by 2025, which appears to be a far cry, given the fact that the penetration of EVs in two wheelers is merely at 5-7% and it has further slipped post the rationalisation of FAME subsidy in June.

On its part, Ola has set up the largest electric two-wheeler manufacturing plant in the world at  Hosur and as the tweet suggests, the company will be coming out with an electric motorcycle next year.

The launch of the Triumph Speed 400 and Harley 440X has generated a lot of buzz in the market.  Both these bikes will look to challenge the dominance of the Royal Enfield- the mid-size motorcycle specialist.

Triumph Motorcycles has received over 10,000 bookings in India and its alliance partner Bajaj Auto has stated the production will be ramped up to this "unprecedented demand.” The Speed 400 was announced at Rs 2.33 lakh at the India launch in July with a special inaugural price of Rs 2.23 lakh for the first 10,000 customers Ex-showroom Delhi.

Harley Davidson’s X440 mid-size motorcycle developed in alliance with Hero MotoCorp, has been launched at an aggressive price of Rs 2.29 lakh to Rs 2.69 lakh (ex-showroom).

The Harley-Davidson X440 marks Hero MotoCorp and Harley-Davidson’s foray into the 440cc segment for the first time in India. Co-developed by Hero MotoCorp and Harley-Davidson at the Hero CIT, the Harley-Davidson X440 will be manufactured at the company’s Garden Factory at Neemrana, Rajasthan.