Despite the reduced subsidy, the retail sales of e-two-wheelers during October were the second-highest in this calendar year on the back of buyer-friendly festive season schemes and attractive deals offered by the OEMs; the highest was in March 2024 at 1,40,333 units.
Ola Electric: 41,605 units
After two torrid months of selling less than 28,000 units (August: 27,615 and September: 24,716), which reduced its market share to less than 30 percent, Ola Electric has sold 41,605 units in October 2024. This is a month-on-month increase of 68 percent and a year-on-year (YoY) growth of 74 percent. The company has also surpassed its entire CY2024 retails of 267,376 units and has sold an additional 96,885 units till October-end.
Ola’s sales decline in August and September was attributed to a large number of customer complaints about service deficiencies. However, following the recently listed company’s assurance that it had addressed 99.1 percent of the complaints to the satisfaction of its customers through its redressal mechanism, sales revived in October.
As a result, Ola’s market share, which was at 27 percent in September – down by 11 percent it commanded in March and July – has regained momentum in October and reached 30 percent. In September, Ola became the first EV OEM to surpass 3 lakh units in sales in a calendar year.
In an effort to address service issues, Ola Electric has announced a Network Partner programme aimed at being logistically closer to its customers. As per a September 26 tweet by CEO Bhavish Aggarwal, 625 partners are already in place. This will be expanded to 1,000 by the festive season and to 10,000 by the end of 2025.
TVS: 29,890 units
Stung by Bajaj Auto taking the No. 2 spot in September, TVS has fought back and regained second position in October. With retail sales of 29,890 units, the company has registered a strong 81 percent YoY growth (October 2023: 16,507 units) and grabbed a market share of 21 percent last month. For the first 10 months of this year, TVS had a market share of 18.41 percent.
Also See: New TVS electric two-wheeler launch by March 2025
Bajaj: 28,188 units
Bajaj Auto continues to reap rich dividends in the e-scooter market. The company, which dispatched a record monthly high of 28,517 Chetaks in September to its dealers across India ahead of the festive season kicking in, has sold 28,188 Chetaks in October 2024, up 211 percent YoY (October 2023: 9,070 units). Like TVS, this is Bajaj Auto’s best monthly score yet.
In September 2024, Bajaj, with 19,198 units, had gone ahead of longstanding No. 2 OEM, TVS Motor Co (18,218 units), but TVS regained traction and its second rank in October with 29,890 units. This means the Bajaj Chetak has a 20 percent market share in October and 15.56 percent for the first 10 months of this year.
Bajaj’s YoY speedy rate of growth compared to TVS is helping it close the gap with the longstanding No. 2 e2W OEM. This is a result of surging consumer demand, ramped-up production of nearly 20,000 units per month and an expanded Chetak retail sales network.
Ather Energy: 15,984 units
Ather Energy maintains its No. 4 rank with 15,984 units in October, up 88 percent YoY (October 2023: 8,484 units). The company registered its best monthly sales in March (17,427 units) but slid to 4,143 units in April. Since then, Ather retail sales have risen month on month, right till October. October retail sales give the Hosur-based OEM a market share of 11.49 percent compared to 6 percent a year ago.
Vida (Hero MotoCorp): 7,309 units
The world’s largest two-wheeler manufacturer and the last of the big legacy players to enter the EV market is seeing demand pick up for its Vida brand of e-scooters. The company, which hit its best-ever monthly retails of 7,309 units in October 2024, clocked 443 percent YoY growth on a low year-ago base of 1,937 units. The strong performance is seen in the increased market share to 5 percent from 1 percent in October 2023.
Hero MotoCorp has started scaling up the brand presence for Vida, whose network now stands at 203 touchpoints comprising 180 dealers across 116 cities. And it already has 2,500 charging stations in collaboration with Ather Energy, in which Hero MotoCorp was an early investor.
Like all the leading EV OEMs, Hero MotoCorp is focusing on reducing product costs. In an earnings conference call on August 14, Niranjan Gupta, CEO, Hero MotoCorp, said: “We are working very aggressively, and on the powertrain side, to bring the costs down by technological improvements, by localisation, obviously, by bringing scale. You will see that benefit coming out into our further launches as well. You'll see affordable products coming out later this year.”
Greaves Electric Mobility: 3,981 units
Greaves Electric Mobility (GEM), the fifth-ranked OEM in this list, sold 3,981 e-scooters in October 2024, down 5 percent YoY (October 2023: 4,184 units). GEM launched its new Ampere Nexus e-scooter on April 30. GEM’s cumulative 10-month sales at 27,782 units are a 67 percent increase over the 16,650 units in the January-October 2023 period. Its October 2024 and first 10 months of CY2024 market shares are identical at 3 percent.
Greaves Electric Mobility, like the other five OEMs above it, is also focusing on cost optimisation. In a Q1 FY2025 earnings call on August 13, executive director and CEO K Vijaya Kumar said, “We have been able to make considerable inroads in terms of our costing of key components and products on one side. The other side is, broadly, we have looked at our cost, sort of a cost rationalisation wherein we are getting closer to building our efficiencies much higher than where we were.”
Also See: Ola Electric claims to have addressed 99.1 percent of complaints against it