Softbank Wants To Transform Ola Into An Electric Car Maker With Toyota
Softbank—Japanese technology and financial partner—is in plans to transform its Indian investee company and cab-hailing company, Ola, into an electric car maker along with Toyota. Toyota ranks second in the list of largest car maker on the global platform, said a source.
On the way where Ola is continuously expanding its cab-hailing service business, the upcoming strategy of electric car manufacturing highlights the forthcoming opportunities in the country. Chief executive of SoftBank, Masayoshi Son, sees some great prospects in India and wants to bet on it, on the stage where India ranks fourth in the listing of largest car market based on volume and its goals to become fully electric car nation by 2030.
Son while talking to media stated that in the coming five years, Ola would release millions of electric vehicles with the alliance of carmaker and government. However, the viewpoint of Ola itself turning its way into the electric automobile manufacturing wasn’t revealed.
The source also said that though the plans for Ola getting into electrical vehicles manufacturing are now unclear, it would be interesting to watch the results of the integrated attempts led by SoftBank, Ola, and Toyota. Ola is also in discussion with the car maker to supply them car bodies on which the company will work together for the development of electric cars. Post accomplishment of the initiative, Ola is anticipated to be the largest electric car company in the country.
As per the information, Founder and CEO of Ola, Bhavish Aggarwal, conducted a meeting with Masayoshi Son to talk about Ola’s electric vehicle forecast strategy. In response to that, Son asked Bhavish to check some special purpose batteries in India. SoftBank already has an alliance with car manufacturers such as Honda and Toyota (not in electric vehicles).
Ola has till date received two rounds of funding from SoftBank; $210 Million in October 2014 and the latest one valued $330 Million in February 2017.
On the other side, Mahindra and Ola declared about theirpilot project in Nagpur that includes deployment of 200 electric vehicles such as e-car, e-autos, e-rickshaws, and e-buses as well. Mahindra will release 100 e2O plus electric cars and the rest 100 vehicles will be procured from Tata Motors, BYD—an U.S. based electric car maker—TVS, and Kinetic.
Looking through environmental perspective, no matter who will be leading the market or how much revenue the companies will manage to fetch,at the end, the only thing that matters is how well the electric plan will help to control and reduce the emission level and depletion of fossil fuels.
