Ola Electric suspends production at Tamil Nadu plant citing maintenance

Ola Electric has suspended producing scooters at Tamil Nadu’s Krishnagiri plant for almost a week, reported The Economic Times (ET) on Friday quoting unnmamed sources.

The company said the plant is undergoing annual maintenance and installing new machines. ET’s sources said Ola had suspended production due to inventory pile-up.

Future Factory, as the plant in Krishnagiri is called, has nearly 4,000 units of electric scooters piled up. The number excludes the thousands of units ready to ship to customers who pre-ordered the EVs, the report said.

Ola had started trial production of its electric scooters range at Future Factory in Krishnagiri in Tamil Nadu’s Hosur district in October. The regular production started in the month of December.

“Like most auto companies that go through annual maintenance at their factories, we did too. At no point can this be considered as shutting down production. Hence, clarifying that (information) is untrue,” an Ola spokesperson told ET Prime.

Responding to ET, Ola did not give details on daily production, booking numbers, or duration of the suspension, but clarified that it was brief.

Ola, which initially had nearly 150,000 bookings, started delivering its scooters in late December. However, it received a high number of cancellations after complaints about the performance and quality of the vehicles.