Eye on untapped market, nine e-bikes to turn up the heat in 2023

The new launches will be from the two significant companies already selling e-motorcycles -- Revolt Motor, the largest in this segment, and Tork Motor - as well as from others

It is not only in technology that India’s electric two-wheeler (e2W) market differs from the traditional two-wheelers running on internal combustion engines, or ICE. Still in its infancy, the e2W market is overwhelmingly in favour of scooters, with motorcycles bringing in less than 2 per cent of the 700,000 vehicles sold last year.

This is in sharp contrast to the ICE two-wheeler market, where motorcycles have been in dominance ever since they surpassed scooters in the 1990s and, despite a rise in the share of scooters in recent years, are 60 per cent of all sales. This year, though, a clutch of manufactures is betting that the ratio will begin to change in e2Ws to give a much larger share to e-motorcycles, resulting in a lineup of nine e-motorcycles for launch.

The new launches will be from the two significant companies already selling e-motorcycles -- Revolt Motor, the largest in this segment, and Tork Motor – as well as from three others that have so far limited themselves to e-scooters: Ola Electric, Matter Motor Works and Ultraviolette Automotive.

The action does not end there. The biggest in ICE two-wheelers – Hero MotoCorp, Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India, Bajaj Auto and TVS Motor – are expected to join the e-motorcycle fray within two to three years. As is Royal Enfield, the maker of the iconic Bullet and Classic motorcycles, which has bought a stake in the European e-motorcycle maker, Stark Future SL, to develop platforms.

Bhavish Aggarwal, founder and CEO of Ola Electric, whose factory can produce up to 10 million e2Ws a year at full capacity, says he expects the electric market to have the same motorcycle-to-scooter ratio as ICE, meaning e-motorcycles will go on to take up a 60 per cent share. However, not everyone agrees with this. Ather Energy, a prominent e-scooter company in which Hero MotoCorp holds 35 per cent equity, believes scooters will continue to hold sway in e2Ws.

Ather is among the start-ups that have made early inroads into the e2W market, the others being Hero Electric, Okinawa, Ampere and, of course, Ola Electric. And that may have been the reason for the proliferation of e-scooters, which are simpler to make. E-motorcycles, on the other hand, require heavier batteries to live up to a motorcycle’s promise of power and performance, and are harder to put together in their open architectures.

Another reason pegging e-motorcycles back is their higher price tags, starting at Rs. 1 lakh and going up to Rs. 4-5 lakh. In comparison, most e-scooters are priced between Rs. 70,000 and Rs. 1.5 lakh, with more of them getting concentrated around the Rs 1 lakh mark. Though e-motorcycles’ higher price tags are a hindrance to finding more buyers now, they will yield more profit margins once the economies of scale and localization kick in and the cost and ease of producing an e-motorcycle becomes comparable with that of e-scooters.

Already, those eyeing the e-motorcycle market are talking about peppering the enter price range from Rs. 1 lakh to Rs. 4 lakh. “We are trying to push our team to launch two electric bikes this year, one of which will be priced around Rs. 1 lakh and the other closer to Rs. 2 lakh. We will then have the entire price range,” said Anjali Rattan, business chairperson of RattanIndia, which this month acquired the entire equity in Revolt. Revolt’s bestseller, the RV 400, is priced at Rs. 1.35 lakh (on road, or the final price to consumer) in New Delhi. 

Matter, too, wants to be present across price points as it aspires to sell 60,000 e-motorcycles this year. “The Matter bike will cater to the mid-premium sporty segment, but the concept bikes which we displayed at the Auto Expo will compete in the executive- and entry-level segments. The pricing will range from Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 2 lakh,” said Mohan Lalbhai, founder and CEO.

UltraViolette is approaching the market differently, focusing at the premium end. “The market we are looking at is equivalent to the 300 cc to 500cc ICE bikes,” says Narayan Subramanian co-founder and CEO.

However, not everyone is bullish on e-motorcycles. Stefan Pierer, CEO of Pierer Mobility, which owns the KTM brand of high-end motorcycles and has a joint venture with Bajaj Auto, insists that e-motorcycles are not feasible because they require huge batteries to deliver the kind of power and performance high-end ICE motorcycles do. And battery prices are moving up, making them too expensive.

Until now, the sceptics have had their say. Revolt, the largest in e-motorcycles, sold a mere 14,910 units last year, compared with the more than 100,000 e-scooters sold by Ola Electric and the 5 million ICE two-wheelers sold by Hero Moto. But once the costs are more in control with increased localization and price tags shrink to bring motorcycles into the so-called commuter segment, where they become vehicles of daily use, the market could change rapidly, as it did in the 1990