This week was all about Europe. In our Thursday long-format analysis, we looked at how Europe, once considered an automotive leader with class-leading capabilities in product design and chassis engineering (we are talking two-wheelers here), has lost its way. It’s now cannon fodder for the Chinese and has been reduced to just being a mid-size market for global manufacturers. When it comes to E2Ws, the first wave of European startups is either dead or struggling badly. The second wave didn’t matter as European entrepreneurs decided that normal was boring and that they wanted to chase niches that didn’t exist.
Arc, Energica, Cake, Brekr, Monoracer, many more – every time the Europeans created something, the world ordered popcorn and held their collective breath.
So what will get Europe clicking again? We don’t know. Our analysis did not throw any answers or find a silver lining.
InsightEV – Global Electric Mobility
Colibri solves the apartment dweller’s problem
In our other story, we spoke to Budapest-based Petre Georgescu, the CEO of Colibri. He has designed the M22 commuter motorcycle. On paper, it may look ordinary, but it has some big things going for it – there are three portable batteries in parallel. And then the entire bike can jack-knife to fit inside elevators so that you can store it in your living room /foyer. In theft-prone European cities, this is a blessing.
Stark Future’s Future
Stark Future has multiple new motorcycles incoming. The Stark Varg continues to be a hot-seller but it’s not street legal. But then, Stark announced the EX in December. The EX is the company’s first street legal motorcycle and is eagerly awaited. Now, the company has homologated it for the US market.
The second Stark is the SM, which sounds even more exciting. It is a supermoto version of the EX. If they followed the conventional path of converting motocrossers to supermotos, we can expect the 21″/18″ wheels to be replaced by 17″/17″ ones, less suspension travel, and more road oriented tires. The SM may be exciting as a daily-use motorcycle.
Stark also announced the Varg Skugga, a military version of the Varg EX, through a LinkedIn post. Electric is a format that works well for light military vehicles because of its inherent stealth nature and ease of logistics.
Stellantis partners with Luvly
Luvly is a Sweden-based startup that has designed a Light Urban Vehicle (LUV in the Luvly…) that can be flatpacked and easily assembled. Stellantis announced that it is partnering with Luvly as a year-long project to explore the startup’s light electric flatpack vehicle tech.
No commercials were announced, which likely means Luvly has not yet raised any capital from Stellantis. It seems like a strategic/ engineering consulting project, as the Swedish startup is still looking to raise EUR 5m in equity.
Thanks to lightweighting every component and building the vehicle on a very light structure, Luvly takes sustainability to another level.
Power comes from a 6kW electric motor, and the L7e microcar is energised with two swappable batteries, each 3.25 kWh. The company claims a 90 kph top speed and a 100 km range with this configuration. The lightweight components help.
Stellantis is no stranger to the L6e/L7e segment. It already offers the Citroen Ami, a L6e and L7e category quadricycle, in the European market.
The interest also indicates that future mobility would need typical car manufacturing OEMs to also address light urban mobility (quadricycles, in European speak) segments. A few weeks back, Hyundai revealed an electric three-wheeler and an electric quadricycle at the Bharat Mobility Global Expo in New Delhi.
India-based Ather Energy seeks USD 1.2bn valuation in IPO.
Bloomberg reported this week that Bengaluru, India-based Ather Energy is likely to go public by the end of this month at a valuation of USD 1.2bn. After Ola Electric, this is India’s second biggest IPO in the E2W space.
But is USD 1.2bn a fair valuation or Ather Energy? Difficult to say when you don’t make any profits. We did a detailed analysis on Ather’s IPO a few weeks back.
In Ather’s case, a comparison with Ola Electric is inevitable. Ola started this financial year with a 52% market share of the electric scooter market in India. This has declined steadily to 11.3% in Feb-25 (Ola claimed in a stock exchange filing that they sold 25k scooters but could only register 8650 scooters). Meanwhile, Ather started the financial year with a 6% market share and had a 15.5% market share in Feb 2025.
Excluding the aberrations in February with Ola numbers, Ather has maintained a market share of 11-15% over the last six months while Ola has managed 19-31% in the same period. Except, Ather is on an upward trend and Ola is sliding.
Both companies are quite different in their DNA. I rate Ather highly in engineering processes, quality of management, product quality, design ethos, and overall maturity. Meanwhile, Ola Electric has an edge in supply chain and vertical integration but lags everywhere else.
Overall, Ather has a no-compromise approach to product, though they still find it challenging to make money. However, scooters are consumer products, and strong consumer loyalty would mean something. Ather enjoys that.
Considering all these factors, Ather should command 0.65-0.75X of Ola valuations. As per yesterday’s close, Ola Electric had a market cap of INR 210.92 bn (USD 2.43bn), so Ather’s expectation of USD 1.2 bn is conservative.
Probably, Hero MotoCorp, which holds 37% equity in Ather, also sees things the same way. They are not cashing out any shares in the IPO.
From Bloomberg:
The offering will comprise both primary and secondary shares, with founders Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain as well as existing investors including National Investment and Infrastructure Fund Ltd. and Tiger Global Management’s Internet Fund III, offloading stakes, according to IPO documents. Hero MotoCorp, Ather’s biggest shareholder with a stake of just over 37%, will not participate in the share sale.
Keeping up with Ola Electric
While covering Ather, we cannot ignore Ola Electric, the market leader, or not, depending on which month’s data you are checking.
Ola Electric likes to make a lot of noise. Two days back, the company said it would be EBITDA positive next quarter. This is the next quarter, which has not even started, and we cannot construe it as anything more than an attempt to coerce investors and shareholders.
The media covered Ola’s press release, and the Ola founder tweeted the media coverage.
Our @OlaElectric EV business will be EBITDA positive next quarter. When we started many thought EVs will never be profitable 😄🙂
Kudos to the Ola Electric team for working hard to make this happen more than a year ahead of analyst estimates. https://t.co/8OgPcD3G4k
— Bhavish Aggarwal (@bhash) March 12, 2025
We don’t know how the Indian regulators work, but the SEC had charged Elon Musk with securities fraud way back in 2018 for making forward-looking statements.
In the same release, Ola Electric also claimed that its registration process is now automated and registration volumes are back on track. This has context from last month when the company released its registration partners, deciding to bring the process in-house. As a result, registrations slowed down, and February numbers were only 8650 units. However, Ola, in its stock exchange filing, claimed that they have sold 25,000 units in February.
The last time any company had round figure sales was….never.
But we have to take the company at its word, what it claims to the Indian regulators. What that indicates is this:
(India) Vahan numbers indicate Ola registered 8390 scooters in Feb and was down to the 4th spot. The company claims more than 25k sales with the difference not yet registered. If they sort out their registration problems soon, and sales stay stable, they would be registering…
— Insight EV (@editor_ev) February 28, 2025
The tweet above should nudge you to follow us on X.
In other recent filings, Ola Electric admitted that its cell gigafactory is running behind schedule and has not met the Milestone-1 as per schedule M of the Programme Agreement for availing of the Production Linked Incentive Advanced Chemistry Cell (“PLI ACC”) scheme.
Not meeting the Milestone is a serious problem – the major part of Ola’s gigafactory business plan depends on receiving government subsidies under the PLI ACC scheme. Without the government subsidies, it would be challenging to meet the Chinese cell prices in the Indian market.
On another front, NDTV Profit said that Ola Electric’s Roadster motorcycle, scheduled to be delivered from March, has not been homologated yet. This casts aspersions on the company’s claims of launching products on time.
In yet another (negative) news, Bloomberg reported that Ola Electric stores across the country have been raided as the company has flouted regulations. As many as 3300 outlets, out of the claimed 3400, did not have trade licenses.
Ola Electric’s stock closed at its all-time low closing price on Thursday at INR 50.51. The stock is down 68% from its all-time high and down 33.6% from its IPO price. Meanwhile, Ola is actively meeting investors and analysts.
That’s a wrap for today. This newsletter will be back next Friday. The posts on the website are more frequent.
