3 new electric scooters from Ultra

Year 2009 will see scooter maker Ultra Motors going in for a major expansion in India. The company, which had parted ways with Hero Electric, will now seek to capture the scooter market in India on its own, The expansion is planned with an eye on this goal.

Ultra Motors is believed to be lining up a slew of new electric vehicles and is also looking at adding to its dealerships in the country. One among the new products launched is a new low-speed electric scooter called the Marathon, which has been positioned against the Maxi. The Marathon electric scooter is capable of delivering a range of up to 100 km on a single charge and has a maximum speed of 25 km an hour. The Maxi is a low speed electric scooter of its erstwhile partner Hero Electric.

The other new models will be a new spruced up Velocity scooter and two other low speed scooters. Ultra Motors is said to have been earmarked an investment close to Rs 140 crore. It will spent the amount over the next three years for sales, marketing and product development. According to the Ultra Motors, from the amount earmarked, Ultra will invest Rs 25 crore during the current fiscal for developing new electric scooter models, while an amount of Rs 16 crore will go into marketing and over Rs 4 crore to strengthen dealership network to 250 by the end of this fiscal. The company currently has 150 dealerships across India.

Apart from this, Ultra would also come out with electric motorcycles aimed at the Indian market. On the anvil is a high performance e-motorcycle which is expected to debut in another two years time. The company seems to be positioning the new e-bike in the same league as a 100cc motorcycle.

We are quite interested in that electric motorcycle. So far, we have been hearing about electric two-wheelers – but almost all products in that segment seem to be scooters, not motorcycles. We are sure the technology for electric motorcycles will not be indigenous – there is no point in inventing the wheel again. There is market demand right now, and we wonder what is stopping India’s electric vehicle manufacturers from launching an electric motorcycle with a respectable speed and range.

Ultra Motors officials have said that the new proposed electric motorcycle is currently being developed at Ultra Motor’s R&D centre in the UK. The company meanwhile has its own production facility at Hyderabad which has a capacity to build at least 60,000 vehicles annually.