Ola setting up Futurefoundry in UK, creating $100-mn vehicle design centre

Recent $200 mn funding to help Ola speed up development of other vehicle platforms, including e-motorbike, mass market scooter and electric car

After raising over $200 million from investors at a $5 billion valuation, Ola Electric, the ride-hailing firm’s electric vehicle (EV) arm, is setting up Ola Futurefoundry, its global centre for advanced engineering and vehicle design. This centre will be based in Coventry, UK, a global hub for the best automotive design and engineering talent in the world.

SoftBank-backed Ola will invest over $100 million over the next 5 years into the state-of-the-art centre and staff it with over 200 designers and automotive engineers. The centre will also partner with world-class education and research institutions in the UK to collaborate on technology research and development.

“At Ola we are building the future of mobility and continue to attract the best global talent across disciplines. Ola Futurefoundry will enable us to tap into the fantastic automotive design & engineering talent in the UK to create the next generation of electric vehicles,”said Bhavish Aggarwal, founder and CEO, Ola said. “Futurefoundry will work in close collaboration with our headquarters in Bangalore, India to help us build the future of mobility as we make EVs affordable across the world.”

Ola Futurefoundry will work in sync with the design and engineering teams based at Ola Campus in Bengaluru, India. It will house global talent across multiple disciplines of 2W (two-wheeler) and 4W (four-wheeler) vehicle design, advanced high-performance automotive engineering and digital and physical modelling. It will also house talent that will focus on vehicle R&D around new energy systems including cell technologies.

“We want to create a world-class design and R&D team with global sensibilities. Ola Futurefoundry is an important step in building a multi-disciplinary team that is agile, flexible, and responsive to the various needs of our consumers around the world,” said Wayne Burgess, vice president of vehicle design, Ola Electric. “We are setting up in Coventry a global epicentre of automotive and technology talent. Futurefoundry will supplement and collaborate with our core team in Bangalore, India to deliver exciting new EVs across two-wheeler, four-wheeler and other form factors.”

Ola setting up the Futurefoundry comes at a time when making electric four-wheelers is the next focus for Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal and the work on this is seriously underway. Aggarwal on Tuesday posted an image of an EV on Twitter that looks like the design concept for the upcoming Ola electric car.

According to the sources, Wayne Burgess, who was hired last year as head of vehicle design at Ola Electric for its entire product range including scooters, bikes and cars, would be leading a team along with top engineers for designing the electric car.

Burgess brings a wealth of international automotive design experience, having worked on some of the most legendary and iconic cars in automotive history including the Bentley Arnage in 1998, Aston Martin’s DB9 in the mid 2000s and more recently, the Jaguar XF, F-Type, F-Pace SUV, XE and many others. People familiar with the matter said Burgess will bring global appeal, and design aesthetics and his expertise in designing some of the most legendary vehicles will also be helpful in bringing these new form factors to consumers.

Burgess has spent almost three decades designing vehicles for the majority of British premium automotive manufacturers, from Rolls Royce and Bentley in his early career, to Aston Martin and Jaguar Landrover to, more recently, Lotus. Notably, he was the chief designer for the Jaguar F-Type sports car, and then studio director for the Jaguar F-Pace SUV.

Last year, Aggarwal shared his vision of the future of mobility - New Mobility, which included products ranging from electric scooters, cars to drones and flying cars. In India, just 2 per cent (30 million) people own a four-wheeler and only 12 per cent (160 million) own a two-wheeler. He had said that means more than a billion people in India have been shut out of mobility by this system.

This week Ola Electric, raised over $200 million from Tekne Private Ventures, Alpine Opportunity Fund, Edelweiss and others. The latest round values the company at $5 billion, an increase from its previous valuation of $3 billion. Over the last 12 months, Ola Electric has built the Futurefactory, the world’s largest two-wheeler manufacturing facility, Ola S1.

This funding is expected to help Ola accelerate the development of other vehicle platforms, including electric motorbike, mass market scooter and its electric car. The funding will further strengthen Ola’s ‘Mission Electric’, which urges the industry and consumers to commit to electric and ensure that no petrol two-wheelers should be sold in India after 2025.