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-   -   Ola S1 Electric Scooter Review (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/motorbikes/244398-ola-s1-electric-scooter-review-51.html)

I wonder if Mr Bhavish will claim next that not many other two wheelers come with 2 wheels, a headlight and seating for the pillion! His statement on the 200 kilometer range is clearly made with the intention to mislead the public.

This gimmick and news of Ola planning to develop its own navigation are attempts to stay in the news. Tomorrow, they will find something new to get bumped up in these news articles.

From a business perspective, it makes no sense whatsoever for the company to divert its attention, resources and human capital, towards building a navigation system when there are so many options that already work so well. There is an old saying - Dont buy a tea stall if you want to have tea!

Recieved the following images on WhatsApp today.

Previously a blue scooter we had seen like this and now these two scooters.Not a one-off case now.This just shows the poor quality of these scooters. This is a real danger to the rider! Hope Ola does something about this.

Hope it's not another tweet with sensitive customer data being published to wash their hands off.

Remember first lot of Duke 200s having fragile front rims, thankfully that was taken care in the later versions. Hoping for the same.

For Ola: As a business, pulling that off, does makes lot of business sense. They will not have to pay for the navigation service (Mapmyindia/google I'm not sure what they use). This will also lead to cost savings on their cab platforms as well.
Also, gives another option to pivot the business (after Ola Cars).

For Customers: The unsolicited joy of being a beta tester ;)

Honestly, considering that
- its going to be a greenfield project
- Ola is essentially reinventing the wheel
- Ola does not have expertise in building navigation software (quite different from developing software that aggregates services based on underlying APIs with proven software)
- Ola has to do it in-house (need to hire a lot of people to develop it) or give it to a reputed IT services company (with their margins, its going to be even more expensive)
- the management is stretched thin already with too many dishes on boil
- the never ending exodus of top management
- the intended functionality doesnt need their own navigation software in the first place (referring to the link)
- the time it will take Ola to perfect it and the frustration of all its users who are getting misguided by it
- duration it will take the product to prove itself before it realizes any revenue at all
- they are at 7.6% achievement rate of their intended scale of EV scooters

I dont believe that there is any business case for this. Developing this software isnt going to be cheap or quick! If it was, we would have n number of players in the market today, which would have then made this a commodity service. Having to pay vendors to provide parts or services is how businesses run. Ola will obviously have a favourable relationship with MapMyIndia or Google. Besides, if there really were benefits from this shared navigation software, wouldnt the wise leader at Ola have identified it before creating a mammoth manufacturing plant? Why wait till now to develop something that already works perfectly around the world?

I say all this as someone who has sold IT services to global MNCs for nearly a decade. I have seen how business decisions are taken when it comes to such gargantuan projects. They are not made lightly. Heads will roll if such a big project fails. There has to be a very solid use case before a single dollar, rupee or pound is spent on an IT project of this magnitude. In this case, I agree that there is some cost saving in the long run but considering the cost of development and unlikelihood of revenue inflow in the near future, we are probably looking at this project breaking even in what 8 - 10 years (my most optimistic semi-educated guess)? Most likely it will be even longer.

Hence, to me, all this is just to take some shine off the launch from TVS's iQube, while keeping themselves warm for fresh funding and the mega IPO that is looming.

As most of the other forum members here have stated, right now, Ola needs to take a breath and pull up its socks. Create a competent customer care team. Focus on quality control of its scooters. Fix the buggy software. Ensure that the chassis doesnt crack in half (we all remember how chassis-gate impacted the sales of the Himalayan) like what hemanth.anand posted above. Deliver the scooter to those who have paid for it and whose insurance is running, like what sunilg33 posted above. Keep the gimmicks and bluster aside for now. People are starting to see through it.

At the end of the day, the more well engineered options in the EV space that are available in India, the better it is for all of us!

After a lot of follow up, My ola S1 was finally delivered yesterday and here are my observations after close to 100 kms of drive

• The delivery experience was smooth and on the expected lines.
• Earlier S1 customers were given the full range of S1 pro including the hyper mode but mine only is limited to S1 features by software. So no hyper mode and restricted range. But since the battery is the same as in S1 Pro I still don't know how exactly they are achieving it.
• The vehicle is a definite looker.
• The artificial sound some EV scooters make is totally absent and only the motor sound is heard. So put a speed of 30 sound is almost absent and will have to use the horn extensively to make your presence felt.
• Ergonomics are average. A flat footboard would have been more comfortable. You have to reach to find the horn button. There are too many buttons on both sides and without a backlit button, it was difficult during the night.
• The UI is very simple and smooth, with no major lags.
• Starting from the incline is very tricky as the motor is cut off until we release the breaks. So the vehicle tends to move back before it finds enough power to move forward. This is even more tricky with 2 people on board.
• Apart from the initial pick up the vehicle drives like a dream. You will be doing high speeds without noticing especially in the sports mode.
• Even though the vehicle feels heavy the overall build quality is flimsy.
  You feel every part is made to look good than to last long. The side stand feels like it can break at any time, and the seat base is also very light. If you look at the front suspension setup it feels very fragile and it's always on the back of my mind when I take a pothole.
• The true range shown on the screen is pretty accurate.
• When indicators are used the vehicle makes a sound and it's pretty loud and annoying. There is no way to reduce the volume or turn this off.
• After the related stories I'm afraid to touch the reverse button even though it worked as expected.
  

So overall apart from the average build quality the vehicle ticks all the boxes. Fingers crossed on the long-term reliability and hope that the bugs are fixed soon.

I have observed wierd loss of Pickup in my Ola since a week. Full throttle gives me not more than 65-70kmph. I used to get this speed earlier with very little throttle. :Frustrati

Has any one observed such drop in pickup??

Also, I think this happened after a reboot which the Ola guys are asking people to do. I see aggressive campaign from them asking customers to reboot (SMSs and calls to tell owners to reboot bikes in some pretext).

It appeared in the news. Seems things are not good for Ola link here

I booked two in the initial euphoria. Cancelled both. Dodged two bullets there :-)

A bullet dodged indeed! The way Ola functions, especially its customer relations, is an eye opener. I have always had a taxing experience with their customer support teams. Do take a look at the conversation Bhavish had with Hormazd (of Autocar) on Twitter today. I was appalled looking at the tone and tenor of the language Bhavish used to reply to Hormazd who was having an issue with his Ola scooter.

Off topic - Happy to make my return to Team BHP after 5 years with this post. I left for a couple of reasons and I am back for a couple of reasons. A story for another day. Remained a silent observer throughout. :)

Another one reported.

Source : Twitter

Ola CEO has the arrogance to call one of his "customers" as biased for sharing an issue he faced! What Bias is he talking about here!?



Even if we assume Hormazd is biased towards ICE, it is a fact that his scooter was bricked one fine day! And then he goes onto claim that no other company but Ola can solve an issue in a day! Talk about audacity!

While bricking is relatively save to the user's life, the 4 examples of suspension breaking, once scooter catching fire and the many scooters going in reverse at high speed are life threatening issues. Fortunately for Ola, they are in India; if this was in another country, Ola would have been sued and facing multiple criminal charges!

I don't understand what has gone into his head, but seriously he should immediately take some courses "How not to engage with a Customer" & "Handbook to top managers - How not to engage on Social media".

In the meantime, SVP has responded to his tweet.
Source : Twitter



Whatever the case may be, Homzad should not be complaining. He got same day service which others are waiting for days. :p

This eccentric behaviour has given rise to the usage of the word "Bhavishing", which is the act of blaming the opposite party for something that is clearly your own fault!

Examples include my neighbour blaming me for planting attractive flowers in my garden, which his cows have eaten etc.

On a more serious note, one has to wonder, if such a toxic culture is being spawned at the top of the ladder, what will its employees learn and inculcate in their professional workspace?

Imagine if the CEO of Hyundai tweeted such a response to any gentleman or lady. Forget one of the senior most and respected members of the automobile journalist community. The TBHP thread wouldn have been 10 pages long by now.

I've said it before on this thread, the biggest roadblock to Ola's success in the EV space, is Ola themselves.

This is the thought that always comes to my mind whenever I hear of more and more Ola issues. Not sure how people justify such things. Having niggles is one thing, and the optimists might be okay with it. But the sort of issues we are seeing, is something that can only be digestible by our market. If only Bhavish had common sense to match his arrogance, he would have ensured that issues such as this would have never reached the customer.

I dont think any other auto CEO (other than Musk) would spend so much time on twitter. He should get his design, QA and processes audited and make necessary changes.

He has already made me doubt the safety of electric scooters in general. Scooters are handled in much more lenient and rough way than cars and they need to be made more robust.