Another Ola S1 Pro Bites The Dust

Published May 26, 2022
Views : 7224
2 min read

The electric scooter maker is staring at a flurry of complaints from disgruntled owners

The Ola S1 Pro is a much-talked-about electric scooter in the Indian market and while its credentials are indeed impressive on several counts, the debut product from Ola Electric has had its fair share of problems.

Owners have complained about issues such as sudden range drops, mechanical failures, uncontrolled reversing and this time, it’s another breakdown (literally) that has come to light.

One Mr Anand Lavakumar took to microblogging site Twitter to share the image of his Ola S1 Pro with its front fork broken claiming that this happened while the riding speed was minimal.

My OLA's front fork got collapsed while hitting against a wall at 25kmph in Eco mode along an uphill Some other users also faced similar issues with the front fork My brother just escaped from very serious head injuries but then also got a deep cut on his face @bhash @OlaElectric pic.twitter.com/W689gOVxYQ
— ANAND L S (@anandlavakumar) May 25, 2022

From the pictures, it looks like the suspension arm has fallen apart. Many believe that the thin forged block metal strip used by Ola as the suspension arm could be the reason for the breakdown. But, without any confirmation from Ola or any outside investigating body, it’s impossible to point to the cause of the failure.

His post opened the floodgate to a barrage of comments with many other Twitter users complaining about material quality issues on their Ola scooters, or unresponsiveness to their complaints from the company, or both. Some of them even highlighted the fact that they faced sudden issues after clocking thousands of hassle-free kilometres on their scooters.

Here's what Ola had to say about the incident:

“Vehicle safety & quality standards are of paramount importance at Ola. Ola today has more than 50,000 scooters on the road. So far, our scooters have travelled over 45 million cumulative km on Indian roads. The recently reported incidents of front fork breakage are due to isolated high impact accidents. All our scooters undergo rigorous quality and performance assessment across different terrains and riding conditions in India.”

The Ola S1 and S1 Pro were launched last year and they’re available at present for a price of Rs 99,999 and Rs 1,39,999, respectively (ex-showroom including FAME II subsidy, excluding State EV subsidy).

With a 3.97 kWh Lithium-ion battery, the S1 Pro offers a claimed real world range of about 135km. It also boasts of features such as a TFT display, Bluetooth connectivity, reverse mode and a lot more.

If you’re looking to get your hands on an electric scooter, you could also have a look at the Ather 450X, Simple One or the Bajaj Chetak.