Ola Electric Extends Scooter Test Rides To 1000+ Cities

Speaking about his company's plans to expand the test ride programme to more cities across India, Ola Electric CEO Bhavish Aggarwal tweeted, "Amazed and proud to see the strong response to our S1 test rides! Thousands of you have tried & loved it! We're now expanding test rides to 1000+ cities across India by Dec 15. This is the largest direct to consumer outreach in Indian automotive history!"

Arun Sirdeshmukh, Chief Business Officer at Ola Electric stated, "Customer response to our test rides has been phenomenally positive and we are really thrilled to see their excitement for the revolutionary Ola S1 scooter. Thousands of customers are taking test rides every day and absolutely loving the best in class design, performance, technology and ride quality the Ola S1 delivers.

We are scaling test rides up rapidly in the coming weeks and will be covering over 1000 cities and towns across India to ensure every customer has access to test rides by mid-December. This is the fastest national scale-up of test rides ever and a revolution in automotive retail made possible by our direct to consumer model."

Ola had initially started test rides of the S1 electric scooter on the 10th of November in the cities of Bengaluru, Delhi, Ahmedabad and Kolkata. 9 days later, the company added five more cities to the test ride programme - Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kochi and Pune. Ola will start the expansion of its test ride set up by adding the following 11 cities to its programme - Surat, Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikode, Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Coimbatore, Vadodara, Bhubaneswar, Tiruppur, Jaipur and Nagpur.

Ola Electric had launched the S1 and S1 Pro In India on the 15th of August, 2021. The two scooters are the first electric vehicles from Ola Electric and will be followed in by an affordable electric scooter and motorcycle in the near future.

The Ola S1 and S1 Pro are powered by a single interior permanent magnet type (IPM) mid-drive motor which during regular riding produces 7.37bhp. However, the electric motor has a peak power output of 11.39bhp which is achieved when the rider asks for more power to conduct an overtaking manoeuvre or for quick bursts of acceleration. The Ola S1 and S1 Pro's motor has a peak torque output of 58Nm.

The Ola Electric S1 sports a 2.98kWh battery pack which allows the scooter to travel up to 121 kilometres before requiring the assistance of a plug point. The Ola S1 Pro sports a slightly larger 3.97kWh battery pack which extends the range to 181 kilometres.

The bigger battery on the S1 Pro increases the scooter's charging time to 6 hours and 45 minutes while the regular S1 can fill up its batteries from the mains in 4 hours and 48 minutes. Both Ola Electric scooters can recuperate 75 kilometres of range in just 18 minutes when connected to Ola's Hypercharger network. The larger battery pack also means that the S1 Pro is 4 kilos heavier than the S1 at 125 kilos.

Thoughts on Ola Extending The Test Ride Programme

The Ola S1 and S1 Pro have received unprecedented levels of interest since their launch earlier this year. Ola's decision to expand its test ride programme to more cities across the country will allow customers to decide for themselves if the new scooter is up to their expectations and worth the money and the wait.