Rider Injured Using Ola Scooter: Reverse Mode Gets Activated In Full Speed

The unfortunate incident took place in Jabalpur to a 65-year old man. The injured man is the father of the person who owns the Ola S1 Pro electric scooter that was involved in the incident.

The owner claims that his father was severely injured while parking the Ola S1 Pro electric scooter as the scooter reversed in speed excess of 50km/h. The incident hit the limelight after the owner shared the incident on LinkedIn and blamed it on the scooter's software.

In his LinkedIn post, Mr Pallav Maheshwari said, "The software bug in the #olaelectric scooter of going in the reverse mode at full speed has severely injured my father. He was the one who even at the age of 65 is very active and was enthusiastic to use #ola #electricvehicle. Please look at what your #poorlytested scooter has done to him."

"I was not a bit hesitant to book the scooter on the day of opening the booking as I wanted to support companies like you and didn't think that #healthandsafety norms would be compromised to this level at your #futurefactory," Added Mr Maheshwari in his LinkedIn post.

In his post, Mr Maheshwari also accused Ola Electric of not issuing any recall or fixes even after multiple reports of reverse mode getting activated in 'full throttle'.

Earlier, the son of an Ola user named Balwant Singh reported a similar incident. According to Mr Singh, the incident happened due to a "fault in regenerative breaking where on a speed breaker instead of slowing, the scooter accelerated..."

While rebutting the claims by Mr Singh, Ola publicly released the telemetry data of the user and landed in a fresh controversy involving the consumer's right to data privacy.

Speaking about Ola Electric, the company plans to become the largest EV manufacturer in India and the startup EV manufacturer produces more than 1,000 electric scooters per day.

According to the official figures, the Ola S1 can cover 121kms on a single charge, whereas the Ola S1 pro can manage 181kms on a full battery. However, these figures shy a bit in real-world conditions.

Both the Ola S1 and Ola S1 Pro come with a long list of features such as LED headlights, a fully digital instrument cluster, keyless app-based access, disc brakes, telescopic front suspension, cloud connectivity, alloy wheels, and many more.

Powering the Ola S1 is a 2.98kWh battery pack, whereas the more expensive Ola S1 Pro sports a larger 3.97kWh battery pack. However, both scooters come with near-identical electric motors.

However, despite the similarity in the electric motor in both variants of the electric scooter, their performance was noticeably different as the more expensive Ola S1 Pro is slightly faster with an official top speed of 115km/h.

Thoughts About Ola Electric

Ola Electric has witnessed an overwhelming response for their electric scooters in India and the startup EV manufacturer is en route to becoming one of the biggest names in the EV industry. However, to become such, Ola Electric has to step up its game and iron out such issues by rigorously testing and rectifying any underlying problems in its products.