Ola Electric Postpones E-Scooter Sale Due To Website Glitch

Announced with much fanfare, Ola Electric has now postponed its sale of  electric scooters to September 15 owing to technical glitches on its website. Earlier, the startup which is rolling out its first two new electric scooters – S1 and S1Pro — had announced the date of live sale on September 8.  

However, once the time sale went live at 6 PM, the website crashed and potential buyers could not purchase e-scooters. Taking to Twitter, founder Bhavish Aggarwal who also leads unicorn cab aggregator Ola Cabs, apologised for crashing of the website and claimed that the website was “just not upto the expectation of quality.” He said that Ola Electric’s team had many technical difficulties in making its website for purchase live yesterday. 

“I know we disappointed you and I sincerely apologise to each of you for what was clearly a very frustrating experience,” he said in a heartfelt apology note. Aggarwal added that the team wants to offer a digital purchase journey for its customers which includes a digital loan process without any paperwork. 

He said that in order to provide the ‘right experience’ to its customers, the Ola Electric’s team will take another week’s time and announced the new live sale date to September 15 at 8 AM. 

Aggarwal added that if a customer has already reserved the e-scooter, the customer will still be able to purchase it first on the new sale date. Ola Electric announced early reservation of e-scooters for a price of INR 499 in July, before its launch date of August 15. The delivery date will remain unchanged for the time being. 

“We have been very fortunate and truly humbled to receive love and support from millions of Indians like you. Thank you. I, and everyone at Ola is fully committed to bring the electric revolution together with you,” he concluded. 

Ola Electric announced its S1 at ex-showroom price of INR 99,999 and its top variant S1 pro at INR 129,999. The prices will vary depending on the state a customer is purchasing. While the S1 variant gets a range of 121 Km in a single charge, the top model will be able to cover 181 Km in a single charge. 

While Ola S1 will be powered by a 2.95 kWh lithium-ion battery, the S1 Pro will rock a 3.97 kWh lithium-ion battery. The company has confirmed that both these batteries will come with a three-year unlimited-KM warranty.  Both the scooters sport a 7-inch touchscreen display and come in 10 colors options. 

Ola Electric scooters will compete against the likes of another Bengaluru-based electric scooter manufacturer Ather, Revolt, Hero, TVS, and others, Reports have now surfaced that LML (Lohia Machines Private Limited) once known for its kickstart scooters will now be manufacturing e-scooters.  As per Inc42 Data Plus report, market share of EV commercial vehicles is expected to be $20 Bn by 2030. The report highlights that the country is expected to touch 28 Mn units by 2030. At present, the two wheeler segment dominates the Indian EV market.

Update (September 11, 2021 at 3 PM ) :Headline changed to “Ola Electric Postpones E-Scooter Sale Due To Website Glitch”