Ola Electric – which experienced a record-shattering start – has been struggling to deliver scooters to the customers. The company has now announced that it is upgrading the customers who bought the vanilla variant of its electric scooter Ola S1 to the top end Ola S1 Pro.
The company says that the hardware upgrade is free of charge, however, the customers might still have to pay a substantial amount to enjoy the software features. The amount in question is Rs. 30,000 and it is the exact difference between the price of an Ola S1 and the Ola S1 Pro – hence doesn’t make any sense but that’s not all.
On paper, this offer might sound interesting to the select group of customers as the Ola S1 Pro comes with a bigger 3.97Kwh battery and additional features like ‘hyper mode,’ hill hold, cruise control, and voice assistance.
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However, the caveat here is that the Ola S1 Pro will be slightly heavier than the standard Ola S1 – which means that the end-user with a Pro model might get an even lesser range than the base variant. The upgrade is also not available to all the users as well.
So, if you’ve upgraded to the top end Ola S1 Pro and do not wish to get the “premium” software features, you’ll get a scooter that offers way less mileage per charge than the one that you initially opted for. So if you’re one of the select group users who has been upgraded, you might be in a catch 22 situation – to go for the upgrade and pay for it as well or go for the upgrade which basically is a downgrade.
Just adding to the misery
While there is little doubt that Ola Electric has been able to change the way people think about electric scooters and even shop for them. However, the company is sitting at a pile of pre-orders and in-terms deliveries the company is progressing at a snail’s pace. And these tricky offers that the company is coming up with are only resulting in negative PR.
Even the handful of customers who’ve got the scooters delivered in the cities like Bangalore or Chennai are complaining about various issues – including low range compared to what was promised/advertised or even about damaged products being delivered to them.
Various reports citing ex-employees suggest that the company does not have fully functional software nor is the factory in a position to churn out the number of vehicles anywhere close to what the company had initially boasted.
On the other hand, the company has clarified that the state subsidies are valid till March 31, hence the delay in deliveries will not have an adverse impact.
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