The problem with Ola Electric

Ola’s track record with prioritising speed over quality and reliability continues into 2023. Rishaad Mody of Autocar India sorts through the clutter of facts and opinions that have been in the news recently.

- Rishaad Mody

Ola Electric, the firebrand EV start-up, has undoubtedly pushed the electric two-wheeler game forward and the numbers it has clocked in the last year and a half are impressive by any unit of measure. But at what cost has this been achieved?

Pointing fingers

Ola has been aggressively dismissive of any criticism against its product or its processes and the latest act of self-defence comes in the form of a blog called “Our engineering facts — busting myths and narratives”. The blog was a response to an expansive, full-page story carried out by the financial daily Mint on how Ola’s front suspension system was failing and putting riders in a dangerous situation.

This has been a publicly known issue for nearly a year now and has been covered by our sister publication Autocar India. So did many other publications, but Ola dismissed the issue saying that these were random and isolated ‘high impact incidents.’ However, with nasty images piling up on the internet of Ola scooters with completely broken and dangling front wheels, as well as a recent one of an injured rider, the company could no longer sweep this under the rug.

You would expect any traditional automobile company to recognise that something was awfully wrong here and jump to action to issue a recall.

However, Ola Electric’s initial response was to silently redesign its single-sided front suspension with reinforcement around the thin neck area where the breakages were happening — Autocar India wrote about this in its second report in January 2023.