Breaking: Meet Your Next e-Scooter, The Just Launched Ola S1

Ola Electric’s new venture has been the talk of the town for the past few months. The company’s ambitious plan of not just launching the Ola Electric Scooter but also an extensive charging network raised many eyebrows. Now, the electric scooter has been launched and it looks like it is going to rattle not only the Indian EV market, but we think even the traditional ICE scooter segment.

What's Its Price? What Are Its Rivals

The Ola Electric Scooter has been launched at Rs 99,999 for the S1 variant and Rs 1,29,999 for the S1 Pro variant (both ex-showroom Bengaluru, inclusive of FAME-II subsidy). Customers in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan will additionally benefit from their state’s new EV policies announced recently. Ola Electric will open bookings from September 8 and deliveries will commence across 1000 cities October onwards.

The Ola Electric Scooter will lock horns with the likes of the Ather 450X, Bajaj Chetak, TVS iQube Electric and the Simple Energy One, the last one was launched later in the day.

How many Variants Are There?

The Ola Electric Scooter has been launched in two variants: S1 and S1 Pro. The latter flaunts a bigger battery, better performance and a few additional features like hill hold control, cruise control, voice assist and an additional ‘Hyper’ drive mode.

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What's New?

Both versions are powered by a 5.5kW motor that has a peak power rating of 8.5kW. Given the differences in battery capacity and motor tune, the S1 Pro is able to reach a top speed of 115kmph while the S1 is restricted to just 90kmph. However, even the lower S1 version has a higher top speed than the Ather 450X, which is currently our performance benchmark in the electric scooter space. To know how the Ather’s performance fares, read our road test review.

This motor is paired with either a 2.98kWh (S1) or a 3.97kWh (S1 Pro) battery pack, with a claimed range of 121km and 181km respectively. The cleverly designed ‘banana’ battery packs sit in the floorboard, giving the Ola scooters an astounding underseat storage of 36 litres! This is 15 litres more than the Suzuki Burgman Street, which boasts of the most storage capacity among petrol-powered scooters. Unfortunately, unlike the Etergo AppScooter, on which it is based, the Ola scooter doesn’t get removable battery packs.

That shouldn’t be a bummer though, as Ola will be setting up a mega charging infrastructure pan-India. With the company’s ambitious charging infrastructure in place, an 18 minute charge can give you a range of 75km. Charging the S1 at your home will take 4 hours 48 minutes while the S1 Pro can be fully charged in 6 hours 30 minutes. Both the variants come standard with a portable 750W charger.

The Ola Electric S1 and S1 Pro share the same tubular frame which is suspended onto a single fork up front and a monoshock at the rear. Braking hardware on both the e-scooter include a 220mm/180mm disc setup aided by a combined braking system.

The Ola Electric Scooters flaunt a long list of features. For starters, proximity lock/unlock as well as remote lock/unlock, phone connectivity to access calls and messages is standard on both the scooters. Ola Electric also offers onboard navigation, a “limp home” mode (when the scooters are low on juice), reverse mode and Take Me Home light feature.

Some other interesting features include hill hold control, cruise control and voice assist, seen only on ths S1 Pro variant. However, what takes the cake is the provision to create multiple profiles which are individually customisable. Heck, you can even have an electronically-generated sound, if you don’t wish to whizz past the traffic silently.

ZigSays

The Ola Electric S1 will definitely cause a stir in the market, thanks to its pricing and the plethora of features the company is offering. It has been one of the most highly-anticipated e-scooters in our market in recent times; and given its brochure, it does seem to live up to the hype. However, the bigger challenge of delivering the e-scooters as well as building the massive charging network still remains.