Amaan AhmedSep 15, 2021 23:24:47 IST
UPDATE: An hour after this story was filed, Ola Electric announced a bigger spike in sales, saying it’s selling four S1 e-scooters every second, and it is understood confirmed purchase orders have crossed the one lakh mark at the time of this update being filed.
In news that provides a glimpse of India’s readiness to adopt electric two-wheelers, Tech2 can now confirm Ola Electric has sold over 80,000 units of its maiden scooter, the Ola S1, on the very first day of sales commencing. While the going wasn’t exactly smooth on the original date of commencement of sales (8 September) and led to a week-long delay, purchase windows for the Ola S1 and S1 Pro opened at 8 am on 15 September, and since then, Ola Electric has amassed over 80,000 confirmed orders within 12 hours.
In a tweet published late on 15 September, Ola Electric chairman Bhavish Aggarwal on Twitter said the company “two scooters every second” since the purchase windows opened earlier this morning. A back-of-the-envelope calculation basis this revelation suggests Ola has now received well over 86,000 orders inside 12 hours.
Floodgates to the revolution are truly open! We’re selling 2 scooters every second! India is rejecting petrol and choosing electric. Purchase now open for everyone who’s reserved! Buy yours now on the Ola App! https://t.co/RIcwzKSIyt #JoinTheRevolution pic.twitter.com/7nDj2o2JnR
— Bhavish Aggarwal (@bhash) September 15, 2021
That Ola Electric has received over 86,000 confirmed orders in a single day comes as no surprise, as the company had received over one lakh reservations within 24 hours of opening order books, and it is understood that Ola Electric currently has lakhs of pre-bookings for the S1.
For perspective, this figure is almost three times the total number of high-speed electric two-wheelers sold in India in the first six months of 2021. It is also roughly the same number of Activas that Honda 2 Wheelers India retails in a period of six days, and the Activa remains by far and away the most popular scooter on Indian roads.
Aggarwal also mentioned that the purchase option is now available for all those who have pre-booked the scooter. Earlier, Ola Electric had chosen to open the purchase window for buyers basis the date of their booking, so only those who had made their booking earlier could choose to make a larger payment to turn their reservation into a purchase.
To make the S1 more accessible, Ola Electric has come up with a finance plan that pegs the EMI amount at Rs 2,999. Image: Ola Electric
At present, anyone who has made a booking by paying Rs 499 can choose to pay Rs 20,000 as down payment (regardless of the variant they’ve chosen), with the remaining amount needing to be paid at the time of invoicing, as either a direct payment or as a finance option, as provided by Ola Electric.
The Ola S1 and S1 Pro will come with a three-year, unlimited-kilometre warranty for their battery packs. For reference, the Ola S1 has a 2.98 kWh lithium-ion battery pack, while the Ola S1 Pro has a 3.97 kWh lithium-ion battery pack – the biggest yet seen on a production electric two-wheeler in India. The warranty on the Ola S1 scooter itself is three years or 40,000 kilometres, whichever comes first.
The Ola S1 Pro, with a 3.98 kWh pack, has the largest battery of any electric scooter on sale today. Image: Ola Electric
Range for the Ola S1 is rated at 121 kilometres, and for the Ola S1 Pro, the range is pegged at 181 kilometres. Ola Electric will provide a portable 750 W charger with the S1 and S1 Pro, and the company says fully charging the S1 at home will take about four hours and 48 minutes, while a full charge for the S1 Pro at home will six hours, 30 minutes.
Ola is also setting up its ‘Hypercharger’ fast-charging network across India, where users will be able to regain about 75 kilometres of range in just 15 minutes. Ola Electric will have fixed charging stations (including slow- and fast-charging points) in 100 cities across India at the time of the S1 and S1 Pro’s launch, and will eventually cover more than 400 cities.
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