The limelight shines again on Ola Electric as another owner alleges that a software bug in his e-scooter resulted in severe harm to his father
As customers continue to take delivery of their new Ola scooters, it seems like these EVs are attracting more and more media attention, and for the wrong reasons. Social media has been flooding with complaints about battery draining issues and bugs causing the scooter to drive in reverse, among others. In some cases, these problems have even resulted in injuries.
One such accident has been brought to light by Pallav Maheshwari, who has shared the details online via a LinkedIn post. The incident took place in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh. The owner alleged that a software bug in his Ola scooter brought severe injuries to his father, who was simply trying to park the scooter.
In his post, Mr. Maheshwari stated that his father was bringing the scooter in question from outside the house to inside when it drove reverse at full speed. The rider hit a wall and was gravely hurt, requiring ten stitches on his head and two plates in his broken left arm. Netizens have mostly sided with the owner, tagging the manufacturer as well as Ola Electric CEO Bhavish Aggarwal in the comments of said post.
Last month, another user – Balwant Singh, a Guwahati-based businessman – had alleged that a glitch in the scooter resulted in his son getting severely injured. In his tweets, he stated that issues with the regenerative braking system caused the scooter to accelerate instead of decelerating over a speed bump, thus crashing on the road.
Ola Electric refuted these claims, stating overspeeding and panic braking as the cause of the incident, sharing the telemetry data of the scooter online. This prompted a huge debate among netizens regarding data privacy, and the owner of the scooter even accused the manufacturer of data tampering in this case.
Several other users have also joined Balwant Singh’s Twitter treads, attaching images and videos of similar problems in their scooters. Also, many electric scooters (from different brands) have been catching fires across India, among which there is one Ola electric scooter as well.
Ola Electric had entered the electric two-wheeler market in India last year, with two offerings – S1 and S1 Pro. Currently, the manufacturer is only accepting bookings for Ola S1 Pro, which is priced at Rs. 1.3 lakh (without EV subsidies).