Ola electric scooter purchase deferred by a week

The purchase of Ola S1, the electric scooter by Ola Electric has been deferred to September 15. In a tweet, chief executive and co-founder of Ola, Bhavish Aggarwal, said that the delay was due to a glitch on the portal for pre-booking the scooter on July 15 when it was opened up. 

Aggarwal clarified that reservations, position in purchase queue and deliveries of the electric scooter will remain unchanged.   

"We had committed to start purchases today for our Ola S1 scooter. But unfortunately, we have had many technical difficulties in making our website for purchases live today. I want to apologies to all of you, who had to wait for several hours. The website was just not up to our expectations on quality.  I know we disappointed you and I sincerely apologies to each of you for what was clearly a frustrating experience," said Aggarwal in a note apologising to customers.  

"We've built a completely digital purchase journey including a fully digital loan process without any paperwork.  We wanted to provide this first of its kind digital purchase and today we haven't been able to," added Aggarwal.   

On August 15, Ola Electric ended weeks of speculation and unveiled its S1 and S1 Pro electric scooter models, priced competitively to cater to value-conscious customers. S1 was priced at ₹99,999, excluding subsidies by state and governments, while S1 Pro model is priced up to ₹129,999. 

Deliveries of the scooters were expected to begin in October in 1,000 cities and towns across the country Ola in August said it will sell its scooters through an omnichannel model, including both online and offline experience centres.  

Ola Electric is also expected to invest $2 billion over the next five years to build an electric two-wheeler charging network with its partners.