New, affordable Ola S1 electric scooter launch in India on Diwali, price below Rs 80,000: Report

In a recent tweet, Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal hinted at a new launch coming later this month. In a tweet, Aggarwal said, “planning something BIG for our launch this month! Will accelerate the #EndICEAge revolution by at least 2 years. Really excited.” Further, a report in Car And Bike said that the company is planning to launch a new, more affordable variant of the Ola S1 scooters.

According to the sources quoted in the Car and Bike report, the new, affordable Ola S1 scooter could be priced below Rs 80,000, which is the same bracket as most popular petrol scooters in the market currently. Ola is said to offer most of the features of the S1 and S1 Pro on the new variant. Like before, the new Ola Electric scooter will be running on the company’s MoveOS platform, the report quoted sources as saying.

Ola launched the Ola S1 back in August as an affordable electric scooter, to sit below the Ola S1 Pro. The Ola S1 was launched at a price of Rs 99,999 (ex-showroom) in India, and comes with a 5.5kW motor with 8.5kw peak power. The electric scooter was launched with a range of up to 141 km and a top speed of 95kmph. The Ola S1 also charges in just 5 hours using a home charger.

There is a 3kWh battery pack on the Ola S1 that powers the scooter. The scooter runs on Ola’s MoveOS platform that brings features like music playback, navigation, a Companion app, and Reverse Mode. Ola will also bring the MoveOS 3.0 update to the Ola S1 around Diwali.

Ola had recently announced that it had a successful Navratri period, where the company claimed it sold an electric scooter every minute. The company said that sales grew four times during this festive season. Ola Electric also said that it managed to organise over 1 lakh customer test drives across India. The company sold 9,364 units in September, according to Vaahan numbers.

While the company has been selling a good number of electric scooters, it is not all hunky dory for Ola Electric. There have been multiple reports of Ola Electric scooters catching fire in India, and an Ola S1 Pro software glitch in the scooter’s early days made it run in reverse at a speed of 90kmph.