Ola S1 Pro Electric Scooter Catches Fire In Pune, Company Launches Investigation

An Ola S1 Pro electric scooter was spotted catching fire in what appears to be a Pune-registered vehicle. The videos of the incident have now gone viral on social media with the blue-coloured electric scooter up in flames while parked on the side of the road. The video starts off with smoke emitting from under the bodywork but the scooter burst into flames which soon engulfed the entire vehicle. Ola says it has already reached out to the customer and the person is "absolutely safe."

The Ola S1 Pro started smoking before catching fire

Acknowledging the incident, Ola Electric issued a statement reading, "We are aware of an incident in Pune that happened with one of our scooters and are investigating to understand the root cause and will share more updates in the next few days. We're in constant touch with the customer who is absolutely safe. Vehicle safety is of paramount importance at Ola and we are committed to the highest quality standards in our products. We take this incident seriously and will take appropriate action and share more in the coming days."

After started smoking up, the electric scooter spontaneously caught fire.

There's no word yet on what caused the incident with the Ola S1 Pro. The issue though could be from the battery overheating but all of this remains conjecture until the manufacturer releases complete details about the cause of the accident. That being said, electric scooters catching fire has not been an entirely new issue and there have been such cases in the past with other such offerings. In several cases, the electric scooters caught fire during charging. We'd like to iterate that the exact reason for the incident is unknown at the moment.

Oh No!
Looks like #OLA pic.twitter.com/QZlYkvMbMh

— Vinkesh Gulati ???????? (@VinkeshGulati) March 26, 2022

The Ola S1 Pro gets a 3.97 kWh lithium-ion battery pack that's fixed. The scooter promises a range of 181 km on a single charge and a top speed of 115 kmph. The model is priced at Rs. 1.30 lakh (ex-showroom, after FAME II Subsidy). Ola recently opened its new purchase window on March 17, 2022.

Ola Electric launched its S1 and S1 Pro electric scooters with much fanfare. The company announced setting up the world's largest two-wheeler manufacturing facility and also announced tremendous demand for its electric scooters initially. While Ola Electric claimed pre-bookings worth over Rs. 1,100 crore electric scooters in just two days, there were repeated delays in the delivery of the scooters much to the ire of customers who originally booked the vehicles from August last year. Customers also took to social media to announce their annoyance regarding the repeated delays. Ola doesn't have any dealerships and offer a direct to home delivery model, which meant test rides have only been for those customers who paid the booking amount. Deliveries did begin in December 2021 and while the company has maintained that deliveries to customers are being done within the promised timelines, many dissatisfied customers have still to get delivery of the scooters which were booked.

Bookings for the Ola S1 originally began in August 2021 while deliveries only commenced in December last year after missing several deadlines

However, our readers would know that this is just one of the many known issues that have crept up with Ola over the last few months. Apart from deliveries, the much hyped product has had quality and consistency issues as far as performance and features is concerned. Customers have also complained about some features not working while there have also been issues regarding battery overheating over time. The latest incident is yet another blow to Ola Electric, which has not just faced the ire of customers but has so far failed to receive any positive reviews on its products. To offer complete disclosure, Ola Electric did not invite carandbike to the first media ride of the S1 Pro electric scooter, so we have no way of commenting on the product. In fact, the S1 and S1 Pro also qualified to be nominated for the 2022 carandbike Awards, but Ola Electric did not send any test units for the two-wheeler jury meet.