Ola S1: Performance Of A Scooter For The Price Of A Bicycle

Bringing high-performance electric mobility to the masses.

By: Enrico Punsalang

Aug 18, 2021 at 11:46pm ET

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Love them or hate them, you can’t deny that scooters are quite probably the most ubiquitous form of transport in the urban setting, particularly in Asia. Europe’s densely populated urban settings are no strangers to scooters, either, with Vespa, the world’s most popular scooter manufacturer, originating from Italy. I’ve said it time and time again, scooters have vastly evolved from the rudimentary machines they were more than half a century ago.

Thanks to advancement in technology, scooters of today are equally vehicles as they are IoT devices. The dawn of electrification has taken scooter design to a whole new realm, too. Nowadays, scooters are undeniably cool and fashionable pieces of technology. In recent months, we’ve gone into great detail about Ola Electric and its upcoming scooter. I’ll have to admit that at one point, I began to wonder if Ola’s lofty commitments were all but smoke and mirrors. However, it seems that the Indian startup has taken a few steps, or should I say leaps, in the right direction.

Ola Electric has unveiled its production-ready scooter, and has christened it the S1. Company founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal has been very active on social media, continuously building up the hype for this scooter. Now, if the specs, and more importantly the price tag, are anything to go by, it seems that Ola Electric has made good on its promises. You see, the Ola S1 isn’t some boring electric two-wheeler with a top speed limited to 30 odd miles per hour. No, it’s capable of reaching a top speed of 70 miles per hour—that’s faster than I’ve ever been able to go on my Vespa S125. What’s more is that the S1, in its Pro variant, promises a range of 112 miles on a single charge.

Now, you may be thinking that all this usable performance and range will come at a hefty price—say, the ballpark of around $6,000, right? Wrong! Arguably the best part about the Ola S1 is its price tag. Ola Electric is offering the S1 in two variants, with the base model S1 fetching the equivalent of just $1,350 USD. The top-of-the-line S1 Pro, fetches the sum of $1,748 USD—that’s the same amount of money as a mid-tier mountain bike. As of the moment, the S1 is only available in India. However, the company has stated that it will soon be expanding to other markets, and that its mega-factory will produce 10 million scooters per year.

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