Hello and welcome to PowerDrift, today is a very special day because, Happy Independence Day,
but it's also special because Ola Electric is revealing their scooters,
the electric scooters, the S1 and the S1 Pro today and there they are,
unlike all the teasers they are actually made of black satin cloth.
No, they're not.
That's the actual scooter.
This is the top model the S1 Pro, 1.30 lakh rupees, there'll be a base model
called the S1 which will be about a lakh of rupees before you account for the state subsidies.
What you should know is that this is a pre-production scooter,
which means this is not the final scooter,
so we're not going to go into a lot of detail about what goes in there,
but we do have the specification, we do know what it's supposed to represent
and that's what we're going to talk about in this video,
and if you're ready, let's get into it.
So now let's talk about the styling and you should be familiar with it if you've been
following Ola's campaign where the marketing
and the teasers have shown what this quarter looks like
and honestly, it's not a surprise,
because this is based on a Dutch scooter called the Etergo AppScooter
and visually it looks the same apart from the Ola badges appearing on the front apron
and the S1 Pro badge at the back and
this is the top model the S1 Pro, what's the difference between this and the lower model?
We'll talk about it in just a minute.
What you should know, is that while visually it looks like the Dutch scooter, this is a 100%
Indian scooter in the sense that the cells inside the battery apart,
everything is made in India
and you should be aware that Ola has an extremely ambitious plan
and they are busy building one of the largest two-wheeler plants in the world with the actual
capacity's supposed to reach 10 million units,
which Ola says is 15% of the world's two-wheeler output.
Now, design wise it's a pretty appealing scooter,
I really like it because the panels and the monocoque underneath means
the finish levels look really good.
We'll talk about it in detail when we ride this scooter in mid September,
which will be a production scooter, this is a pre-production unit,
but I think the reason there is appeal is because that headlight
sort of looks like a human face, it's a happy human face
and I think a lot of people will connect to it.
But what do you think about the styling? Leave us a comment, because we're moving on and
we're talking about what's under the hood.
So as we said, there are two versions of the scooter the S1 and S1 Pro, this is the
S1 pro and the primary difference between them is the size of the battery.
So the S1, the base model, it runs a smaller battery, it's just under 3 kWh
and the top model runs a 4 kWh battery, which, if you think about it,
the S1 is more or less where the Ather is at,
but, the surprise is that the performance is quite a bit different
because the S1 actually offers you a higher top-speed as well as a greater range and the
top S1 Pro actually offers you 181 kilometres.
Remember, this is on the ARAI cycle,
this is not Ola's realistic world claim, which is of course going to be a completely
different number, something that we'll talk about when we actually ride the scooter.
In terms of setup, there is no real surprise the Etergo AppScooter and the Ola scooter they have
the battery pack in the curve there.
It's a monocoque frame, which uses a combination of metal and plastic, the motor's somewhere
in there, there's a belt inside this chamber and of course you can see the suspension.
What Ola is promising is a vehicle that has performance levels that we've not seen before,
especially on the S1 Pro, charging times are going to be pretty decent because if you
use Ola's coming fast charger network, the top scooter obviously has 181 kilometres of
charge, it comes to the 750 watt charger, which means charging times are also less
so I think four and a half and six and a half hours are your charge times
for this scooter when you're using the home charger.
And at least initially,
Ola owners will be able to use the Ola hypercharger network for free.
So that's the update of what we know about the numbers of this scooter.
In terms of numbers, the peak output is 8.5 kW, continuous output is 5.5 kW
and just for reference, we don't know whether this is good, bad or ugly yet we'll find out.
So all in all, what the Etergo is promising is more performance as well as more range,
but do remember that this scooter is also slightly heavier than the Ather,
so when we get to the comparison test stage somewhere late in September, we'll find what
the two scooters are like against each other.
But as of today, the promise is, this has the largest range we've seen yet
and remember Simple Energy has not launched their scooter yet.
This also has two versions with two different battery packs
but the motors are the same, five and a half continuous output, eight and a half peak.
Since we're talking about the chassis, it's not just the monocoque that is innovative,
the front suspension actually is quite innovative as well, because it uses single sided swingarm
with a mono shock mounted on top and the rear monoshock is
horizontally mounted above the swing arm unit.
But, what Ola is also doing is they're pushing a lot of technology into the
connectivity features of the scooter,
so the first thing you should know, is that, that does not come with a key, what you get
is an app which connects to the scooter and they call it proximity mode and I'm given
to understand up to four members of your family will be able to access the scooter using the
app and each time you create a profile for one of these family members you'll be able
to change certain settings on the scooter.
So this scooter has both modes and moods.
Yeah, modes and moods, not those moods.
So what the modes mean, is that you get a normal mode, a sport mode and a hyper mode, the basic
S1 only gets normal and sport and the upper scooter gets normal, sport and hyper,
that's three modes. Hyper obviously is going to be the performance mode,
what does it actually mean on the road we'll find out later.
What Ola is saying is that these scooters will get to 40 kmph in well under four seconds
in both the cases, whether you take the S1 which is the less powerful one or the S1 Pro
which is the more powerful one.
What is also important is that the scooter has speakers built-in
which means you'll also be able to control the sounds that it makes
and a lot of notifications will come with their sounds as well
and obviously you can set up your profile to run the scooter completely silent.
This is in addition to the normal set of connectivity features which we
expect from electric scooters today.
So this does have 4G built-in, it has Wi-Fi, it has Bluetooth, it will have push navigation
there is a touchscreen in there and all of those other features are also obviously there.
In time they will be OTA, over the air updates and the features in the scooters will improve
or change or be added to as time passes.
So what happens next, on September 8th, you will be able to pay the rest of the amount due
to be able to finally reserve your Ola S1 or S1 Pro and remember the prices are roughly
one lakh and 1.30 lakh rupees for these scooters before you account for state subsidies.
Depending on where you live, the price of the S1, the base scooter should fall between
80 and 95,000 rupees and as more states come online the prices will continue to fall is
the likely chance. When will you get one home?
Ola expects to deliver these scooters starting October and they are saying a lot of cities
will come online simultaneously, it won't be as one city at a time rollout which means
at least the major metros will be covered in the initial phase itself.
After that comes the question of the hypercharger network, more scooters arriving, delivery times,
wait times and all of those things and we'll see how this thing goes because the
plan for Ola is extremely ambitious,
and remember, this is not a company that just wants to make scooters, there are bigger plans
there will be motorcycles, there will be cars, we just don't know when.
What happens next for you and me, is that the next thing we do is ride the scooter.
Our slot is somewhere in the middle of September, so stay tuned for that
and if you haven't, do hit the subscribe button and the bell notification icon so that when
we ride this scooter, you and I can see this video together.
And now it's your turn to tell us what you thought of the Ola S1 and the S1 Pro.
Please do leave us a comment, PowerDrift tries to respond to all the comments we get.
So it'd be a super, super nice thing to have a discussion directly one to one with you.
Thank you so much for watching,
this is PowerDrift.