Front suspension of Ola Electric scooter broke while riding, claims user

In yet another tragic incident involving Ola Electric Scooter, a user has claimed that his Ola S1 Pro's front suspension broke down while riding.

On the microblogging site Twitter, Sreenadh Menon requested the company for a replacement of the vehicle.

"The front fork is breaking even in small speed driving and it is a serious and dangerous thing we are facing now, we would like to request that we need a replacement or design change on that part and save our life from a road accident due to poor material used," Menon wrote.

Many other users too joined him with countless stories of quality issues, breakdowns and poor after-sales experiences on the same thread.

"This is a misery that happened to me. The front fork collapsed while hitting a wall at a speed of 25kmph in eco mode along an uphill side," another user wrote.

"Similar issue happened to some other customers on the plain road also. Take this as a serious and most urgent problem and resolve it soon," he added.

In a statement issued to DH on May 27, the company said, "Vehicle safety and quality standards are of paramount importance at Ola. Ola today has more than 50,000 scooters on the road. So far, our scooters have travelled over ~45 million cumulative km on Indian roads. The recently reported incidents of front fork breakage are due to isolated high-impact accidents. All our scooters undergo rigorous quality and performance assessment across different terrains and riding conditions in India.”

Meanwhile, recently, a 65-year-old man in Jodhpur suffered serious injuries after the Ola e-scooter unexpectedly went into a reverse mode at full speed.

Pallav Maheshwari, who is the son of the victim and returned to India last year and was 'ecstatic' about the country's EV revolution, posted on LinkedIn that his father suffered serious injuries in the incident.

Several Ola Electric customers have complained about the reverse mode accelerator glitch in the past.

Balwant Singh from Guwahati tweeted last month that his son met with an accident "due to fault in regenerative braking were on a speed breaker instead of slowing, the scooter accelerated, sending so much torque that he had an accident".

Ola Electric had said it did a thorough investigation of the accident and the "data clearly shows that the rider was over-speeding throughout the night and that he braked in a panic, thereby losing control of the vehicle. There was nothing wrong with the vehicle".