ola electric: concerted campaign against the company, electric scooters well tested: Ola Electric
“In February and March, we faced a concerted campaign by posting images of a broken front fork. Many of these images are repeated several times from different angles, and many of them are simply images of the accident,” the company said in a blog post Friday night.
March 14th, Ola The electrician said it offering buyers of their scooters the option to replace the front fork, the key component between the car body and its wheel. The company said it was free after complaints that the part had broken in transit.
Industry watchers noted that Ola’s announcement was akin to a product recall, although the company did not use the term in its announcement.
Ola said Friday that his announcement earlier this week was not a recall.
“Typically, in order to order a recall, regulators set a failure ceiling, after which automakers are required to recall. In India, this is 2% of all cars sold. OEMs sometimes produce voluntary recalls at a lower failure rate by observing failed parts over a period of time and concluding that there may be a higher failure rate in the future. In our case, the failure rate is really low,” the company said.
Discover stories that interest you
Ola said there were 218 front fork failures out of more than 200,000 vehicles driven 700 million kilometers or more. Of those, the company said 184 were accidents, 34 were inconclusive or not related to an accident. “34 out of 200,000 is 0.015%, and 34 out of 700 million kilometers is 1 out of 20 million kilometers,” the report says.
Ola added that the car, including its front fork, has been well tested in all conditions, both in the real world and through digital simulations.
The SoftBank-backed company acquired Dutch electric car maker Etergo in 2020, and the firm said Friday it was perpetuating the “myth” that the car was not designed and tested for India.
“The entire vehicle was tested at three levels: digital simulation, component testing and automotive laboratory testing, and automotive field testing,” the report said. “We follow an industry-leading product development and design process from concept development through virtual and physical development to deployment and production.”
Ola has also come forward with statements about several accidents, including a broken front fork arm in the past. The mobile firm has always maintained that these were isolated incidents. The company has been facing quality issues since it started shipping its scooters in December 2021. Despite complaints, Ola Electric has achieved record sales in recent months.