'Crazy demand': Many report errors as Ola Electric opens bookings for e-scooter
Ola Electric on Thursday announced bookings for its upcoming electric scooter have been opened for a refundable amount of ₹499. Shortly after the announcement though, many interested customers who had logged onto the company website to book the model reported getting error messages. By late Thursday evening, Bhavish Aggarwal took to Twitter to apologize and pointed to the sheer volume of people on the site as a possible reason for the error messages for many.
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Ola Electric has managed to generate a mammoth buzz around its upcoming electric bike. While an official launch is expected later this month, the opening of bookings in itself was a kind of a cornerstone moment for the company. But with many potential customers reporting error messages while trying to book, Aggarwal had to reach out on the micro-blogging site. "For those who faced issues in the beginning, apologies! We didn’t anticipate the crazy demand and didn’t plan enough scalability of the website. All fixed now," wrote the Ola Electric CEO.
The Ola electric scooter will be built at the facility that is coming up in Tamil Nadu. This facility is touted as the world's largest for electric two wheelers and could initially have an annual production capacity of two million units before the figure is ramped up to 10 million units. While the facility will initially meet local demand, it will also serve as a base for exports to markets in Latin America, UK, New Zealand, among others.
All eyes though are on the debut product from Ola Electric which is making big promises as it plans to take on rivals from Hero Electric, TVS, Bajaj, Ather Energy, Okinawa and others. With a per-charge range of around 150 kms and support for fast-charge, the e-scooter will also benefit from incentives announced by several state governments in the country.
