After ramping up production of electric scooters to 1,000 a day in the first week of January, start-up giant Ola Electric has managed to sell just a fraction of that number during the entire month.

According to auto retail sales data supplied by the Federation of Automobile Dealers Association (FADA), the Bengaluru-based company sold just 1,102 electric scooters in January. The data which is sourced in collaboration with the Ministry of Road Transport and Highway, is sourced from nearly 87 per cent of the country’s regional transport offices (RTO).

On January 6, Founder and CEO Bhavish Agarwal tweeted that Ola Electric’s Futurefactory was producing ‘almost 1,000 scooter a day’ while simultaneously announcing the opening of the next purchase window for the customers.

In January, Ola Electric claimed that its vehicles were in transit which is why retail numbers looked low. However, according to FADA it takes less than 10 days to deliver a vehicle with registration anywhere in India. As there was no lockdown in third wave of the pandemic, RTOs have been fully operational.

A mail seeking clarification on the discrepancy in production and sales data sent to Ola Electric remained unanswered at the time of publishing this article.

Vinkesh Gulati, President, FADA, said, “The numbers (of 1,000 production a day) are not true and I don’t know why they are blaming the dispatch. They are saying it takes 3-4 weeks for dispatching the vehicles. Normally we deliver vehicles within 24 hours to a maximum of 3 days once the customer makes the full payment. Even if transportation is an issue, they can transport in maximum 5-7 days in India and another 2-3 days for RTO. Even the place of their production they are not able to do numbers where there are no dispatch issues. There is something Ola is hiding.”

Ola Electric claimed to have received orders for 100,000 units for its S1 model from the time it opened bookings last year. The company started deliveries only in mid-December; after a two-month delay and six months after opening the bookings.

Consumer’s ire

The company has been at the receiving end of consumer’s ire for delaying the delivery of the vehicle with several of them taking to social media to explain their position. Several consumers approached FADA for help. Because Ola Electric does not have any dealers as it supplies directly to consumers, it has become difficult for FADA to find a recourse.

However, FADA has sought the intervention of the Ministry of Heavy Industries. “There are lot of dissatisfied customers who have approached us but there is no recourse about what can be done about it. We have forwarded the mails to the Heavy Industries Ministry seeking their intervention. All we want is that Ola should be transparent in their process,” Gulati added.

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