Ola has a lot of plus on its side and just 1 minus point on its side.

The only minus point is its SOFTWARE GLITCHES on the VCU and Touch Screen. Ola is not the only company to suffer from it. Ather also has this problem.

Let us understand this problem thoroughly.

But since Ather’s customers are premium customers from the higher middle class they either have a 2nd scooter or vehicle at home and are not as desperate as the Ola Electric Customer.

The guy who set fire to the Ola Showroom was depending upon the Ola Scooter to run errands and…

without it he became desperate.

Ather’s advantage: is that Ather sells far, far less vehicles than Ola Electric. Also Ather’s customer support seem better trained to handle customers.

Almost NOBODY seems to understand that 99.99% of the problem is with the VCU, SIM & Touchscreen software.

The worst part was these software glitches kept repeating many times a year. So if there were just 4,000 problem cases in last 2 years… and each one of them repeated 20 times it would show up as 80,000 cases.

What’s a VCU?: Most eScooters have just 3 main parts – motor, battery and charge-controller. The charge-controller controls the amount of power sent to the motor. It can also be used to ReGen-charge the battery while going downhill.

But Smart eScooters have one more part called VCU (Vehicle Control Unit) which controls… the charge-controller and also “spy” on the customer.

Call it the CPU or Computer or Brain of the vehicle. It comes with OctaCore Processor, 3GB RAM and 4G SIM card too. VCU is used to capture customer’s scooter movement data. Basically it is trying to do on your scooter… what Google, WhatsApp, etc does on your phone. To cover this up they provide gimmicky things like maps, music, etc which you already have on your phone. But this adds the cost burden of annual payment for 1 4G SIM Card (approx Rs 3,500/yr)… since all member of the family have a simcard… why leave out the poor eScooter?

This VCU feature is absolutely useless for the customer and as of now also for the scooter company other than making and playing with multiple Excel/PowerBi charts and Pivot tables with the data.

Also the speed of Ola’s growth also meant every month there will more and more vehicles coming to the service centers with software glitch.

Lot of people complained of LATE DELIVERIES: Are you kidding? Waiting period was looked upon as a prestige issue in Indian automobile sector. No company delivers vehicles before 6 months. Ok Bhavesh Agrawal was into manufacturing vehicles for the first time and Ola being a scooter needed ARAI Testing, Registration & travel through multiple states. All these take a lot of time. So he might have underestimated the number of days between “shipping” and delivery.

Rest of the issues like seem to be minor like misunderstanding between dealer and customer or the service agent trying to make extra money off the customer. This happens in most vehicle service centers.

So the Major issues are:

1. Delayed Services: Long waiting times for repairs and maintenance – (VCU PROBLEM – service center staff unable to troubleshoot quickly).
2. Unresolved Issues: Despite multiple visits, some problems remain unresolved, leaving electric bikes non-functional. – (VCU PROBLEM)
3. Warranty Problems: There have been complaints about delays and refusal in providing warranty services. (It is not very clear what this means since most of the problems are with VCU software glitches and warranty is for part replacement. eScooters by their nature do not have so many part replacement requirement).
4. Inconsistent Performance: Some customers have reported that their vehicles do not  perform consistently even after servicing. (VCU PROBLEM)
5. Battery Defects: Issues with the battery, including charging problems during the warranty period, have been a common complaint. (VCU PROBLEM – this might seem to be a straightforward battery problem… but it could also be due to software glitch or the software not charging the battery properly or incompatibility of old firmware and new software).

(Why Bhavesh Agrawal himself an IIT-ian and with his huge army of engineers and technicians is unable to track these problems down and solve them is very strange).

So ONCE OLA ELECTRIC IDENTIFIES the problem it has ONLY 2 options : Either KEEP the VCU or REMOVE the VCU.

1. Keep the VCU & TouchScreen… and try to repair these glitches. If he decides to take this path then this will be one hell of a journey. Such incidents will keep happening and he would never be able to get full control on it. (these glitches will keep showing up on old firmware eScooters after an update, etc).

2. Remove VCU & TouchScreen….. meaning Connect the battery directly to the charge-controller… just like how the Chinese had designed it.

If Ola goes with the 2nd Option then not only will the problem be solved forever but the scooters will also become less expensive by Rs 25,000 to Rs 30,000.

a) He could still work on solving the VCU problem on limited number of scooters and it would be easier to solve such problem in small quantities. But trying to hold on to the VCU would be like trying to hold on to a tiger by its tail… not worth it at all… least of all for a economy scooter.

b) Also the VCU and Touchscreen could be sold as an optional accessory and should not be linked to starting, operating, speed control, stopping or charging of the vehicle.

These are minor issues and proof of that is… eScooters without VCUs do not face such complications. There are many inferior quality locally assembled Chinese eScooters and none of them have these problems. The main problem with Chinese eScooters is that they do not show the exact kms or (State of Charge) SoC.

So these VCU issues can be easily solved. Maybe Bhavesh never paid too much attention to customers complaints… probably a habit he built with Ola Cabs.

So if the issues are solved… will OLA ELECTRIC be a multibagger stock?

Ola Electric has been the fastest producer of eScooters… fastest to 1Lakh, 2Lakh & 3Lakh eScooters. It could also be the fastest to 4Lakh eScooter.

Ola Electric could be a much bigger company by June 2025 when the following products will also start coming through:

• eMotorcycles (June 2025)
• eRickshaw (Dec 2025) and
• 100GWH Lithium-Ion Battery Gigafactory (battery manufacturing has already started)
• Krutim AI (already working and on par with Microsoft CoPilot)
• OLA AI Chip – AI chip — Bodhi 1, Ojas, and Sarv 1 (2026) … Will it be something similar to Nvidia?

So does Bajaj & TVS have any chance?