Following the fire incident in an Ola S1 Pro in March, many people have continued to vent their anguish on social media channels, each with his or her own difficulty.
While many of the Ola concerns have previously been tied to unexpected drops in range, breakdowns, uncontrolled reversing, and registration issues, customers are now experiencing mechanical failures that are nothing short of deadly.
The mechanical issue was initially reported on Twitter by Sreenadh Menon, an S1 Pro user. Following his tweet, several more users who were hesitant to share the same issue began writing about what had happened to their scooters.
The mechanical breakdown that consumers are experiencing occurs at the “fork” level. They appear to be breaking or collapsing, both of which are potentially deadly.
According to the images of the broken fork, the suspension arm appears to have failed in all of the cases. Ola’s suspension arm is made of a thin forged block metal strip, which is not common on single-front-fork scooters across the world.
Most single-front-fork scooters and autorickshaws employ forged hollow metal tubes as suspension arms rather than the block metal used by Ola because this design bears less fatigue stress over time and is more adaptable to variable load. The suspension arm has been broken in all the cases.
Reference- Twitter Handles, HT Auto, Motor Beam, Economic Times, Autocar India, Inside EVs