We are focused on our users, competitors on us: Ola Electric's Aggarwal

We have disrupted the traditional business model of OEMs and the traditional cosy business relations that this industry has had, says Bhavish Aggarwal, Ola, Co-Founder & CEO

Ola Electric has been tackling questions about its safety and it recently offered to upgrade the front fork for 200,000 customers. Founder Bhavish Aggarwal talks about it in an interview with Surajeet Das Gupta. Edited excerpts:

You have offered an upgraded version of the front fork free of cost to all customers. Even so, you refuse to call it a ‘recall’ despite the defect and concerns around consumer safety. Why?  

Based on our data, 218 scooters have had this issue out of the 200,000 we have sold. Out of the 218, 184 are accident cases. If you're going to run into some wall, the front fork will break and it happens to normal ICE (internal combustion engine) scooters with a twin fork, too. Of the 34 other cases, we were inconclusive about the cause and that is only 0.015 per cent of all our scooters sold. This number is minuscule and well within the safety threshold of any OEM (original equipment manufacturer) anywhere in the world and does not require a recall. The government threshold is 2 per cent failure of a part, so we have a 200x delta.

But why are you so chary about calling it a recall?  

For a recall, OEMs have to study the data for a longer time span — maybe for some quarters — to see if the failure rate is rising. Yet owing to a sustained campaign against us in January-February, mostly undertaken through bots, which made some of our customers anxious, we decided to offer a free upgrade.

We have published all our engineering and crash test data, which no OEM does, so there is full transparency. We are happy for well-respected people to comment in public debates about whether these numbers are higher or lower than an OEM’s, and that will settle the debate on whether there was a safety issue in the first place.  

What's your take on the criticism that's come your way?

You ask anybody in the industry and they see us as the disruptors. We are the outsiders of the industry. We have upended the rules of the industry at every level. We are changing the industry, so there is discomfort in some segments. My focus is on my customers and my future technology and product road map, whereas my competitors’ focus is on us.

Many have alleged that you are the only company that uses a front fork, which is different from conventional twin forks used in India. They say this fork is not designed for Indian roads and was replicated here because Ola bought a scooter company in Europe. Some say you were cutting costs?

First, our front fork costs nearly double that of the conventional twin fork. The assumption that the traditional fork is better under stress is not true. In EVs, in general globally, the material being used is aluminium — Tesla is built with aluminium.  Aluminium is lighter, so is better for EVs in terms of range and has its own advantages over steel, which is used in a twin-pin fork.

So from a safety standpoint, there is no difference?

The difference is that in high impact, steel bends before aluminium breaks, but the impact is the same — the wheel will get jammed and you’ll get thrown off. We have done rigorous testing of the front fork. We have thrown concrete slabs at it, dropped the vehicle from a crane, etc. We have nothing against the twin-pin fork. In fact, we will be using this for our entry-level Ola scooter, which will be launched soon, so that we can offer it at a lower price. Our front fork, which is under attack, has a 75 per cent higher safety margin than the traditional twin-pin fork system. In the new design, the margin is 200 per cent, but it is still made of aluminium.

Will the upgrade impact you financially? Are you prepared with enough supply and how long will the offer last?

We have a strong balance sheet. Each scooter will cost around Rs 1,100-1,300 at the most. We have already prepared our supply chain and have an extra couple of months of the requirement for this particular part. It will take one hour to fix it, and it will be undertaken through our 400 experience centres. 

Why did Ola not go for an independent third-party audit to check on the front fork’s safety? Some would say your data is all internal and hence unreliable?

OEMs always do their own internal assessment because it's in the OEM's interest to not have defective parts, otherwise the consumers won't buy them. Third, why don’t we do a third-party independent audit of failure rates for the whole industry? 

Critics say you did not inform your customers that you were working on an upgraded front fork for months, despite saying you are transparent.   

Unlike other vehicle makers, we do continuous re-engineering and have upgraded hundreds of parts such as changing the wheel a bit, increasing the display brightness etc. Customers are never told about these small tweaks. They do not want an information overload.