“We started from December 15 onwards and in 15 days, we have dispatched 4,000 units covering the commitments that we had made for December. The vehicles are on their way and we have delivered many of them while a few are going through the registration process. Typically it will take about three to four weeks to shake itself out and for everything to get reflected on Vahan, says Varun Dubey, Chief Marketing Officer, Ola Electric.
It’s being alleged that only 500 vehicles have been sold on the Vahan website whereas you are claiming that over 4,000 deliveries have taken place. What is the truth here?
Let me clarify this and set the record straight once and for all. People who should really know this are saying stuff which is misleading if not entirely false. We dispatched 4,000 scooters in December. We started from December 15 onwards and in 15 days, we have dispatched 4,000 units covering the commitments that we had made for December. The vehicles are on their way and we have delivered many of them while a few are going through the registration process.
Many states do not actually report the data to Vahan. Secondly, there is always some lag between the Vahan data from states where they is an older Vahan version. Number three, there are many states where temporary registration numbers have to be given which are not reflected in Vahan. And we have just started. Typically it will take about three to four weeks to shake itself out and for all of that to get reflected on Vahan.
We have started deliveries only from December 15 and the month is not up yet. All this data should start reflecting by the end of January and even more as we start the dispatches and deliveries for January and February customers as well. There is not really much of a discrepancy, this is just how Vahan works and really people who have been doing this business for many decades and are representing important bodies should know this better but for various reasons they decided not to tell this clearly. But this is the truth.
The ARAI range that is being claimed is 180 but the real range is around 130. How do you justify the gap in the range as it is almost 50 km less?
It is a little surprising that people in the industry are behaving as if variations from ARAI is happening for the first time. There is literally no auto manufacturer who delivers on the ARAI range because that is under certain test conditions. If you look in the traditional auto industry, there is a certain mileage that you have from ARAI certification and then there is a real world mileage. Everybody asks and finds out what the mileage is. Now let us look at the data. On average, the variation that industry has between ARAI range and what they deliver in the real world on mileage is about 30 to 40%.
Ola’s data from 181 to 135, the ARAI had 25% variation. So, we have the lowest variation in the industry. The variation is normal, ARAI certification is the law; that is what we have to claim and in the real world we are at 135. That is just a 25% variation while for everybody else it is in 30-40% range.
Many are claiming that Ola promised something in the feature and when the vehicles were delivered, all the features were not there. They have been told it will be added later. Can you clarify which are the features which will be added on later and when can we see them added on in the system?
Absolutely. For us, the scooter is as much of a software platform as it is a hardware platform and even in September when we had opened up the windows and done the media test rides, we had explained it clearly that the software is going to come in stages and we are going to release these as important software updates over several months in 2022. That is what we are going to do.
So features like cruise control, hill hold, navigation etc. are coming up in the next few months by June. That is what we are going to deliver and it is not just about those features. As consumers continue to use the scooter and live with the scooter, we will learn and we will keep adding more and more features which consumers will continue to get.
So unlike a traditional vehicle, where typically the design cycle is three to five years and if you are buying a vehicle in 2021, you are probably buying technology from 2016-2017 and then you live with it for five years, so that by 2026, it is a 10-year-old technology.
In our case, when you buy in 2021 it is from 2021 and then as you live with the scooter and use the scooter over the next five years, we keep adding more and more features and keep improving the software, so that the consumer always gets the latest and that is how it is going to fundamentally change automotive and how it is going to work. That is what our customers are expecting and the scooters are going to deliver.
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