Ola Electric expands e-scooter test rides to 1,000 cities in "largest D2C outreach in Indian automotive history"

Ola Electric on Saturday said it has expanded the customer test rides for its electric scooters across the country.

With this expansion, customers in over 1,000 cities and towns will be able to test ride and experience the Ola S1 electric scooter, a statement said. The test rides will be initially open only for those who have purchased or reserved the Ola S1 and S1 Pro scooters, it added.

Ola had kicked off test rides in Bengaluru, Delhi, Ahmedabad, and Kolkata on November 10, and then opened up five more cities - Chennai, Hyderabad, Kochi, Mumbai, and Pune on November 19.

The company will now rapidly add more locations to ensure all customers have access to test rides by December 15, the statement said.

Ola Chairman Co-founder and Group CEO Bhavish Aggarwal tweeted:

Ola Electric Chief Business Officer Arun Sirdeshmukh said, "Customer response to our test rides has been phenomenally positive and we are really thrilled to see their excitement for the revolutionary Ola S1 scooter."

The company will be scaling test rides up rapidly in the coming weeks and will be covering over 1,000 cities and towns across India to ensure every customer has access to test rides by mid-December, he added.

"This is the fastest national scale-up of test rides ever, and a revolution in automotive retail made possible by our direct-to-consumer model," he said.

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Customer test rides will be rolling out in the next set of cities starting November 27, in cities including Surat, Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikode, Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Coimbatore, Vadodara, Bhubaneswar, Tirupur, Jaipur, and Nagpur, the statement said.

Ola Electric had unveiled two e-scooters, Ola S1 and S1 Pro, in August this year. In September, Ola had stated that the sales of its maiden electric scooter crossed Rs 1,100 crore in two days. Later that month, Ola Electric raised over $200 million led by Falcon Edge, Softbank and others, at a valuation of $3 billion.