65-yr-man suffers injuries as Ola Electric’s reverse mode fails

New Delhi: In yet another tragic incident involving Ola Electric’s controversial ‘reverse mode’, a 65-year-old man in Jodhpur suffered serious injuries after the Ola e-scooter unexpectedly went into a reverse mode at full speed.

Pallav Maheshwari, who is the son of the victim and returned to India last year and was ‘ecstatic’ about the country’s EV revolution, posted on LinkedIn that his father suffered serious injuries in the incident.

“The software bug in the #olaelectric scooter of going in the reverse mode at full speed has severely injured my father. He was the one who even at the age of 65 is very active and was enthusiastic to use #ola #electricvehicle Please look at what your #poorlytested scooter has done to him,” Maheshwari posted, along with some pictures of his father.

“He has banged his head on a wall with almost the skull open (with 10 stiches now) and broken his left arm which would have to be operated with 2 plates inserted,” he claimed.

Ola Electric was yet to address the new incident.

Several Ola Electric customers have complained about the reverse mode accelerator glitch in the past.

Balwant Singh from Guwahati had tweeted last month that his son met with an accident “due to fault in regenerative braking where on a speed breaker instead of slowing, the scooter accelerated, sending so much torque that he had an accident”.

Ola Electric had said it did a thorough investigation of the accident and the “data clearly shows that the rider was over-speeding throughout the night and that he braked in panic, thereby losing control of the vehicle. There was nothing wrong with the vehicle”.

The accident happened on March 26 when Singh’s son was driving an Ola S1 Pro.

“The scooter went airborne before crashing and skidding. My son was hospitalized on March 26 and had a fracture in left hand and 16 stitches in right hand due to fault in Ola S1 Pro,” tweeted Balwant Singh who is still fighting with the company on social media.