Ola S1 Pro refuses to play music during live presentation

Ola Electric officially rolls out Move OS 2.0 for S1 Pro during Ola Customer Day event, all owners to get it by 30th June

At last, after a long wait, Ola Electric has launched its official Move OS 2.0 for its maiden S1 Pro electric scooter. The launch happened during Ola’s Customer Day event yesterday at its Future Factory in Hosur, Tamil Nadu.

But, at the live presentation of the brand new OS, the scooter caused an embarrassment just like how Tesla’s Cybertruck did during its debut.

For starters, during the unveil of Tesla’s Ford F150-rivalling Cybertruck in 2019, the company Founder, Elon Musk, claimed that the pickup truck was literally bulletproof against small types of firearms.

Elon, then, called Design Lead, Franz Von Holzhausen, to try and smash the Cybertruck’s armor glass. When Franz threw a metal ball, he was shocked to see the glass getting shattered. Later Musk did the damage control claiming that the incident happened for some weird reasons.

Similarly, during the presentation of the Ola S1 Pro Move OS 2.0’s various features, the company’s Chief Marketing Officer, Anshul Khandelwal, tried to demonstrate the first-in-a-2-wheeler music playback option from the scooter’s dedicated 10-watt speakers.

Ola S1 Deliveries
Ola S1 Pro has now got Move OS 2.0

He started playing a number from his mobile but the scooter didn’t respond. Anshul, then, paused and played it again for no avail. As a third attempt, he locked the scooter, unlocked it, and tried to play the song. But the black S1 Pro on stage remained mum.

As a final attempt, he started playing the song from his mobile and approached the scooter. He fiddled with the display. But, the screen didn’t respond to his touch inputs. Anshul, later, brushed it off as a connection issue and went over to the next part.

We believe the scooter must have had the official version of the Move 2.0 installed and it’s quite a worrying sign as all the previous versions of the OS had screen-hanging issue reported by users.

And it’s suspected to be the root cause of all other allied problems like low range, non-charging, range drops, scooter refusing to start, sudden reversing, uncontrolled honking, etc., as per many users in the know. Hope Ola rectifies it before rolling out the update.

Ola S1 Touchscreen Cluster
The scooter’s intuitive display

This aside, Ola Electric revealed a host of crucial information during the event. The Move OS 2.0 will be available for all users by 30th June via an OTA update. Over 50,000 customers of the S1 Pro are likely to benefit from this move.

The new OS supports naming the scooter, inbuilt navigation from Map My India, music playback, smartphone connectivity via Bluetooth, new eco mode for increased range up to 170 km, keyless locking/unlocking via mobile, and cruise control that can be activated for any speed between 20 and 80 km/hr.

The event saw the winners of the 200 km-challenge get a brand new Ola S1 Pro in Gerua colour. The participants were taken on a tour of the all-women factory that’s also the largest 2-wheeler unit in the world.

Interestingly, during the event, there was a demonstration where the S1 Pro effortlessly pulled a Isuzu D-Max pickup truck. But it must be seen if the new OS has addressed the scooter’s gradeability issues reported by users or not.