Nine months after Ola showcased its wild and somewhat unrealistic electric bike concepts, the startup has patented three new electric bike designs. These are much more realistic-looking designs and one of the three bikes in particular seems to focus on practicality.
- Practical Ola e-bike has twin rear shocks, hub-mounted motor
- Other two bikes have a monoshock and different swingarm design
- Hollowed-out subframes under the seat on two Ola e-bikes
Practical Ola electric bikes patented
Let’s start with the most practical e-bike design that Ola Electric has patented. The bike seems to draw design inspiration from the beefy-looking roadster concept that Ola had shown last time around. In fact, all three patent drawings resemble that particular concept. Coming back to the practical Ola e-bike, it has a very motard-esque design language with sharp creases and a very angular design language.
What differentiates it from the other two e-bikes here is that this bike has twin shock absorbers at the rear, a simple box-section swingarm and a hub-mounted motor. Even the stepped single-piece seat seems to be simpler as does the chassis subframe it is based on.
It also seems to be running on larger wheels than the other two and those wheels seem to be shod with skinnier rubber. Considering this e-bike appears to be more utilitarian than the other two Ola patents, it could have an increased load-bearing capacity.
This brings us to the other two e-bike design patents, which look sportier than the practical e-bike. Both these e-bikes share most elements, both in terms of design and componentry. The main powertrain, suspension, wheels and seat units seem common across both these electric motorbikes. One thing to note here is that both have a very unique-looking swingarm, which seems to be an amalgamation of two rectangular units into one.
Where these two differ from each other is in the ergonomics – one has lower handlebars (could be clip-on units) and the other has an upright conventional handlebar. The headlight and seat design is broadly the same but there are subtle differences. The only difference in terms of powertrain is that one of the bikes has a small trapezoidal bodywork element at the bottom of the pack.
Compared with the original concepts, these Ola electric bike design patents seem to have more realistic propositions when it comes to mass produced cost effective motorcycles for our market. While Ola previously stated that its first electric bike would be launched in 2024, it remains to be seen when the first production-spec bike actually emerges.
Azaman Chothia
Vishal Venugopal
