Back at its launch in August last year, the Ola S1 Pro seemed poised to become one of the most feature-rich scooters available in India. But when deliveries finally commenced in December, the units delivered to customers were missing many of the headline features that were promised, including cruise control, Bluetooth connectivity, navigation and more.
Ola has now announced that it will roll out an OTA update called MoveOS 2.0 by the end of April, which will bring with it some of these promised features. In addition to receiving Bluetooth connectivity, cruise control and navigation, S1 Pro owners will finally also have a companion app for their scooters. The company also says that the update will bring performance improvements.
We had a chance to test ride the S1 Pro in Bengaluru and compare it with the Ather 450X in Mumbai, and on both occasions, the scooter's motor faced overheating issues and a subsequent drop in performance. Perhaps this is one of the performance issues that Ola hopes to fix with the update.
A far more pressing issue is that of Ola scooters occasionally going forwards in reverse mode and vice versa – a rather serious bug that could put you in some very dangerous situations. We hope that this is also something that Ola is working on to rectify via the upcoming OTA update.
While owners will be happy to finally be receiving many of the promised features, it still might not include everything they've been promised. At its launch, Ola said the S1 Pro would receive a hill hold function as well as a voice assistant feature, and there is still no mention of these in the company's MoveOS 2.0 announcement; so, it remains to be seen whether they arrive in April or not.
Azaman Chothia
Vishal Venugopal
