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Originally Posted by sri_tesla We don't need to go too back into the history of the Indian automotive space for that. Bajaj Auto did much worse with their electric scooter Chetak. Bajaj launched Chetak in two variants Urbane and Premium at Rs 1.04 lakhs and Rs 1.19 lakhs respectively. They opened the bookings for both variants but they never produced any base variant Urbane and delivered to customers other than showroom display models. Even the premium variant was delayed for many months. Even worse is Bajaj increased the price of the Chetak by almost 50% in just 1 year after launch. Even those who booked early need to pay this 50% increase. They don't even provide the charger with the vehicle and customers need to buy it separately. Also, They are charging Rs 4,700 annually in the name of data charges which were not announced at launch. In the history of Indian automotive space, this never happened but nobody talked about it including you because hardly anyone cares about Chetak. |
I wasnt aware that Bajaj never produced any units of their base Urbane Chetak. I searched online to learn more but couldnt find anything that maps to this story. I could only see some articles that said Urbane deliveries are delayed. Can you share some links to this news that you shared?
Secondly, price increases after launch are nothing new in the automobile space. Very few companies provide price protection. If customers are willing to buy a product with a 50% price hike, then good for the company, its employees and its shareholders. If customers arent willing to buy a product with a 50% price hike, then sales will naturally plummet.
Thirdly, did Bajaj promise a charger and then say that customers have to pay more? I didnt follow.
I went to page 16 on the Motorbikes section to dig out the Chetak thread (
says a lot about where the Chetak stands in this forum), and didnt find too much outrage on Bajaj's supposedly egregious strategies (
50% hike + no charger + annual data fees) from Team BHPs 71,542 members. There were less than 5 posts that were critical of their massive price hike in April 2021. From 71,542 members.
If it were such a big deal, based on the track record of this forum, we probably should have seen more posts that were critical of Bajaj.
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Originally Posted by sri_tesla Companies announcing the base models and never delivering them is very common in the Indian automobile world. The dealership will say that the base variant will take 5-6 months and push the customers to go for higher variants especially for the products which are in high demand. It happened to me with my Honda City purchase in 2014. |
There is a more than a small difference between
- a company going slow on the manufacture of base models (
to prioritize the delivery of more profitable mid and top end variants) and
- a company stating that they will not manufacture the base model for 12 months after they took bookings.
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Originally Posted by sri_tesla Delays in the automobile world are very common and in the EV space, it's even more. Bajaj and TVS have decades of experience with manufacturing and supply chain management but still, they could not meet the delivery timelines of their EVs. Ather officially claimed they are operating at full capacity of 10,000 units per month and they are not even delivering 3,000 scooters per month but there is a 2-3 months delay for their scooter. It's the same or worse with Revolt as well. By the way, Ola dispatched more scooters in its first month than Bajaj Chetak and TVS iQube combined first year (2020) sales. In fact, Ola dispatched more than double that of chetak and iQube first-year sales. It's also more than Ather's annual deliveries in 2019 and 2020. |
But nobody is talking about the others. The point is where does Ola stand with respect to all the lofty timelines and delivery schedules that they themselves promised? Nobody is criticizing Ola with respect to its competition. We are just logically pointing out that Ola aims for the sky and misses its targets, time and again. That just reeks of bad leadership behind all the marketing showboating.
I dont know why people keep bringing up TVS and Bajaj and Ather and Revolt. So what if Ola outperforms some of the others in the nascent EV space? That is like saying India's number 11 batsman has a higher batting average than his peers in the South Africa, Australia and England cricket team. It doesnt change the fact that its still the number 11 batsman.
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Originally Posted by sri_tesla Anyway, after customer feedback, Ola has reversed their decision and now delivering locked S1 pro to all those who paid Rs 20,499 in Jan and Feb batch. They are listening to their customers unlike others (Bajaj) who import most of the components from China yet lecture the startups who are doing more inhouse manufacturing. |
I am glad to note that in closing, you have cemented what I have been trying to say about Ola's terrible leadership. The top honchos at Ola would not have taken the decision to start production of the base S1 at the end of 2022, lightly. They must have put in hours of effort in simulating production planning, calculating delta profits from the S1 Pro, conversions etc and only then would they have reached out to the customers and informed them about it.
But dont you think that they would have put some thought into the sort of feedback that customers were bound to give them? Or was the leadership at Ola so shocked that people were unhappy, that they had to reverse course immediately? Why such a knee jerk u-turn? Again, all of this smacks of leadership incompetence.
Anyways, this is what a fellow TBHPian mentioned to me last night when we were discussing this latest Ola debacle - "Its just a scooter, why does the whole purchase decision and experience have to be so complicated with Ola?".
And that perfectly sums up the problem with Ola.