A customer has sent a takedown notice to Ola Electric for publishing the electric two-scooter's telemetry data on social media, after the e-scooter met with an accident in Guwahati, injuring the rider. Balwant Singh from Guwahati had tweeted on April 15 that his son had 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." The ride-hailing major said last week that its investigation showed the rider was overspeeding.
"My notice to Ola Electric to immediately take down my telemetry data which they have published in public without my consent violating privacy laws and the graphs whose authenticity has not been verified by me/law agencies. Failure to do so, I will take legal action," Balwant Singh tweeted, with a screenshot of the takedown notice.
Ola said it did a thorough investigation of the accident and the "data clearly shows that the rider was overspeeding 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 Balwant Singh's son was driving an Ola S1 Pro. "The scooter went airborne before crashing and skidding. My son was hospitalised on March 26 and had a fracture in left hand and 16 stitches in right hand due to a fault in Ola S1 Pro," tweeted Balwant Singh.
Ola had said that the scooter's speed on the night of the accident was between 95 kmph and 115 kmph. However, in releasing a detailed graph of the speeds at which the vehicle was travelling, many pointed out that Ola Electric was tracking customer data, and pointed out that it could be a violation of privacy, TNM had reported earlier.
Meanwhile, in another development, Ola Electric has voluntarily recalled 1,441 e-scooters as a pre-emptive measure to conduct a detailed health check of the concerned batch. The company said that its internal investigation into the March 26 incident when an Ola S1 Pro e-scooter caught fire in Pune has revealed that the "thermal incident was an isolated one".