Exclusive: Truth about Simple Energy’s future: New electric scooters inbound

Bengaluru-based electric vehicle startup Simple Energyunveiled its maiden product, the One electric scooter in August 2021 and had since created a buzz among the potential EV buyers. In fact, the product appeared to be an instant hit even before the launch as the company claimed that it had received over 65,000 pre-bookings for the model within three months since the wraps were taken off.Fast forward to November 2023, five months after the e-scooter was officially launched, there’s a word in the consumer base that theEV maker is planning to shut shop. What has gone wrong? Is it already the end of the road for a promising startup? Well, we have the answers.
After having dispatched the first batch of the One in June earlier this year, the company has managed to only deliver some sub-50 units until now, thereby not living up to its promises. In fact, quite recently, some of the customers who pre-booked the model have received communications from the company that their booking has been cancelled and the amount will be refunded without any deductions.
So far, even after the cancellation of about 10 percent, the company sits at a healthy order book of over 80,000 units and a challenge to deal with. Suhas Rajkumar, Founder and CEO, Simple Energy, spoke at length about the ongoing speculations with TOI Auto and revealed the company’s future plans, both immediate and distant, which includes new product launches.
Simple Energy says that there were several fake websites that had started to take orders in the name of the company to dupe the customers of their money. “A lot of websites have cropped up, boasting about how they can get you the Simple One quicker. They took orders and pre bookings and a lot of people were given false promises through those websites which were not our official websites. We detected a lot of them across India.” Rajkumar revealed.

Speaking about the e-mails the customers received which said that all bookings are being cancelled he said “On that e-mail, they (outsourced agency) mentioned that we are refunding all the people, so there was a typo error. That went out to 2-3 people once we got the notice from our PR agency, we immediately acted on that CRM because it’s also not in-house controlled. We stopped those calls last month. This exercise was done roughly about three weeks back.”
Several customers were concerned as they had been receiving calls from the company in which they were asked if they wanted to continue their bookings or not, thus giving an expression that the company isn’t confident of fulfilling the demand. To which Rajkumar explained that they always ask customers if they want to retain the booking, which is a part of legalities. “We have a routine exercise that we do and at the end of the call, we always have the same question, which is ‘Would you like to retain the booking or you would want to process the cancellation’. This is always done to ensure the customers that we are always there to refund 100 percent of their money because not everyone would read the website or our terms and conditions,”
The EV maker has fell significantly short from its delivery promises. However, it says that the production line has now been streamlined and there’s a large order that’s set to be dispatched very soon. “We mentioned during our launch as well that we would be doing a trial run before we scale to a level and fortunately for us, we have streamlined our production lines and our supply chain, and we have a large order to go out in December. From January onwards, we are going to be regular,”
“We don’t want our customers to cancel their bookings because now that we are beginning to scale, I think we would need them now more than ever,” he added.
“Initially, we will target the South and the West Zone in the next four months. We expect to sell 100 units a month in the prominent Southern and Western cities, which will propel us to 10,000 units a month by the end of the ongoing FY.” noted a motivated Rajkumar.
New model launches on the card: The latest in mid-December 2023
Earlier this year, TOI Auto broke a story that Simple Energy, just like its rivals Ola Electric and Ather Energy, will be launching an affordable iteration of its One electric scooter. Well, it’s time. Rajkumar told us that the EV maker will be launching the Dot One in mid-December. The company said that it will be calling up their pre-booked customers and will offer them the option to buy a lower variant.
While the scooter gets no cosmetic or feature upgrades, its cost has been brought down as it will only be offered with the fixed battery option and four colour variants on offer as against the six with One. The upcoming Dot One will be equipped with only the fixed battery, delivering 151 km of certified range and 160 km in IDC. The performance and specs of the model will remain the same as One. The Dot One can achieve 40 kmph from a standstill in just 2.77 seconds.
It will come equipped with a battery capacity of 3.7 kWh. Furthermore, the familiar 8.5 kW electric motor employed in the Dot will generate a peak torque of 72 Nm. It is also equipped with CBS and disc brakes. The scooter has more than 30 litres of under-seat storage. Other features include a touchscreen instrument cluster that controls various functions and gets app connectivity as well.
Besides that, the company plans to launch a family scooter based on the Simple One platform sometime next year. “We have also completed our Alpha stage of testing, for what we call a ‘family scooter’. It is based on the same platform. Two years back we started off this program in-house. We have never spoken about it because we always knew what can help us catch the market is how aggressive we are on the pipeline. By mid-next year, you can expect to see the all-new model rolling out of our facility.” Rajkumar noted.
Simple One production ramp up will begin from December and the company has plans to deliver scooters in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune , Surat, Ahmedabad, Kochi , Vizag , Goa in next six months.