EASY RIDER

Is the Bounce Infinity E1 the e-scooter for the masses?

- Janak Sorap

I had a sense of it, but never realised its true intensity until I wrote this story. If I ever was to consider purchasing an electric scooter, I would end up confused in the first five minutes itself. The credit for that goes to the variety of EV options that are currently flooding the market. With the government offering subsidies and benefits, this is only going to expand further and get a lot more confusing and complicated as new startups pop up now and then. Mind you, I am not even considering the flagship scooters from the makers like Ather, Ola and Bajaj here.

Simple and easy to read digital instrument console

Not much storage space with the battery is plugged

Brakes are too sharp as they tend to lock up easily

In this whole clutter of EV domination, one company seems to have found a way to stand out from the crowd. Bounce, a Bengaluru-based firm has launched their first electric scooter Infinity E1, with two promising USPs. The first one involves two prices to choose from, where one includes the battery and the other does not. Yes, I am not joking, they'll sell you a scooter without a battery. The second USP is linked to the latter wherein Bounce will rent the battery to you on a subscription basis, while each battery swap will cost the user a mere ₹35. Yes, Bounce is not the first company to come up with battery swapping technology. But, the company has worked out a plan to set up battery swap stations to address the range anxiety issue. All one needs to do is pull up to any of the swap stations, access the Bounce cloud network through a smartphone, and once the payment is done, swap the depleted battery with a completely charged one. It would more or less be equivalent to the same time involved in filling fuel.