Ola Announces EV Superbike – Diamondhead. Is it Futuristic or Dystopian?

Sometimes reading the news makes my mind wander off the tangent, thinking about the implications, the repercussions and the causality of events that make the news.

The same thing happened today when I read the news about the Ola Electric Announcement of a new superbike: Diamondhead.

Great features have been promised, out of which, the biggest selling point they have put up is that the bike can go from 0 to 100km within 2 seconds. That is positively super crazy speed. And this bike will be made available to customers at a price tag of 5 Lakh rupees. That is just under 6000 US dollars in the current exchange rate.

I was never a bike fan. I was never the cool dude in college. So, I have no experience in bikes, nor do I fancy feeling the wind in my hair while riding a 2-wheeler (bicycles included). But I am not going to talk as a bike critic here, but as a plain Jane traditional marketeer.

Prima facie, everything is “wow”, everything is “cool”: great offerings, fantastic design, high tech machine, etc. However, it got me thinking about the fundamental things (like I always do when I see a brand). For example: who is going buy it, how it is going to be used and what outcome it would achieve.

The answer to the first question seems obvious. There is a growing demand among the youth for premium motorbikes. As per a news report I found, the market share of premium bikes (above 150cc) has grown by 5 points in the last 6 years (from 14% in 2019, to 19% market share in 2025). That is a 22% growth, indicating a rise in disposable incomes of the youth, hence driving the aspirational purchases.

But right after I found the answer to who is going to buy the bike, I floundered about trying to rationalise how they are going to use this bike and the actual outcome from it.

Let me tell you why exactly.

Theoretically the bike is great. However, the state of Indian roads is terrible. I really wonder where exactly the bikers would go from 0-100km within 2 seconds. I also wonder if it is even practical to go from 0 to 0.1 km in 2 seconds in Indian traffic.

This is where I began losing the plot. Steve Jobs always emphasised more on product experience and ease of usage, than adding more features. I subscribe to that school of thought and so I began wondering where exactly would an Ola customer do the 0-100km in 2 seconds, and that is when I began going down the rabbit hole.

India has some of the worst accident statistics in the world. More than half the deaths in road accidents are with 2 wheelers. With such high fatality rates, shouldn’t the focus be on safety rather than on breakneck speed? (Literally breaking necks).

On top of that, the growing road rage numbers in India is also a big concern. An old report from a few years ago states that road rage increased by almost 50% in just 2 years.

These number are worrisome. With these facts, does it really make sense to have companies marketing super fast bikes to run on congested pothole filled roads?

What was Bhavish Agarwal thinking?

Probably he was thinking this is a “Crazy good idea”, that will make tremendous waves, will make the youth long for it, and make the company a lot of money.

It is possible they will make money. Or maybe not. I don’t know. But what I do know is that it creates no real value for the Indian consumer. Still they will buy it. As long as there is disposable income, consumers will splurge. And that brings me to the sad realization:

We are becoming a dystopian society that focuses on what looks good, rather than what is actually good. It is a society cursed with the escalation of commitment.

And with that I’d like to end my post.

Thank you for reading.