The embargo on the Simple Wave lifted at noon on Sunday and by lunch every outlet that matters had filed from the Bengaluru media ride. The verdicts rhyme. RushLane called it almost there, Bike India called it a dark horse, Autocar asked whether it is worth the money. All of them love the seat, all of them love the boot, all of them mention the 243km IDC figure on the top Wave Plus. And under Autocar’s video, forty-odd comments in, not one person is talking about any of it.
They are asking where the showroom is.
What the reviewers found, in one breath
Let me get the scooter out of the way first, because it is a good one on paper and I have ridden the platform it sits on. Simple’s numbers say 132, 171 and 243km IDC for the Wave S, Wave and Wave Plus. The middle Wave everyone rode runs a 3.7kWh battery, a 6.4kW motor, a chain, and the same long wheelbase as the Simple One. That One I did ride, for an afternoon in Bengaluru in 2023, and it was quick, plush and had an app for everything. Which means Bike India’s planted-in-corners report does not surprise me one bit.
The storage is the real trick. About 70 litres all in, a 64-litre well under the seat that swallows a full-face lid and the charger together, plus a cubby and a little side pillbox. Mind you, the only price anyone has is Rs 1,09,999 ex-showroom Bengaluru (about $1,250), and that is the base Wave S with the small 2.2kWh pack, not the scooter on the videos. The Ather Konarc S starts a shade under Rs 1 lakh.
Now the niggles, because they matter more than usual
RushLane’s test unit had a joystick that ignored inputs now and then, a reverse that would not engage, and a starter button that went to sleep for ten minutes. Bike India’s had the horn pushed out of thumb’s reach by that same joystick, and only one of the two side pillboxes working. Pre-production bikes, one media ride, so I am not calling any of it a defect. Nobody should.
Here’s the thing, though. Simple says the Wave is for families in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities. Simple also has 75-odd outlets across 63 cities and sold about 10,400 scooters between January and August. Ather’s warranty card promises ten years on the battery; Simple’s warranty for the Wave I could not find printed anywhere, and neither could the reviewers. So a joystick that sulks is a five-minute annoyance in Bengaluru, where you ride it back to the shop. Three hundred kilometres from the nearest Simple sign it is a very, very roomy scooter parked in the hall for a fortnight while the family goes back to the old petrol one.
That is exactly what the comments say, in their own words. Which showroom, which city, what about service, and one chap who says his Simple threw a belt and nobody at the workshop mentioned it. I cannot verify him. I also cannot ignore forty people ignoring a 243km headline to ask the same boring question.
Buy the scooter you can get fixed
Value is hygiene, I keep saying, and emotion decides. But hygiene is not optional, no? The Wave has done the hard part; the reviewers came back smiling with caveats rather than frowning with excuses. The boring part, the part that is just money and time, is putting a man with a laptop and a box of switchgear within an hour of the buyer. Simple has 75 of those. It needs 750.
Deliveries are due from 25 September. If there is a Simple showroom in your city, go and sit on one, open the seat, put your helmet in, and see if it makes you grin. If there isn’t, wait. Not for the scooter. For the showroom.
