Okinawa Praise Road Test Review

Design, Styling  and features of the Okinawa Praise e-scooter

If one were to go by the looks alone, this e-scooter is stylish to some extent. The tapered front nose area, side profile and the rear have sharp design lines. Apart from the LED DRLs, the e-scooter comes with LED headlamps and smart rear lights with LED winkers. The plastic claddings on either side of the rear wheel give the impression that the scooter has dual exhausts.

The e-scooter comes with lots of interesting features but before I go into them I must tell you I was not the least impressed by the key fob. It’s black in colour and though it offers four different functions, the buttons on them are not at all appealing in terms of visual clarity. The all-black shade should have been replaced by luminously designed buttons for each of the four functions the fob offers.

The functions these buttons offer per se are very useful. One is for remote locking the e-scooter; one for remote unlocking and one has a “find my bike” function which once pressed gives out a high pitched sound wherein you can spot your bike. The fourth button pressed twice activates your scooter batteries and you can ride your e-scooter without actually inserting your keys into the key slot. In short, it’s keyless riding! Under the seat is a miniature circuit breaker which when flipped, turns off your batteries completely when you park it somewhere.

The Praise also has a USB port to charge your mobile phone and an aluminium grab rail in the midst of so much plastic all around. This aluminium grab rail comes handy for the rear passenger to grab and also for the rider to grab and pull the scooter on to the main stand.

One issue I felt needed to be addressed immediately was the foot mat on the e-scooter. My advice to the company is that it needs to be made from some anti skid material or needs to be screwed on to the floor board,  else there can be a tendency where your feet slides in front along with the mat which in turn could lead to some serious safety issues.

The Praise comes with storage space beneath your seats and also in front where there are deep cavities for storing everything from your mobile to other knick knacks. There is a mobile charger outlet too. For safety reasons, the e-scooter refuses to budge when the side stand is deployed.

Engine and Performance of the Okinawa Praise

When you hop on to the saddle and start the silent horse, you may feel a bit awkward with the floor board. You realise your legs stick out, but then as you ride the e-scooter, you understand that you are supposed to place your feet in front till you hit the edge of the board in front where your feet are well ensconced. At that point you begin to love your ride. The Praise also comes with something called a motor walking assist function. In short, it means that with your key on and without any pressure it can be walked easily. This is a very handy function, something like a power steering where you move the steering of a car with considerable ease when you are in a stationery position.

As for the brake levers, these are adjustable. The CNC machined levers can be adjusted in such a way that your palm and fingers are not stressed out, or stretched out, to be more precise.

The Okinawa Praise is powered by a 1000Watt BLDC motor. The Praise sits on 90/90-12 tubeless tyres both in front and rear. It has a digital console with a speedometer, an odometer, a trip meter and a battery indicator which shows the different levels of charge left. It’s like your fuel indicator. The only sad part of the trip meter is that each time you switch off your scooter and start again, your earlier trip reading is wiped clean. Ideally the trip meter should come with a provision to reset it when the rider so desires.  The Praise comes with double disc brakes in front and a single disc at the rear. The rear wheel has the mechanism to recharge your battery during braking. It’s called regenerative braking. 

There are two ride modes --one is the Economy mode where your speed is restricted to 35kmph and sport mode where the speed increases to a max of 65 km per hour. And when you are in the sport mode you can also press the turbo button which is on the left part of the scooter handle wherein for 30 seconds you can get a boost to your drive with speed increasing to around 75 kmph.  Though I was riding single, I was not able to hit the 75kmph speed. I had to be content with a top speed of 72kmph. The e-scooter, by the way has a load capacity of 150kg.

The Praise has hydraulic suspension in front with gas charged telescopic shockers and at the rear it’s a double shocker with dual tube technology and coil springs. Unlike a lot of electric scooters I have driven in the past, this one’s a lot better in terms of suspension though it’s still a tad stiff and can make your ride a bit uncomfortable on rugged roads. But the moment you hit smooth roads, the suspension ensures a dream ride without any hitch. Braking came easy on this scooter as was expected because of the disc brakes.

The Okinawa Praise draws its power from a 72V/45Ah VRLA battery. Though this battery offers a mileage of around 170km to 200km as the company claims, it takes almost 6 to 8 hours to recharge from zero.  The company will soon be introducing the Lithium ion batteries for this scooter and those can be charged in just about an hour. But then it would also mean a higher price tag for the e-scooter!

Verdict

My first impression of the Okinawa Praise was very positive. In spite of riding it for more than an hour over several kilometres for the shoot, I found that the battery charge levels had not dropped even a single point. I guess it just goes on to prove that the Okinawa Praise is definitely a long distance runner in every sense of the word.