Technical glitch hits Bajaj Wave

Bajaj Auto has started attending to some technical glitches with its scooterette, Wave, barely a month after its launch, at the dealer level.

While dealers said the model has a clutch problem, company officials said the problem was related to starter motor.

The two-wheeler major, which had sold around 5,000 Waves since its launch in the last week of May, has attended to a number of vehicles to fix the problem, a dealer in Mumbai said.

The glitch was brought to the notice of the company by certain customers. Though the company has not formally announced the fault, a dealer said, it was fixing up the problem in vehicles brought for servicing..

Another dealer said certain vehicles were being fitted with "an upgraded clutch system".

Bajaj Auto vice-president (business development & marketing) R L Ravichandran denied that there was any problem with the clutch assembly. He, however, admitted that there was a minor issue with the starter motor and said that the company was rectifying it.

The company is also believed to be fixing up the problem of the scooterette in other cities, including Delhi, Bangalore and Pune. The number of vehicles on which the problem was rectified was not immediately known.

The company had launched Wave at about Rs 32,500 (ex-showroom), priced lower by Rs 4,000 than competition, including Honda Activa, Nova and Scooty. The vehicle was slated to give a mileage of about 40 kmpl.

The scooterette, which a revised version of Bajaj's Saffire, runs on a 110 cc, 4-stroke engine, using Digital Twin Spark Ignition technology. Wave's engine has a peak power rating of 8 bhp at 7,000 RPM. The Bajaj scooterette also manages to develop a relatively higher peak torque of 0.9 KgM at 5,000 RPM.