[psvinay]

I am a Hero Electric scooter user for past 4+ yrs. Please see my review post 3 months of using it here

So far, I have changed the battery pack once (cost ~11k). It lasted close to 2.5 yrs. I think my current pack might last for another 6 months max. These days, after a full charge I get approx 20-25km range. In six months the range will most probably come down to 5-10kms, and then I will have to go for a new battery set.

Will this new bike change this reality? Will this new patented technology around battery (thermal & packaging) improve the life and efficiency of battery? Hero had mentioned that the bike will give 60km range. In the first few months, I did get 50-55kms range. But with in 4-5 months, the range dropped to 30+kms and that's what one can expect in the long run. Since this new bike can run much much faster than my Hero bike, it will use lot more energy, so hope this will be using a much bigger battery pack, which will in turn increase the battery cost considerably.

This new bike looks really cool. But from a user perceptive, I would need the following, before considering buying a new electric bike.

1. Long lasting battery (at least 5 years) with acceptable degradation of efficiency drop. For example, a 10% drop every year in the Kms range promised is bearable. Otherwise it does not make any economic sense.

2. Gear system. With out it, it is really a Cycle with a motor.

Please note that my views are from my experience with Hero electric bike. I am NOT in any way saying or implying that this new bike don't address any of these issues. If the above mentioned 2 points are addressed in this new bike, then it will surely become a gem in the electric scooters scene.

[CrAzY dRiVeR]

m.overdrive.in/features/interview-arun-vinayak-chief-product-officer-ather-energy/

Ather energy back in the news after a long time.

[Samurai]

Ahem, I am unable to see anything new. Even the photograph is from the launch in Feb. Wish they had something new to say after 4 months of silence.

[Diesel_convert]

I was invited to their pre-order customer preview on the 18th of june.

Had a chance to interact with a lot of their engineers, CPO and CBO.

I forgot to take any pictures , but I'll list out some of the things that stood out from my point of view.

The embedded systems part.

• They are heavily focusing on telemetry and data logging to make the experience better.
• If you are navigating from A to B and the range calculated isnt enough, the system will automatically add a waypoint to the closest charging center.
• They also track the riding habits of users. They showed us an interesting overlay of graphics representing acceleration/ lean angles on a track. This should be accessible to the end user.
• They are planning to have one accelerometer and one inertial sensor on the final version. Their test setups are running 3 accelerometers.
• they also plan to add always on condition monitoring of the vehicle by measuring motor current,vibration levels,temperature of the battery etc. This in theory should lead to preventive maintenance with proper analytics.
• You will have to pay for data eventually.
• It has accident detection based on the accelerometer, they are planning to add automatic calling of an emergency number to the final release.
• They are going to map road quality (potholes etc) into their navigation, with accelerometers + GPS data.
• I asked them about the privacy/legal implications of all this data, they haven't really thought that part through yet. They have an incognito mode for the GPS.
• The system optimises constantly to get you to your destination, will reduce top speed/acceleration to ensure you have enough range. Calculates based on your navigation data.

Will continue with the interesting mechanical design bits in the next post.

[farhadtarapore]

Instead of LCD screen, why don't they just incorporate a way for a user to embed his/her cellphone in that slot - that can take care of the navigation and the speedometer, etc. All they'd need to build is an app.

[printh]

Originally Posted by farhadtarapore

Instead of LCD screen, why don't they just incorporate a way for a user to embed his/her cellphone in that slot - that can take care of the navigation and the speedometer, etc. All they'd need to build is an app.

Oh that would warrant water resistance first and maybe even dent battery life of mobile.

[Rajeevraj]

Detailed Specs revealed.

Ather S340 will have a driving range of 60 kms. Recharge upto 90 percent could be accomplished in an hour while the lithium ion battery pack will offer lifecycle of 50,000 kms or lifespan of 5-6 years. It can do a 0-60 kmph spring in 12.11s. Max torque output stands at 14 Nm.

Source: Rushlane

That peak torque of 14NM is quite a bit higher than the typical 100-125cc bikes and scooters. The 0-60 top speed of ~12 seconds is slower than most of the entry bikes and scooters (which are in the 9-10 sec range), but considering the higher torque and the fact that peak torque will be available from start, expect it to be zippier than the typical scooter in acceleration from standstill and in start stop traffic.

EDIT: This link has a video of a test run

[ampere]

Nice to see it having a BLDC (Brushless DC Motor). Reminds of reading Hall effect in school! Lets see more we have in store!

[Nithesh_M]

I am keen to start manufacturing electric motorcycles in the country and have been itching for a startup for the last 2 years myself. But after conducting a bit of research on the evolution of the battery technology, I decided its best to give it another 5 years at the very minimum until there is a vast improvement in price to performance ratio for EV's to be commercially viable in the Indian market.

At this moment there isn't much of a benefit if you to switch to EVs but with the uncertainty of gas prices in the next 5 years, you could see a lot of people jumping over and by then I hope there is some improvement over battery performance.

Ather and Tork motorcycles have a considerable advantage now by starting first.

[CrAzY dRiVeR]

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/...w/55087588.cms

Ather energy gets big funding from Hero Motocorp. Things should get more interesting now.

[joslicx]

Can you take out the battery and charge it standalone?

That could be a very nifty feature for people like me living in apartments. It would be difficult to setup a charging point at the parking place (and more difficult to ensure it is not vandalized or misused). But if you could take out the battery and charge it in your home then it would make life easier. I would consider buying this scooter if this kind of setup is available. Would be perfect vehicle to commute to my tennis court (~2km) and office (~1km from next month). Just recharge the battery every weekend, would be very convinient!

[farhadtarapore]

Originally Posted by joslicx

Can you take out the battery and charge it standalone?

That could be a very nifty feature for people like me living in apartments. It would be difficult to setup a charging point at the parking place (and more difficult to ensure it is not vandalized or misused). But if you could take out the battery and charge it in your home then it would make life easier. I would consider buying this scooter if this kind of setup is available. Would be perfect vehicle to commute to my tennis court (~2km) and office (~1km from next month). Just recharge the battery every weekend, would be very convinient!

I had asked exactly the same question and someone had replied as to the weight of the battery being 30-40kgs - not something you can easily carry home.

[joslicx]

Originally Posted by farhadtarapore

I had asked exactly the same question and someone had replied as to the weight of the battery being 30-40kgs - not something you can easily carry home.

Thanks. 30-40Kg is really too much of weight and that would preclude taking it out and recharging standalone. Ah, why the batteries have to be so heavy. The last frontier in mass adoption of electric vehicles really. There is still one of two generation of advances in battery technology needed before EVs truly become mainstream.

[daretodream]

In Oct-2016 when I decided to buy a new scooter, I approached Ather first.
The response:


I sent another query to them:

Scooter will send data to your servers for navigation or machine part status etc...
Who will bear the internet costs?
Ather or User??

And answer received after 3 days:

Hi XXXXX,

We are yet to finalize these details. Will let you know once decided.

Regards,
XXXXX

I went on to buy 2016 Suzuki Access 125 Special Edition.

I received this very humble email from AtherCEO(Tarun) on 20th Jan:
Highlights:
1. Push production date atleast by another year
2. Under-anticipated the challenge- Heavily
3. Growth Narrative so far- Head count, funding, multiple recognition via awards: which means a strong foundation for the next year

Hi XXXXXX,

Last year had been a challenging one for all of us at Ather. This was the first time we were exposed to the practical challenges of building a product and it has been an extreme but valuable learning curve for us all. Today, we wanted to discuss the most visible facet of launching the S340: the timelines.

Launch the product already!

We have been getting a lot of mail from our enthusiasts and EV lovers. Some are restless (“Been holding off my purchase of a scooter for the last 6 months!”), others have offered good advice (“The market will move if you don’t start test rides soon”) and some are genuinely worried (“Petrol companies will kill you if you don’t hurry up”).

It's a mixed blessing, to have such a passionate community. Such a community deserves open communication, which comes easy to us. You don't have to look far but our open houses, blogs, posts and social media announcements till date are examples enough. And so will be the timelines.

Back in February, 2016 we unveiled the S340 and announced that we will be starting test rides by second half of the year and production by end of the year followed by shipping in early 2017. What we had already built by that time was a prototype that could achieve the performance specs, the looks that we intended and the system intelligence was upcoming. This was an incredibly fast build-out as this particular platform started taking shape only by mid-2014 and the team had put together a lot in merely 18 months.

While we did begin limited beta test-rides and open house interactions in the second half of this year, we have as of today pushed our production date by at least a year.


Why the change?

It’s the same reason why we could start an auto company in India in the first place - we under anticipated the challenge. Heavily.

Building a completely new product, development typically takes around 6-8 years. And that’s usually on the back of a fairly stable platform, existing technology and established operations. We wanted to compress the process into a much shorter span. But we under-anticipated a couple of things.

Being a new product, we don’t have years of customer and field data. Working around that, (testing on the bench and in the field) meant we took longer than we thought it would.

Also, building a vertically integrated company has meant that we are practically our own suppliers, putting the entire reliability, design and manufacturability in our hands. While this end-to-end control is exactly what we wanted - it comes at a large upfront time investment.

A first attempt meant that we are doing technology development in parallel with product development - and that’s hard to parallelize.

Building a product like this in the first pass requires an engineering and operations team that runs like a well-oiled machine and has all the systems in place. A team that would have the capability to work on a new platform and technology in India and go through an entirely new product introduction journey. For us building this team and these systems is probably the single most valuable outcome of our efforts.


What does it mean?

Make no mistake - we do feel shitty about not being able to predict the time to market better. We could have understood the need for experience and a larger team early on and could have predicted timelines better. But one learns. The last year has been a great humbling experience for us as the true weight of building a product company and an engineering organization has dawned on us.

Being product-people nothing would get us more excited than seeing our product in your hands. And we are working hard towards it. Ather is important and not just to us. We believe, what we are building is very critical for the eco-system and we cannot falter.


A strong foundation for the year ahead

While these realizations and course corrections happened, we did lay a strong foundation for an accelerated growth in the year ahead.

We grew. From 75 people in Jan 2016 to 175 people today - this is one of the largest EV efforts in the country now. Honestly, hiring engineers with some serious product development experience has been one of our biggest challenges. Fortunately, we have been joined by experienced professionals with diverse skill sets across our team. It doesn’t stop here. We will be doubling our count in the next 18 months and there are already 60+ open positions across teams. You, your friend or someone in your circle might be a great fit at Ather. Feel free to let them know. You can check the opportunities here.

We raised a round - $31M led by Hero Moto Corp marking the first time an Indian auto OEM has invested in a domestic hardware startup. If you missed out the last blog on the funding story here you go: Series B blog

We started beta test rides and open houses across Bangalore and Chennai. Over 90 + of our enthusiast have already test-ridden the S340. And we have had the pleasure of interacting with 500 + folks in these two cities. We did put a pause on these two events since all prototypes have been currently allocated to different teams for testing. Expect to hear from the team on these events soon.

Testing, testing & testing. Our last two prototypes together clocked close to 10,000 kms of test rides. In parallel, all our sub-systems too have been put through strenuous testing at our facilities.

And (some mandatory pat on the back after a recap post) ET Start-up Awards recognised us under the Best on Campus Startup category, Frost & Sullivan presented us with 2016 India Electric Mobility Technology Innovation Leadership Award and IESA (India Electronics and Semiconductor Association) and TiE at their recent IOT Next conference honored us with the Most Inspiring Startup Impacting Automotive Award.

As work continues to happen we will share more details with you. We are also sure that you will have many more questions on this topic and/or might even want to come see. You are more than welcome. Feel free to reach out to me directly on tarun.m@atherenergy.com or info@atherenergy.com if you have any general queries. (Trust me you will get a human written response to your mails on this one too).

Exciting times ahead!
Tarun
CEO & Co-founder
Ather Energy

Copyright © 2017 Ather Energy Private Limited, All rights reserved.
No.1, Victoria Road, Victoria Layout, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560047 | 080 46647400 | www.atherenergy.com

[Mortis]

Sad news that they have pushed back the release for one more year but its also a good thing that they are unwilling to rush and release a half baked product.

Its most annoying though to people who put off their purchase of a bike in anticipation of its release.
I am hoping to buy my first bike in April and wanted to see how the S340 turned out. The Tork T6X might be released soon but its out of my budget at 1.25 lakhs so I guess I will have to settle on a normal petrol powered one instead