[Snehal Sekhar]

It looks like Ather Energy has got a new factory to start production of the S340. I received this mail today stating the progress they have made and the joining of two senior industry professionals.

Hi XXX,

Here are some quick updates from the past month.

Factory gets a go ahead!
We kick-started work on our factory this month. The defunct railway container manufacturing facility in Whitefield Bengaluru is now getting a new life. Setting up a facility for manufacturing automobiles is no cakewalk, but thanks to the strong support from Karnataka Udyog Mitra, all the necessary approvals from various government departments have been given in a short span of time. The facility will now be modified to gear up for mass production of the S340 in the coming months.
And as it happens always, we are running out of space in our existing workspace. We will soon be moving to a larger office. More on that in the coming months.

Veteran tigers join the streak
While hiring continues across verticals, we have been joined by two senior industry professionals. We are excited to have them on-board in our journey to get the S340 to production faster.
Dr. Venkatesh Padmanabhan joins us as the Chief Operating Officer. He will head sourcing, vendor development, quality, manufacturing, and procurement at Ather. Venki, as everyone fondly calls him, comes with a long career across multiple automotive companies including General Motors, Daimler Group’s Chrysler, and Royal Enfield where he joined as COO and eventually became the CEO in 2011.
Thiruppathy Srinivasan (Thiru) joins us as VP, Vehicle Development. Thiru joins us with over 25+ years of experience in product organisations like 3M, Rexnord, Tyco, and A.O. Smith. He holds a Master's degree from the Ohio State University and a Bachelor's degree from IIT Madras

Government on full throttle
The electric vehicle market in India is still nascent. Sales of EVs rose 37.5% to 22,000 units in fiscal 2016, still a mere 0.1% of total vehicles sold during the same period in India. Policies interventions haven’t been able to make the expected impact in the market. However, with the latest policy announcements, the Government of India (GoI) seems to have made its intent clear with an ambitious target of running only electric vehicles in India by 2030. The plan to get there and the nitty-gritties are something we too are curious about and we eagerly await the government to share more on this.

All major automobile manufacturers will need to have EVs in their product portfolio. A robust vendor ecosystem to support the requirement will fall into place, one which is non-existent today. And a ubiquitous charging infrastructure, and definite power distribution policies will come into place much earlier than anticipated. Great times ahead for EVs!

And testing continues…

Pictures from the last track testing
As testing continues on the hardware front, our team developed a light Monte Carlo tool for internal use in data simulations. While most free MC tools we could find were Excel based, we decided to build an R-Shiny application to run our own simulations. Since a bunch of our enthusiasts are into data science, we thought it’d be a good idea to make it open source! You can read all about it on our blog.

It looks like it will not be anytime before 2018 that we can expect the S340 to be released.

[payeng]

I wouldn't be surprised if a cash rich Hero or Mahindra buys out Ather energy..

They are taking just too much time.. maybe the promoters would be only too happy to find a buyer

[Snehal Sekhar]

And so I receive another update from Ather Energy on the status of the ongoing work on the Ather S340.

Hi Snehal Sekhar,

We skipped the last newsletter. So here are quick updates from the past two months.
On the Product
Our prototype roll-out times have come down significantly. We have been on-track in achieving our internal targets for each of the iterations. Here are some pictures of the latest prototypes fresh out of assembly. The last iteration has a few cosmetic updates and a slightly wider body.


Improved Power Transmission

We now have an improved Power Transmission. While the earlier version worked well, we found out that there were some frictional losses. To overcome those, in the latest iteration, we have implemented better assembly practices and we now have significantly tighter tolerances. The bearing sizes have been increased and the transmission belts have been upgraded with better materials and a new tooth profile. These changes lead to a better transmission efficiency, a longer freewheeling distance, lower noise, and a longer life. We are also now able to hit the range targets comfortably.
Open House continues

After a brief break, Open House sessions are back on the calendar. We hosted the last one at our new office on September 9th. This time around, we also revealed a prototype of the charging pod to few of the participants. We wanted to hear what future owners of the S340 had to say on the ergonomics and functional design. It really helped us to validate a lot of factors and also make course correction before we move to the next phase.

Ather at NITI Aayog's Champions of Change
NITI Aayog, Government of India’s think tank, recently launched Champions of Change, an initiative to help bridge the gap between the government and young entrepreneurs working towards building a better India in the coming years. Tarun was invited to be a part of the forum and share ideas on the theme “Energizing a sustainable tomorrow”. The second day of the session was presided by the Hon’ble Prime Minister. It’s quite interesting that it’s not been a one-off session. Meetings with relevant ministries were scheduled and the follow-up meetings for accelerating the implementation of the suggestions are in the pipeline. We think it’s a great initiative and look forward to a deeper engagement with the government and implementation of suggested ideas to accelerate towards the electric future.

Karnataka Government rolls out Electric Vehicle & Energy Storage Policy

The government has had EV subsidies for a long time, what was lacking however, was a detailed policy and strategy to ensure a transition towards EVs. The Government of Karnataka has rolled out a detailed Electric Vehicle and Energy storage policy that caters to the entire EV ecosystem.

A few important features of this policy are:
Full exemption of road tax and reduced registration fee for EVs
Subsidies and incentives for EV and EV component manufacturers
Establishing EV manufacturing zones and Research and Innovation Center
Supporting Charging Infrastructure development through multiple measures, also while mandating charging points in public buildings
Maharashtra, Gujarat, Telangana and a few other states have already announced plans for transitioning towards EVs too.

Not sure how many more prototypes they will be bringing out and what the final model will look like. Looks like a never ending wait.

[Bhatman510]

Originally Posted by Snehal Sekhar

And so I receive another update from Ather Energy on the status of the ongoing work on the Ather S340.



Not sure how many more prototypes they will be bringing out and what the final model will look like. Looks like a never ending wait.

It took Tesla a least a good year from Model S deployment. Beta and RC cars were in testing, but took time to ramp up materials and have enough part stock to even maintain some sort of production line. If there trying to set up correctly create your pilot product, do your homologation testing and from there launch accordingly.

From seeing enough EV Vehicle deployments, get it right the first time than rather produce some product that has design/quality faults from the get go (Model S/X)

[Snehal Sekhar]

The latest mailer I received from Ather:

Here is what happened at Ather in the last few weeks:

The Money Man
As we get closer to production, the complexities of handling our finances pile up. Prudent financial management is as critical as building a great product, infrastructure, and a great experience. Luckily for us, we got the guy who can spearhead this function.


Karan K. Punjabi joined us as the Head of Finance last month. Karan comes with 12 years of experience in various organisations like KPMG, Flipkart, Housejoy, and Arvind Internet, across which he’s held roles in different capacities.

Heads up on OPEN LABS
Some of you in Bengaluru would have already received an invite for this. For those of you who haven’t, Open Labs is an on-going program for you to experience different aspects of the product and for us learn about your preferences. In a few months from now, we will be hitting production. We wanted to make sure that we have captured all your feedback before we hit the production line. Be it the throttle, UI/UX on the dashboard or the charging experience.

We conducted the first session of Open labs, with around 5 folks last Saturday. Expect more on it in your inbox soon.

Ather @ GES 2017

We were invited to the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, 2017 held at Hyderabad from 28th-30th November. Ather was one of the five shortlisted startups’ to display their product at the event. The startups were chosen based on Niti Aayog and Startup India’s guidelines, on the basis of their innovations. Prior to the start of the event, Hon’ble PM Shri Narendra Modi and adviser to the President of the US, Ivanka Trump took time off to visit our display at the event.

Your Personal Home Charging Station

We will soon be scaling up our operations on the private charging front aka the charging set-up at your home. Our preliminary survey points out some key pain points like permissions for installation, energy consumption charges, verifying location, and drawing the power cables. So we have decided to take this upon ourselves by surveying your society/area to do the groundwork and set-up charging stations without giving you any stress. All we will need is your help with your location.

[TusharK]

Thanks to Sreehari Variar for sending this information in. Heartfelt gratitude for sharing it with other enthusiasts via this Team-BHP page!



Bangalore-based startup Ather Energy had unveiled the S340 - its first electric scooter in February 2016. While the launch of the e-scooter had been delayed, it now seems that the company is gearing up to introduce it in India.

Ather Energy claims that pre-production components from over 100 suppliers started arriving at its facility at Whitefield, Bangalore earlier this year and trial production of the e-scooter is already underway. The company aims to start commercial production in July 2018, while pre-orders are scheduled to be accepted in the month of June for customers in Bangalore.

According to the company, the S340 has undergone 4 years of development and 50,000 km of on-road testing. While the project did get delayed, the e-scooter received a few additional features and updates during this period. It is now equipped with a charging port, on-board charger and charging pod, waterproof dashboard, battery and charger, underseat storage with light, tooled up components and an improved user interface with service scheduling. It also has a combined braking system (CBS) with regenerative braking, motor cooling, parking assist, push navigation, charging locations tracking, EMI protection and supports over-the-air updates.

Ather Energy is also setting up fast charging stations across Bangalore. Charging points will be installed over the coming months, ahead of the launch. The company will also be opening its first Experience Centre at Indiranagar in Bangalore in the month of June.

Plans to launch the S340 in other parts of India are expected to be announced later this year.

Link to Team-BHP News

[karthikd21]

I received an email as a reply to my query. entire content posted below:

************************************************** **********
Hi Karthik Hulikal

After 4 years, 55 prototypes, 50,000 km in on-road testing and over a million man hours, the S340 is finally ready!

And this one is not a render or a concept for a show. It’s rolling off an actual production line as we speak.



The last time we emailed you about timelines was in Jan 2017. That’s when we explained how we underestimated the challenges of validation and getting from a prototype to a production-worthy piece. For us 2017 has been about fixing those pieces for the product: from working with our supplier partners and getting the process quality right to stabilizing our internal systems.

And it has reflected in the S340. Things we had in mind while unveiling the proto but the vehicle did not have back then - a charging port, on-board charger, storage space, not sucky UI, waterproof dashboard, waterproof battery, waterproof charger, tooled up components, under seat light, regenerative braking, service scheduling, EMI protection, charging pod, motor cooling, CBS, Over-the-Air Updates, diagnostic alerts, parking assist, push navigation, charging locations tracking...it’s a pretty long list and a pretty important one to build out.

Early this year we finally started receiving pre-production components from our 100+ suppliers and vendors and our assembly line came up in Whitefield, Bengaluru. Vehicle trial production is running right now and we are planning to commence commercial production in July.

For us the S340 has never been only about the vehicle, but it is about your complete ownership experience - from purchase to after sales. When you have enough computing power baked into your design from the get-go, then how you track and schedule servicing, how and when you recharge, your reason to purchase itself - they all change. We have worked hard to ensure that we deliver on that superior ownership experience with the very first vehicle that we put on the road. Hence, not just your riding experience but your charging experience matters to us, your purchase experience matter to us, the servicing experience matters to us.

Over the coming months a couple of things are going to happen, so expect more announcements from us:
In May - our charging infrastructure is going live in Bengaluru. We are keeping it under wraps. However, installations have already commenced in Bengaluru. And yep, these stations will have fast charging capability installed from day 1.
In June - we will open up the pre-order window for the S340 for our Bengaluru customers. Around this time, we will also open our first Experience Center at Indiranagar in Bengaluru. You will be able to take test rides here and spend time with our teams.
All throughout - we will be getting more and more sentimental as this baby starts walking.
Soon after deliveries commence in Bengaluru, we will kick-start our plans to launch in other cities. We will announce our plans to launch in other cities later this year.

Finally, the S340 is a personification of years of work by a team that believes that it can build great experiences right here in India. That customers will pay for a superior product even if it’s built without a legacy. That engineering and product comes first. That it’s important to build it right - Move Fast and Break Things.

We hope you love it.

Exciting times ahead!
Tarun

[Snehal Sekhar]

Received this update from Ather Energy a few days ago.

Hi Snehal Sekhar,

By now, you would be well aware of all the important events coming up in the following few months. While the update by Tarun last week would have given an overall sense of timelines which we are working towards, this newsletter will tell you all that's happening behind the scenes to meet those timelines.

Take a quick look at what we’ve been up to, leading up to the launch:
Homologation and Validation of S340
We’ve been building prototype after prototype. But, that’s not enough. The big leap is when you know that the product will perform in every condition, imaginable and unimaginable. And we are doing all it takes to make sure that happens. We have been doing homologation on the S340 for quite some time now. Here are a few of the tests that the vehicle has successfully cleared.

EMI/EMC homologation compliance - A safety measure to bar any kind of external electromagnetic interferences messing with the electronics on the vehicle.
Environmental tests - Tested under severe conditions to withstand dust, extreme temperatures, rain, waterlogging, etc.
Battery Homologation - Short circuit, vibrations, and nail penetration test.
Chassis durability test using Cam Drum Testing Machine.
Accelerated wear test on all electronic components in high ambient temperature conditions.
Vibration tests using specialized rigs to mimic road conditions.
Building the customer service and production team
After building a strong team of engineers over the past few years, our focus in the last few months has been on building a sound customer service team - a team that will consist of relationship managers as well as product specialists, who will be your first touch points while interacting with us. The highest priority of our customer service team will be to ensure that you have a great experience with the purchase and ownership of the S340.

All the prototypes until now, were handcrafted by a team of engineers at our R&D center. This obviously is not enough, to mass produce we would certainly need a far bigger set-up. Over the last few months, we have also assembled a skilled production team who have undergone extensive training to efficiently roll-out vehicles from our Whitefield factory.

Giving our partners a taste of the S340
The S340 would have been impossible to build without a robust ecosystem of our 100+ suppliers. As we get into production, we thought it would be great to invite them and give a preview of what they have been helping us build over the last couple of years.

An open house session was hosted exclusively for our component partners last month to show them the vehicle in all its glory. The suppliers got to interact with our engineering teams, share their feedback and have a broader look at the ecosystem we are building alongside the S340. They were happy to test ride the vehicle and we were happy to hear all they had to say about it.



What’s up with Open Labs?
We set-up Open Labs a few months back to get feedback on the product and customer touchpoints. Since then, we have hosted eight open labs sessions and dozens of one-on-one interviews with a lot of you folks from Bengaluru.

A whole bunch of feedback sessions were conducted on the upcoming website, experience center, and the charging infrastructure. Plenty of relevant feedback was gathered. Based on that, things as small as a word placement in the upcoming website, to design of the entire charging pod have been reworked.

Deploying MESSI in the field with customers

Last we wrote to you about MESSI was in August 2017. MESSI has been super helpful for us to gather data in the field, beyond what we could’ve captured using S340 prototypes alone. Initially, MESSI was installed on employees’ vehicles and could collect 7 data points that included information on the throttle, RPM, brake, horn, acceleration, orientation, and location.

MESSI has been updated to MESSI 2.0, which now means that it is capable of collecting additional data - on temperature, weather conditions, riding with a pillion, and brake pressure. Also, a GSM connection allows real-time data monitoring for a quick and accurate analysis. We’ve got several enthusiastic volunteers on board, who are now helping us collect information through their scooters.

MESSI now reaches Chennai too, to help us understand the weather and road conditions there better. It will enable us to prep up to get the basics right, build the foundation, and plan for the next launch city.

This is all for now. As we go to market, there will be more to share in the coming days and we promise to keep you updated first. Lots of great news on the way!

[akshaymahajan]

The Indiranagar center is just getting its final touches. Saw the boards up today. It seems to have a few charging stations on the side for parked vehicles. Will give it a visit once it opens even though I am not in the market for the S340.

Great location : 3rd Main Defence Colony, 100 Feet road, Indiranagar (Next to Anjappar)

[karthikd21]

Got a Media invite in an email today. See below:

[Snehal Sekhar]

Ather seems to be putting up charging points across Bangalore as per the email I received today.

Hi Snehal Sekhar,

Charging infrastructure first or electric vehicles first? We are putting the debate to rest.

AtherGrid, our public charging network goes live today in Bengaluru! We would like you to meet 'Point' - the electric vehicle charging pod that's a part of AtherGrid.

Get to know it better on our redesigned website.


There has been a lot of excitement around the S340 launch. However, we know for a fact that even the thought of adopting an electric vehicle (EV) is blanketed by anxiety about charging. That’s exactly why we are setting up this extensive charging network - to make adoption of EVs much easier.

Points are already up and running at 17 locations. We expect this number to reach 30 by the time the pre-orders for the S340 open in June.
Where can you find Point?
AtherGrid has been designed in a way that it seamlessly fits into your lifestyle. You will find Points at places you anyway go to, such as tech-parks, malls, cafes, multiplexes, and gyms. Also, they’ll never be more than 4 km away from wherever you are.

Fast, easy, and connected
The S340 can be fast-charged up to 80% in under an hour at any AtherGrid location. Also, with the Ather mobile app, you can find the exact number of Points that are available at a charging location and remotely check your charging state too.
Open for all
To drive electric vehicle adoption, we need a reliable and extensive charging network. AtherGrid is designed to offer a hassle-free charging experience, not just for Ather vehicles but all other EVs as well. Any electric vehicle that uses a 5A or 15A connector can be plugged in. Also, charging is on us (read free) for the first 6 months. For the S340 owners? Details coming up in June

But what about the S340?

Pre-orders open in June. Pricing details and detailed specs will be updated on our website on the day of launch. Expect a heads-up on all this and more. So keep an eye on your inbox, for you don’t want to miss them

Team Ather

[sri_tesla]

Ather energy announced their EV charging stations which are being setup in Bangalore. These will work with all EVs (not sure how that works as different vehicles might have different charging ports). By end of May, there will be 30 charging points. By end of 2018 the count will be increased to 60.

http://www.autocarpro.in/news-nation...angalore-29582

I hope these numbers are only for station count not the ports. Each station should have multiple charging points.

[payeng]

Charging your EV at specific charging Points would require a lot of Planning with respect to one's travel plans / itinerary (its understood that charging an EV is not like topping a tankful of an internal combustion engined vehicle, it would take at least 30 mins to charge for a decent range)

Wouldn't setting up a network of "swap-able" batteries be much easier and convenient solution?

[Lalvaz]

Originally Posted by payeng

Wouldn't setting up a network of "swap-able" batteries be much easier and convenient solution?

Swappable batteries would be faster definitely, but not much easier. Would also cause loads of headaches about battery quality and warranty issues, since people would just swap whenever their batteries get older or have a faulty cell.

Also bear in mind that the range of an Electric 2 wheeler is usually about 80 kms on a full charge, so that should suffice for home office runs for most users. In the rare event that the user finds himself with less juice, he can juice up to 80% within 30 mins at these charging points. I think that's pretty cool, don't you?

[payeng]

Originally Posted by Lalvaz

Swappable batteries would be faster definitely, but not much easier. Would also cause loads of headaches about battery quality and warranty issues, since people would just swap whenever their batteries get older or have a faulty cell.

Also bear in mind that the range of an Electric 2 wheeler is usually about 80 kms on a full charge, so that should suffice for home office runs for most users. In the rare event that the user finds himself with less juice, he can juice up to 80% within 30 mins at these charging points. I think that's pretty cool, don't you?

Cool as long as EVs are rare on our roads and only a few visiting the changing stations. Imagine a "Queue" lined up for a charge.