[21Archer84]

Originally Posted by hemanth.anand

We recently took delivery of an Ather 450 to replace my Wife's Vespa 125. The Ather 450 is on sale in Bengaluru at a price of Rs.1,27,730 lakhs OTR.

Thanks for an exhaustive and detailed review. Have a safe and Happy electrified miles riding it.

[hemanth.anand]

Originally Posted by superbad

Excellent thread & congrats for the first Ather ownership on TBHP.

Thank you!

This is rather surprising, considering that even Rs 1500 dumb phones have auto cut off. Surely there must be some mechanism within the battery itself to prevent overcharging. Otherwise what is stopping it from bursting?

The Auto cutoff is a second layer of safety. The BMS and the on-board charger will protect the battery

I didn't get the bit about "shut down the scooter". Doesn't it simply mean powering off?

In the settings, we can actually "shutdown" the scooter like a PC. When the vehicle is not in use (unplugged and key turned off), the electronics still consume a negligible amount of power and he power pack drains slowly. If we don't ride the scooter for around 5 days, it’s advisable to shut it down. Ather also calls this as vacation mode. switching it on is as usual by turning on the key.

Also does trickle drain happen only after 3 days without running?

No it is continuous. if the vehicle is not shut down, and not charging, trickle charge happens at a rate of approximately 2% over a period of 10 hours. If you have parked it in your office in the morning and come back in the evening, it would've reduced a bit.

Per month & per quarter cost doesn't add up

Yes it doesn't. Price of a 250gms tea packet and a 1Kg tea packet doesn't add up either

I think Ather should've also kept an option for no plan subscription. The average monthly plans are appearing to be equivalent to paying for petrol. Yes, there are benefits to the subscription, but the main advantage of opting for an electric vehicle (low running cost) is negated. Why not let consumers have the option of not tying themselves to any plan, just pay for charging & servicing cost?

In a way, you aren't forced to! if you don't pay for the subscription plan, you'll not get the service.
But what's a smartphone without data? similarly what's a smart scooter without data? Ather Connect plan will be good although 3000 per year for data sounds atrocious.
Electricity consumption is too less and can be paid by the user.
Service will be charged as per the below list on Ather website.


Pay per service

[nishsingh]

Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed review, and congratulations on the buy. I am pretty sure you will be doing most of the riding yourself!

Ather is definitely a company to keep an eye on; the attention to detail is simply superb. Even the fonts chosen for office display boards are neat and classy!



Being a movie buff, to me, the Ather 450, in its resplendent white glory is reminiscent of Eve, the next gen robot, from the movie Wall-E. Indeed it makes the other scooters look as old as the robot Wall-E next to Eve!

[hemanth.anand]

Originally Posted by Lambro

Great review Hemanth, i got mine last weekend ... stickered it up a bit

Thanks and Congratulations! Even I was planning to get some graphics, I've still not got around to decide what to do. I do not want to spoil the minimalist looks. I'll do it only when I find such an idea and not till then.

Originally Posted by 21Archer84

Thanks for an exhaustive and detailed review. Have a safe and Happy electrified miles riding it.

Thanks,
The price mentioned is when it is bought by paying the amount in full. Cost if purchased on Loan or Lease will change. It was indeed 1,27,730 when I bought it. After 6th March 2019, Govt. of Karnataka has introduced another cess of 500 for road safety. This changes the OTR price to 1,28,230.

Then there is FAME II that will become effective and there will be a subsidy of 24,000 (10,000 per Kw). My scooter was before FAME II and I had got a subsidy of 22,000 (flat amount). So, when FAME II subsidy is effected, the OTR should come down by 2,000.

Originally Posted by nishsingh

Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed review, and congratulations on the buy. I am pretty sure you will be doing most of the riding yourself!

This has become a new topic for my wife and me to fight over

Being a movie buff, to me, the Ather 450, in its resplendent white glory is reminiscent of Eve, the next gen robot, from the movie Wall-E. Indeed it makes the other scooters look as old as the robot Wall-E next to Eve!

If only I had my father's Activa now, I could've taken a photo similar to this

[hemanth.anand]

Originally Posted by Latheesh

Another customer vehicle. Spotted this in my apartment and I noticed the cool looking charger first.

@hemanth.anand - Reg number of yours and this one is pretty close and both are KA51.

Yes, Feb end to March many vehicles have been registered and delivered close to each other. Unless otherwise requested, most of the vehicles are being registered in KA51.

[amods]

Great review and excellent write up. All good about the scooter said and done, but isn't the full charge range a bit too short (As per my understanding it is 80KM on full charge - right?)?

Sorry for my lack of knowledge on electrics - but at least a 150 on single charge would've been great.

Question void if my understanding and premise is wrong

[hemanth.anand]

Originally Posted by amods

Great review and excellent write up. All good about the scooter said and done, but isn't the full charge range a bit too short (As per my understanding it is 80KM on full charge - right?)?

Sorry for my lack of knowledge on electrics - but at least a 150 on single charge would've been great.

Question void if my understanding and premise is wrong

It all depends on your usage pattern. Very similar to buying a diesel or petrol car or even electric car for thst matter depending on its running.

What percentage of people ride a scooter above 70kms every day? Very low. Ignore the people whose job involves travelling within the city like delivery guys etc. It is not for those. The vast majority of scooter users in Bangalore will not drive more than 70kms a day. So, this range is alright for most of the usage. Of course people have to ride a scooter over 70kms occasionally due to some unplanned activities...that's when public charging helps.

Ofcourse the more the merrier!

[hemanth.anand]

Q1 of 2019 is over and we've got the electricity consumption refund processed by Ather. I got an email today.

As per the report, the scooter has consumed 39.87 units. At ₹6.5 per unit (for the announced slab of 100-200kWh), I'm reimbursed a total of ₹259.15.


Reimbursement report

The scooter had run 836.1kms till March 31st (today it's 930kms). That's ₹0.30 per km.

Fair enough. However that's not the actual cost I've incurred. My regular electricity consumption at home in at least the previous 3 years is around 270 units per month. This month, I've consumed 320 units. That means 100 units in the slab (200-300 units @ ₹7.55 per unit) above the one announced by Ather and 20 units in two slabs (above 300 units @ ₹7.6 per unit) above that.


My March bill

So if I calculate accordingly (20 units in the highest and 19.87 in the second highest), the running cost for the scooter will be ₹302 in total and ₹0.36 per km.

We had taken delivery of our Ather on March 3rd. My home electricity billing date is 1st of every month. So the calculation is actually easy for me. Of course this will not be same for everyone. But whichever way we look at it, the running cost is 5 times cheaper than an ICE scooter.

[hemanth.anand]

The scooter has completed 1.5 months. It had crossed 1000kms around the 1 month mark. Unlike my previous vehicles where I take a photo every 1000kms, I couldn't do it here as the ODO isn't displayed in the ride screen.


1k in 1 month

Yesterday I was lying at home doing nothing..so took the scooter out in the evening to JC road for small aesthetic additions.

The rear of the scooter was looking too black and too empty to me. So got a laser cutting of fibre material (the usual number plate material) and filled the “ATHER” depression. The depression is now embossed. It adds contrast and looks nice now.


ATHER move visible now


Embossed

Another addition was made too with vinyl stickers. Similar to some special edition vehicles that get numbered badges, I put on my scooter. I had checked with the Ather team and they had told me that the last 3 digits of the VIN is the vehicle number. Accordingly, mine is the 207th Ather manufactured...so put it here


Special one

And today, there was an Ather Owners' Ride and Meet organised by Ather. There was a Ride from their Indiranagar experience centre to their office in Bhannerghatta road. I was not part of the ride, but reached the meet location directly as I live on the southern part of the city which is closer to their office. There were around 100 Athers that took part.


Open house

It was an informal open house but they did show us quite a few slides explaining about the scooter. Most if them were known and I understood one point on Regen.
Regen has a low speed cutoff at 20kmph and high SoC cutoff at 84%. Which means it works only when the charge remaining is below 84% and when the speed of the vehicle is more than 20kmph.

They also showed many stats and graphs that they've plotted with the data collected so far. It was quite informative and interesting. Some of the stats that I noted down

• Total riding distance of all owners put together crossed 3,00,000 kms today which was 10,000kms 5 months ago (14th nov). This show that more and more scooters have been delivered this year.
• Median daily riding distance of users is 17kms
• 64% of the times, users ride in RIDE mode and 36% in SPORT mode.
• Best range some user has achieved is 110kms in 90% battery
• There's a marked difference between people who ride in 100% RIDE mode and people who ride 100% in SPORT mode. Very few ride by switching modes.
• The top speed distribution has followed a normal distribution with the median at 45kmph. And outliers at the 90kmph mark
• Average speeds have been high in the early mornings at 35kmph going down to 22kmph during the 9am time and dipping to 19kmph in the evening peak hour and again rising up at night. This is quite normal for Bangalore.
• The median range stands at 69kms in RIDE mode and 61kms in SPORT mode.
• Most charging sessions start with 45% charge still left
• The cable is used mostly during day time (expected IMO)
• Only 4% of the total charging has been done using Athergrid

They also gave a peek into the next update in May and future updates. May update will have a Manual trip meter (A, B and Auto), Battery percentage remaining number and trip meter in ride screen along with some navigation enhancements.
Future releases will have more changes like Regen status display, dark mode, traffic status layer in Navigation, App Notifications and sorting public charging points according to distance to the user.
During this 3 hr session, they answered many questions from users too.

After this they invited selected users to share their experiences as well and I was one among them. It was my first public address (although I've addressed bigher crowds in office). I was informed about this 3 days earlier. One owner had made a professional looking powerpoint presentation with slides complete with Ather logo and scheme!! I just spoke casually for 5 mins about my experience with the scooter. There's one crazy user who is kind of an unofficial ambassador for the scooter. He has ridden the scooter to Nandi hills, Dharmasthala, Tirupathi and Vijayawada. While he was still in Vijayawada and had written on the forum that he'd miss the meet, Ather had got a bus ticket booked for him and got him for the meet. Wonderful gesture indeed

Finally they'd organised packed lunches for all before heading for a group picture with Owners and their rides.
It was nice to see close to 100 Athers together. Professional Photographers and their drone captured all of it.


A selfie with almost all Athers


All lined up


My #207 among many others

There were people from the service team also present so that owners could have one-one with them. There was a small noise coming from the handle of my scooter and it was hard when turned completely to either side. They checked it and sorted it out immediately. Some hose/cable was obstructing it. Also I told them that I feel that my scooter's noise is pretty high compared to others. They ran diagnostics and confirmed that it's normal.

It was a very well organised event and one interesting thing they told was that they'd like to organise an interactive meet for us and our scooters to meet their prospective buyers in Chennai-their next city. They told that they'd take care of logistics of our scooters. It'd be really nice if they so it and I'm ready for it.

All in all it was a wonderdul 4 hours of a Sunday.

[hemanth.anand]

On April 23rd, the Ather experienced it's first rains. I rode quite a distance in heavy rains. I had expected the screen to act wierd but nothing of that sort happened. I felt it was a little more noisy but it may be a placebo also.





Also I ordered my set of IND plates with frame from Orbiz. Although the green colour isn’t that great I like it because I’m a fan of embossed plates.





After a little over 2 months since my scooter was registered and I got the RC from the leasing company today. I immediately uploaded it to the scooter. Since it’s a Leased vehicle, I’ll only get the picture and not the original.

One thing that’s puzzling is that in the Tax Upto field it’s written as TT which is something unknown.
Generally for private vehicles it’s LTT(Life Time Tax) and for commercial vehicles where the Road tax is paid annually, they mention the Date. Even though EVs attracy zero Road tax, it is mentioned as LTT (I verified with the RC of our E2O).Lease or buyout shouldn’t affect this IMO. The leasing company also doesn’t know what TT means. I think it’s a typographical error by RTO.



One other funny thing in the RC is that they’ve mentioned 000000 cc and 00 number of Cylinders. It’s high time RTO updates the RC format. In our E20 it is mentioned as 1 cylinder and 1cc

[hemanth.anand]

My wife had injured her leg at home and hence using the car to her office. So the usage has been reduced and hence I decided to take this opportunity to check the trickle charge.

After returning home from Office on April 23rd, the scooter was charged fully and I unplugged it around 10PM. Range remaining was 55kms in Sports mode. It remained like this for 8 fulls days till May 1st around 10PM when I next used the scooter for a small errand. The Range remaining was 38kms in Sports mode. So 17kms was lost during this period which is around 2Kms per day.

It is recommended to Shutdown the scooter when the scooter is not used for more than 5 days to prevent this loss. I decided to check this also. I used the scooter on 2nd may to office, completed charge after coming back home and unplugged by around 10PM. This time I shut down the scooter and till today it is not used. I may again use the scooter this weekend. It should've retained the complete 55Kms this time. I'll report it once I us the scooter next time. I can't check it on my app as it will not sync when it is shutdown

[hemanth.anand]

Originally Posted by hemanth.anand

I'll report it once I use the scooter next time. I can't check it on my app as it will not sync when it is shutdown

I had shut down the scooter on 2nd may (with full charge and 55kms range in sport mode). It was switched back on on 10th May. The ODO displayed 53km range in Sport mode.

Another major update I'd not put here. During the Election weekend, when we were outside Bangalore (off topic, but we drove out after voting), I gave the vehicle to a friend of mine who is into detailing and got the PPF applied on my Ather.
The scooter doesn't come with any body crash guards (even as accessories) as yet. Also since my scooter had fallen down once and got some scars.
Although the screen is scratch resistant already, vandals have spoilt some Athers already. I wanted to avoid that happening to my scooter. So I got the film on the screen as well.
Overall it consumed 24sqft of the film. The results are wonderful. The scooter body is now even more glossy and more importantly scratch resistant. Rainwater also beads well slides down faster. The touch screen response also has not reduced too.

I've been busy after that with some family commitments and also its raining in Bangalore from some days. So I've not been able to take good pictures of the scooter after the PPF was applied. The not-so-clear photos can be seen in the post #40 of this thread which shows water beading.

Before the PPF (Hexis Bodyfence), Paint correction (polishing in layman terms) for the panels was done. Additionally, Alloys wheels and tyres got Gyeon coating.

[Sebring]

You, Sir, are a true braveheart to have adopted this tech so early. Ather rolled out the red carpet and answered all my queries patiently over many, many times. I really like their approach to the business and one feels like 'he' is buying an Apple product - at the Indiranagar showroom. Their content and replies over Social Media are 'top notch', truly emphatic and very encouraging. Doesn't look/feel like a sales pitch at all. Please add as much as possible regarding your experience. Gonna keep my eyes peeled on this thread

[hemanth.anand]

On June 25th, my wife took the scooter to office as usual. In the evening, when she came back home, she couldn’t plug the charger into the scooter. She called me to check when I come home. I came and found that the solenoid lock was closed for some reason


Physical lock
I tried resetting the scooter (both brakes+power switch) but nothing changed. Switched off and switched on the charger at MCB…no change.
Called the RSA and explained the issue and what all I’d tried already. He asked me to shutdown the scooter and restart which should solve the issue. I did that and the solenoid lock was released!


shutdown>restart>problem solved

When I went through Ather's forum, I found this to be common issue and a shutdown-restart solved it immediately. In fact most of the software glitches are solved by this method. thankfully Microsoft hasn't patented this issue
Being a mechanical engineer myself, this is one thing i hate about software or software driven devices. At the same time, I'm happy that the solution is simple like this!!!

Originally Posted by hemanth.anand

Another addition was made too with vinyl stickers. Similar to some special edition vehicles that get numbered badges, I put on my scooter. I had checked with the Ather team and they had told me that the last 3 digits of the VIN is the vehicle number. Accordingly, mine is the 207th Ather manufactured...so put it here

I wasn’t liking the looks of this sticker too much. Especially after the PPF application because the ppf was not sticking properly due to the small height differences. So, I got it removed and reapplied PPF for that area. I got back the clean looks. But I still wanted that #207 badge…so got a plaque similar to my Keychain on June 28th and pasted it on the right Swingarm.


Clean looks restored


#207 Plaque


#207 Plaque

The L shaped valve of the tyres were difficult to access. Especially the rear one is difficult to access due to the belt pulley. I used to take 5 minutes of effort to fix the nozzle of my portable compressor and 20 seconds to pump air! Even the fuel station attendants were having difficulties. So I got it replaced by Straight valves. I went to Madhus on 29th and got ti changed. It was the first Ather and obviously people there enquired a lot about the vehicle. It was nice to meet Nikhilb2008 and have a chat with him. One Passionate guy!

I was preparing for the Chennai event and added a couple of things to my scooter for that.

1. Ram base mount.



This was probably the only base mount that could be fixed on our scooter. Will be useful for mounting phone/action cam.

2. Helmet



I was developing this PCB design in my head over many days. My idea was (it still is) to get it airbrush painted. But the artist told he’ll need 3-4 weeks. I wanted it before the Chennai event this weekend. So 2 days ago, I bought a new Vega Ridge half face helmet and got the design done at a vinyl shop in JC Road. It also gave me a good idea of how the design actually looks on the helmet. I’m pretty happy with the result (some changes are sill needed). At a bare minimum I’ll get a clear coat sprayed to protect these stickers from peeling off. At best I’ll get the design airbrush painted when I've more time.

Other than the minor glitches, the scooter has been running pretty well. With each update, things are getting better.

[hemanth.anand]

The helmet is now an attention seeker! One day when my wife was riding the scooter to her office, a colleague of mine spotted and sent me the picture that someone is riding my scooter

Yesterday the scooter crossed 3000 Kms. It's been running smoothly without any major issues.
The screen sometimes freezes, but a soft reset (both brakes + power button) solves the issue. There was one other small issue which was solved as well by an Ather technician (details below).

Originally Posted by hemanth.anand

I had a small issue with my scooter. When on rough roads, the seat would make noise because there was a small gap in the latch assembly of the seat lock. It was a minor one and since it wasn't troubling me, I had ignored that. I reported the issue to get it solved as well as check this new feature. I got an acknowledgement email immediately with a ticket number. The next day I got a call from Ather and they booked an appointment for the day after. The technician came and solved the issue in 10 minutes. He only had to put two additional washers and adjust the height of the seat thereby reducing the gap in the latch mechanism.