Not your regular scooter (Part 2)

I am expecting that you have landed here from the part 1 of this write-up. If not, I would suggest go back, read it and then reroute yourself here. Well it’s half the fun when you reach the climax without knowing the plot, isn’t it? So move your cursor back on the hyperlink right away.

For the rest of you, let’s continue with the journey, and let’s find out what was little something that pushed the team back to the drawing board.

Observe. Notice. Discover. Build.

Have you ever noticed that when you stop your ride, you first put your left feet on the ground? All the petrol run two-wheelers have the engine on the left, making the vehicle lean towards the left. Now that’s something that affects handling and balance, and that was bothering our engineers. So they went ahead and corrected that, to give you that perfect balance.

Zero lateral Offset

Whoa! what’s that? Nothing but a jargon for perfect symmetry in a vehicle.

How would that be of help to a rider? Well, it allows one to lean more, and take sharper turns. Adding more fun for you meant more work for the designer. Also, that brings in a new jargon in the picture — ‘polar moment of inertia’. Sounds pretty heavy? Let’s make it simple for you.

Low polar moment of inertia
It’s all about bringing the heaviest parts in one line, close to the center. Motor, the battery and all the other components had to be symmetrically mounted to achieve that. So that you can zip-zap through traffic, manage the narrow lanes, handle sharp turns, and the scooter stays nimble, even with a pillion.

The scooter at its lowest best

Next task on hand was to achieve the lowest centre of gravity to ensure great handling.

The only way to make that happen was to place all the major components as low as possible. The motor had to be placed low and battery floor mounted.

But, what exactly did all this mean??? It was a little more complex than it sounds. It meant starting from the start.

Going back to the drawing board

Putting the battery close to the floor to achieve the lowest COG has more implications than probably seen with naked eyes. It becomes the chassis member and that needs to be much sturdier, and be able to swim through water. And this meant re-imagining the battery casing, entirely. So finally, here’s our rugged battery that has gone through a hell lot of tests and with IP 67 rating it can survive up to a meter of water for about half an hour. Ready for the rainy days, literally.

Sounds pretty simple?

No really. Shifting the place of so many components from their place also meant building the chassis from scratch. So, now the plan shifted to build a hybrid aluminium one. What so different about it? The cast aluminium frame is flexible; it could be played around with to mould it anyhow. Just right when you need different thickness in different areas, to fit in various components, make better storage and solve for things that have hardly been aid attention to earlier.

All of this, to deliver the ultimate handling experience!

Now the vehicle design was done. What else could be re-looked at? We at Ather hate lousy design. So, next was the turn of poorly designed, the much ignored, not-so-pleasant two-wheeler ownership and service experience.

Debugging the ownership experience

Two-wheeler ownership experience is pretty much the same everywhere. Isn’t it? Dial in the customer care, then struggle to find time in your chock-a-block schedule to first drop off and then pick-up your vehicle. Also, having to pay for things like labour charge, consumables etc., when the first 3 services are said to be free, leaves a sour taste in the mouth. Right? So we thought why not sort this out, right from the registration to pre-sales to post-sales everything.

Always charged-up

Would it be a great experience, if you have to bear the burden of finding and installing a charger? Our team decided to take this hassle upon themselves entirely.

When the Ather 450 arrives at your home, charging Point will be up and ready, beforehand, to fuel-it-up.

After pre-ordering, first thing would be to assess your location for the installation of the charging Point, and we would take the full payment only once we are sure that your parking is ready to welcome the Ather 450.

No fretting over booking a service

No never-ending IVRs, no tedious processes to get your periodic maintenance service booked.

In the future, you would be able to place a request through the app. Not only do you get to track all your services, but you can also see your vehicle’s service history. Nothing hidden, nothing hazy. Say hello to a fully transparent service.

An entirely new, hassle-free service model, that weeds out the issues in the current after-sales system.

Your time is important

You have better things to do in life than dropping off your vehicle to a service centre. It should be the last thing on your mind. So, we have taken this off your to-do list. We will pick-up your vehicle, service it, and drop it off too. No unnecessary trouble.

It’s easy to miss out on little-little things while one focuses on the big-ticket items. These seemingly petty things that someone might not stand up and notice, but might begin to discern as and when realization strikes. And when that happens then probably, one would sit up and notice that with how much love, this thing on two wheels has been sewed together.