Domestic hardware start-up Ather Energy is working on building India’s first ‘smart’ scooter. The scooter’s hybrid aluminium chassis and the aluminium swing arm will help it keep its weight down. This lightweight aluminium construction combined with a powerful battery will likely make this scooter the fastest electric scooter in India.
During the unveiling, the S340 concept featured a lithium ion battery pack with a range up to 60km and a top speed of 72kmph. It takes 1 hour to achieve 80 per cent charge using the fast charging mode. The electric scooter’s battery pack claims a life cycle of 50,000km and a life span of 5 to 6 years.
Chief Product Officer at Ather, Arun Vinayak was quoted saying, "Auto designs, up until now, have largely been optimized for petrol/diesel vehicles and hence these cannot be used as reference models for electric vehicles of the future. We did not study existing e-vehicles either since most are designed to simply be urban mobility solutions - their maximum speeds may go up in the range of 25-30 km/hr and they are also missing basic safety requirements. We on the other hand, are aiming to build a product that will be faster than even petrol vehicles."
Commenting on the low weight of the scooter, Vinayak said, "Extra mass is not desirable on rides so we wanted to clean that out. It also enhances the overall performance of the vehicle because lesser metal means lesser energy is required to propel the vehicle forward."
The scooter is set to feature a cloud-based data service. Some features will include a profile-based sign in, on-board navigation and pre-configured drive modes. The scooter will come integrated with a S340 mobile app that helps configure the ride and profile preferences. This app will also allow syncing of navigation routes on its touchscreen dashboard.
Chief business officer at Ather was quoted saying, "This is a high tech product and consumers will most likely have to pay a premium - perhaps somewhere between a Honda Activa and a Vespa. But it is important to note here that it is a premium product not because it has a diamond-encrusted exterior but because it is a tech-driven product and that will excite only a certain kind of consumer. That typically would be early adopters in any tech-driven curve, which is what we are going after."
Which means we can expect this scooter to priced somewhere between Rs 65,000 and Rs 1,00,000. Which isn’t bad pricing considering the technology the scooter has to offer.
Source - ETAuto
