Back in the day, an electric two-wheeler was only considered as a sluggish machine that would get you from one place to another without sipping up any gasoline. Add to that a bare-bones design, range anxiety and lack of charging infrastructure, and you are now aware of the reasons why these didn’t sell well in the world’s largest two-wheeler industry.
In this exorbitant scenario, a new start-up Ather Energy has been on their toes to introduce an all-electric scooter as their first product. And as a result of the S340 concept – which the company showcased in 2016 – the Ather 340 and Ather 450 were born. While the 340 is an affordable offering, the Ather 450 has more juice when it comes to the range as well as performance. Here’s a glimpse of our Ather 450 review.
With the Ather 450, the idea was to develop a scooter that doesn’t flaunt its electric nature. In other words, it looks very much like a conventional scooter. And that’s a good thing. The Ather 450 has a very well-balanced design, and it does look futuristic. The sharp front-end with a pointy beak, flush side stand, sleek all LED lighting and the 12-inch alloy wheels are very well-integrated with the design. The attention to detail is simply impeccable too. The exposed seat hinge finished in green and the integrated pillion footrests are very well thought of. There are no decals on the body, and no loud paint schemes to garner attention on the road. Moreover, it only comes in white colour.
Get on board and the first thing that catches your fancy is the 7.0-inch coloured touchscreen infotainment system. It almost looks like someone fixed a smartphone on the dash. It also packs a dash of connectivity features and in-built navigation that’s powered by Google Maps. Talking about connectivity, the scooter is connected to your phone via Internet that’s enabled through the built-in SIM card. The touchscreen gets an IP65 rating, meaning it has some effective sealing to handle water to a certain level. While the connected features are free for the first year of purchase, you’ll have to shell out from your own pocket after that period.
The Ather also comes with a reverse parking mode, which lets you reverse the scooter easily. The speed is only limited to 2km/h, but if you hit an obstacle, the motor sends more torque to the rear wheel. On the whole, the Ather experience has been nothing short of impressive so far. But even if I have to nit-pick, I must say that the touchscreen lags at times.
The Ather 450 gets a 2.71kWh battery pack that works in tandem with a 5.4kW brushless DC motor. That’s equivalent to 7.2bhp. The torque is 20.5Nm. As soon as you twist your right wrist, the first thing to notice is how the Ather 450 manages to gain momentum in a very conventional way. It’s not slow by any means, but the acceleration isn’t snappy either. And on the contrary, that actually feels quite nice. The top-end performance and the flat torque curve of the motor are really impressive. There are two riding modes to play with – Ride and Sport. While the Ride mode is programmed to deliver the most riding range, the Sport delivers mind-numbing performance. In fact, the scooter feels substantially different in both modes. The ride quality is on the stiffer side, and you do feel some jerks more often. As far as handling is concerned, the Ather is light and pretty sporty around corners.
To sum things up, we came really impressed with the Ather 450. It’s evident that it took Ather some long time to launch the scooter, but they have covered ground when it comes to everything else. In fact, getting your hands on one of these outside Bangalore and Chennai is really difficult. That’s only because the Ather is sold only in these two cities, as of writing this review. Ather has also launched over 30 touchpoints since its launch, and you are never more than 2km away from one. So, is the hype worth it? Well, after experiencing it, yes! To read our extensive Ather 450 review be sure to tune in to autoX.
