450X: Discussions on battery

Ather 450 series Product/Technical discussions
16

Lifep04 battery has a nominal voltage of 3.2v with fully charged voltage of 3.6v, additionally for the same cell size they also have lower AH capacity for eg in older 18650 format a lifep04 battery peaked at about 1500mah vs a li-on pack which has a 3.6v nominal and 4.2v fully charged and cell capacities peaked to about 3500mah.

Lifep04 makes sense in city buses, which have a long chassis and runs a lot daily, this is where liefpo4 batteries can work. They have faster charge rate and longer cycle life. But in cars and two wheelers there isn’t enough space for the batteries or will be super heavy with more batteries.

17

I meant 30% health. In case of full ownership, that is when I am considering battery replacement.

19

Ather, y can’t you give 5 years warranty instead of 3 yrs on battery for the full payment. So that people believe and trust Ather.

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20

Just my thought on the Subscription plans,

The monthly subscription,

A. Let say there are two groups of user, both always drive in warp mode(that’s the reason to be X ain’t it) But group 1 has usage > 40km per day Group 2 has usage < 20km per day

No one wants the batter worries so we all want to go for the battery subscription model, the problem here though lies that both group of users are paying the same subscription, which for the group 2 user makes no sense.

Why wont ather come up with base battery subscription based on the user profiles. Say you had like X rs/month for users less than 5k Kms a year, Y rs /month for users with < 10k Kms per year and Z rs /month for anything greater.

Even if the user was paying X rs per month, but if the battery did come for replacement and he fell into the second band he can just pay the difference amount in subscription over the months to avail the warranty.

This makes it accessible and sensible to all users.

B. Why can’t all the data related features like ride statics and sensor data you need to improve the vehicle be synced with users phone and only the anomolies from normal be sent back to ather.( You pay for data for you phone, your home internet and again 400 per month which is 50k for your scooter? This to me the biggest pain point. Software support should not be charged heck 10k phones get it for couple of years charging 400pm for a 1L scooter is a crime).

You charging for the grid and service palms are convenient for a particular group of users, which brings to point C.

C. Battery worry relief is something we all need, so that should be the base subscription and the rest ( the grid and service) add ons.

This makes the scooter plus or pro sensible for even the low usage group.

Let me know Athers view on this.

1 Like
21

The 450 Plus and 450X have been designed to offer different features and performance levels notwithstanding the amount of usage. However, if you think that the monthly subscription cost doesn’t make sense for your light usage, you can choose to buy the vehicle upfront at ₹149000 or ₹159000. With light usage, your battery degradation is likely to be minimal, and the usable battery life would be longer than that of a heavy usage scenario. It anyway comes with a warranty of 3 years, but the battery has been built to last much longer, so you won’t have to worry about replacement for several years.

The monthly fee that we ask to pay for connectivity is not just for the data usage, but for also for supporting future development of new features and improvements, and data pipeline and storage costs. You can choose not to opt for any subscription plan, and you’ll be able to get critical fixes installed.

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23

@abhishek.balaji Does Ather have a plan to update it’s battery pack for Ather 450X in future which will give better range in single charge. Because with time, there must be development in the battery segment. Those who will go for subscription model, they must want these high capacity battery packs to be replaced in their 450X at the time when the performance of the present battery pack will go down below 80%?

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24

I think it won’t be relevant to answer this right now. Since we don’t know what will be the scene in the battery tech world in 3-4 yrs when the first 450X will need the battery. I think you’ll get an idea about what will happen to the battery :battery: in the 450X when ather replaces the first 450 Battery. From what Tarun said, it’s unlikely that our 450 will get the same battery that the scooter came with. All this being said. By the time your scooter actually reaches 80% SOH which will be well over ODO 50000Km there will be new platforms that ather would have launched and in my opinion I think ather’s batteries are designed to last the life of the scooter itself for a moderate user.

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25

This is something I believe every EV owner MUST read:

Summary: Ather owners don’t need to worry about battery degradation, and the Ather Team does not need to bring back battery subscription in the near future :slight_smile:

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26

Anyone knows what is the True Range for Ather 450. I’m assuming that is actually the Eco Range which comes out to 75Km. Correct me, if I’m wrong.

In that case, isn’t it odd Ather 450 plus with better specifications has got lesser True range of 70Km. What am I missing here.

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27

It really is quite odd. Especially since it’s 11Kg lighter and if they fit a lesser capacity battery, maybe even lighter.

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28

I HIGHLY doubt this. The battery would have degraded by a lot by then and nobody will pay you what the scooter is worth. As Ather says, calendar ageing is much stronger than odo ageing, so basically use the scooter as much as you want as soon as you can :stuck_out_tongue:

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29

True, I was just kidding. It is not like a mobile where battery replacement is not so expensive (not for Apple phones though)

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30

Not sure where you heard this, but it’s not true. Wherever I have researched, a lithium ion battery’s degradation is mainly due to charge and discharge cycles(odo ageing). Calendar aging definitely takes toll on the battery too but it isn’t as strong as cycle life. A lithium battery can be stored for many months without using at 40-50% charge without much issues, the issues come when store them at fully charged or fully discharged state.

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31

I have heard about the impact on calendar aging what @Suraj_madhu said in few Ather meets including a latest tweet few days back replying to Arun Bhat.

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32

I was in the same dilemma @sumanth1998 Im not an expert, but when the company itself states this. I believed them. If someone here knows the whole picture about the degradation with some real research to back it, do share. Nowhere did I see calendar ageing to have such a big impact as Ather or some other people have recently stated. But I want to believe that they know what they’re talking about. Maybe someone from the Ather team can help us out here. And to add to what you said @sumanth1998 I bought an old iphone 6 last year in 2019 That’s a good 3 years from its production and the battery health was at 100% when I got it, maybe because we go through much more charge cycles on our phones, that the ageing by cycles used is more of a factor than calendar ageing

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33

The only thing which can help us here is time, we have to see how the ather 450 batteries age, while ather claims this, other ev batteries have proven to age more based on how much they’ve driven. Will have to wait and see.

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34

True. But I think I understand what Ather meant in their tweet, basically Ather has an oversized battery, and so going through charging cycles will degrade the battery but not nearly as much as we expect it to considering, all the experience we have comes from smartphone batteries which use 100% capacity. So with more charge cycles also there isn’t s huge affect on the health. So athers battery negates the affect of degradation(to an extent) by charging and discharging this way. And that maybe makes the calendar ageing a bit more important in this case. Also in the last 8 months. There have been times where my Ather has gone through 2-3 charge cycles and not moved an inch😅, in which case the ODO isn’t a good representation of the degradation. And maybe Ather is basing it’s claims of degradation by age, on tests done on Ather’s battery and not lithium ion batteries in general. Source -https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/why_mobile_phone_batteries_do_not_last_as_long_as_an_ev_battery and a little birdie

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35

After 3 years what is the battery percent normally and what about if degraded , what is the exchange possibility in case want to change the battery after 3 years ,

36

No owner has had the scooter fo 3 years. Just over 2 years since the first owners got their scooters. A few have crossed the 20k mark and very few the 25k Km mark. But I think 3 years would put the battery anywhere between 85-95% depending on how you’ve used it.

Idk what you mean by this. But if you mean, replacement. To genuinely won’t need a replacement in 3 yrs. Maybe in 5 yrs at the very minimum you might need a change and that could cost somehwere around 30-40k at the time to get the battery we have now. But by then the technology would be better and we’d get much more dense batteries for our scooters. And so the cost is just something we have to wait and see.

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37

Thank you bro :blush: , can you give me your number

1 Like