Ask Us Anything on Atherstack and Ather Connect

[ryan (Ryan Shroff)]

@SidG26

Not a big deal but we’re missing boot-up sound and splash screen. Also the Series 1 accents. Any plans to bring them back? Would be a cool touch.

So are we! These cute little touches are lower on the priority list for now, but we’ll pass this feedback along to the industrial design team.

[ryan (Ryan Shroff)]

@Sevenwitht

Could we make the font and visuals bigger for easily visiblity ?

We will look into this, but can’t promise anything given the already limited real estate we have on the dashboard screens.

[srivatsan.subbarayan]

@anandhupresannan

Why did you removed the trip B and real time efficiency option from the dashboard, if possible please bring that facility back

Based on user feedback, a lot of people did not use trip b too frequently - we will look into it

[srivatsan.subbarayan]

@srivatsabs24

Can we expect old U.I as optional interface? It was best on gen 2 450x new Ather stack seems to lag too much. I guess old interface has light requirements compared to heavier Ather stack or expect to solve lagging soon?

We have noticed that the new UI is resource heavy specially on our gen 2 hardware which has lower RAM - we are working on making a more improving it. We are not considering a move back to the old UI right now.

[srivatsan.subbarayan]

@anandhupresannan

There is a lag or missing in the Ather when we turn on indicators. Sometimes even if we are on the indicator it is not turning on. Need to do the same action one more time. Is it a dashboard software issue or any issue with the switches

Although in most cases the lag should be minimal, but there are a few corner case scenarios which can cause the lag to build up - we are working on resolving this

[ryan (Ryan Shroff)]

@anandhupresannan

If we are on map, we cannot see the current ride meter or the odometer, if you can add that to the side pannel while riding on the map it will be good

We’ve received this feedback a few times. We’ll look into the feasibility of this with the current UI.

[srivatsabs24 (SRIVATSA BS)]

So can we expect regen revamp to be rolled out to gen2 users? Since current regen is practically unchanged from 450 gen1. And Can you please add Series 1 animation like it was in previous U.I it was nice little touch which I missing with latest Atherstack.

[sripriya.nellore (Sripriya GN)]

@pratham.shetty

The send to scooter feature is mostly a miss, and rarely do I see it work; no matter how many times i reset the scooter or reinstall the app/ clear cache/data of the app. Sometimes I see the pop up while I am driving(15-20 min after I sent it to the scooter, even if signal strength is full). Is there any future fix/ work going on in the background?

Thanks for sharing the feedback. We had started measuring the time lag for send to scooter but will relook at it to see if the pattern has changed recently, and work on the fix.

[sripriya.nellore (Sripriya GN)]

@switchtoshankar

Can you share insights into the data-driven approach of Ather and how data collected is utilized to enhance the user experience and drive continuous improvements in the ecosystem?

The data is used broadly for the following categories of use cases:

• Building data based products and features for the Ather owners. For e.g. Ride stats which is now evolving into RideStories with a lot of rich pattern analysis and insights data or predicting batter charge consumption for a particular ride in trip planner and to measure if a trip is feasible or not- both of these are highly used by many Ather owners and also we are the first in 2w industry globally.
• For R&D to design better specs for our vehicles. Example would be by measuring how often brakes are used helps our team define quality specs that can last over 10 years and so on. This is different from traditional automotive design where expertise and intuition would be used to define these specs. Those are still required but combining with data significantly improves the design process, specially where a lot of guesswork is involved.
• For predictive diagnostics and remote diagnostics- here again we have fairly advanced models and algorithms that makes our fleet much safer as we have the ability to predict issues and recall specific vehicles or diagnose issues remotely to send a fix via OTA.

[kumar.hany1994 (Hany Kumar)]

These notifications wouldn’t not distract user while riding Ather? As per mentioned in previous question.

[ryan (Ryan Shroff)]

@syed.ishtiaq.apple

One thing we really miss was PPL really loved the idea of realtime efficiency it literally shows u how much ur burning power of wings do Show how much u have but it’s clearly missing the feature of how well can u accelerate with having a good efficiency any clues of it making a comeback in stack 5.8 or 5.9 ??

Answered the real time efficiency vs wings of power above. Please do check that one out.

@syed.ishtiaq.apple

also I had this crazy idea we have different modes each mode is different form other So why not implement this When ur in eco mode it should display the efficiency in realtime and when ur in sports mode or warp mode it should display the temperature of moter and battery pack If this possible in future??

Re: the second point, the effort vs customer benefit is not exactly proportional here. We do also want you to focus on the joy of the ride, and not burden your brain with pesky details like temperature while warping. Leave it to us to manage things like temperature fluctuations

@syed.ishtiaq.apple

Also grste work on solving the bugs I can say it’s really smooth now the experience is really really good Fantastic job team

Thanks for the kind words. We will continue to improve and optimise.

[ryan (Ryan Shroff)]

@pdhananjaypatil

A widget for guide-me home lights would be amazing as well as more efficient way to activate and deactivate doesn’t need to be web based could just be Bluetooth type of solution for near vicinity would do.

Just curious - any reason why you would want to be able to toggle it on/off situationally vs. just leaving it on permanently?

[ryan (Ryan Shroff)]

@kumar.hany1994

These notifications wouldn’t not distract user while riding Ather? As per mentioned in previous question.

Not if we design the interface extremely well

[Devi (Devi Lakshmikanthan)]

@sripriya.nellore @ryan care to respond to this? It as 13 upvotes as of now.

[ryan (Ryan Shroff)]

@sangamesha.ma

Why vehicle will reboot automatically two to three times in a day

This is something that we are looking into - we have identified a few causes for it and are actively working on it, you should start to see an improvement in your experience.

[kratosnov2]

Can we expect upgrade option for 450+ to 450X for Extra mileage? Since we all know 450+ Is 450X.

[sripriya.nellore (Sripriya GN)]

@kumar.hany1994

These notifications wouldn’t not distract user while riding Ather? As per mentioned in previous question.

That’s a good question! No, we designed the experience so that these notifications can only be read when the vehicle is stationary, like at a signal.

[sripriya.nellore (Sripriya GN)]

@Devi

The Ather Connect app and software on the scooter have many bugs. The pest control team seems to introduce more bugs than they fix.

The fact that there is a recurring cost involved in providing data connection to the vehicles does not mean that Ather Energy should charge for buggy software. In fact, it is quite the opposite. If Ather Energy wants to charge for the Ather Connect subscription, they should first make sure that the software is bug-free and that it provides a good user experience. Otherwise, they will simply be alienating their customers and driving them away from the brand. To be frank Ather connect is not worth the money.

I have the following questions for Ather Energy:

1. Why don’t you open the Wi-Fi module in all the scooters and completely ditch the mobile network connection? There are offline maps and open street maps available.
2. Why don’t you provide 4 to 5 years of software updates for your vehicles, like mobile companies do for devices that cost ₹20,000?
3. Why does the Ather app require permission to access notifications, contacts, etc., in order to work? This is unnecessary unless someone wants to use Bluetooth to get call alerts.
4. When will the Bluetooth issue be fixed? There are smart bands available for ₹1000 that connect to mobile devices without any issues and transfer data, call alerts, etc. Why can’t the Ather scooter do the same?
5. Why are you removing the existing features from the scooter, even when it is used by most of the people like real time efficiency or the 2nd trip meter.

We made Ather Connect free around 2 years ago in order to mature the product, as well as bring it to a minimum cost structure. We have made good strides on both aspects though there is always more we can do. Ather Connect, like any product is not charged just because there is recurring cost; it is charged because it is of value. On that, agree with you that the experience needs to be good for the product to be useful. We also understand that most vehicles don’t have these features and thus, not all users have a need for these features. That’s why it is charged as an optional subscription.

On the other questions:

• WiFi is far more unstable than mobile network connection- the experience would take a massive hit and a ton of work needs to be done on it. Using WiFi as a fall-back would make more sense than replacing it with the more reliable 4G connectivity. There is a more detailed answer to this in another post that I would encourage you to go through. There are also certain restrictions on what we can or can’t use with maps. All the features available to consumers on the mobile app maps is not available to businesses. Open street maps means building our own maps- while it can always be explored, nobody beats Google today in terms of the data coverage that they have.
• Software updates are being provided. If your question is specific to Gen 1 450, most are on 2G which makes OTA nearly impossible. There was an option to upgrade to 3G, but most customers chose to go for a model upgrade itself which we offered. Even mobile companies are unable to support phones on 2G.
• App requires permissions strictly for the features that are implemented as defined by the platform- Android or iOS. We don’t ask for permissions for any other data if there isn’t a feature that needs it. Having said that, we are looking into feasibility of building a flow where permissions are asked only when a feature is being used (e.g. on bluetooth pairing).
• Feedback on bluetooth is noted and the teams have been working on it to continuously improve it. One difference to note between a Rs. 1000 smart band is that they connect to mobile devices which are certified. Our dashboard is on Android opensource and not certified by Google (as Google hasn’t designed Android for 2W)- so that makes it different from a tech implementation compared to pairing with a mobile phone. We have to build all the libraries ourselves that is otherwise offered by the mobile platforms.

Overall, we have our work cut out for us. These are good questions and I am glad you asked them.

[dattaram.gawas1 (Dattaram Gawas)]

How about enabling speakers for Google maps navigation audio, music playback, calls and voice assistant?

[HarshaVardhan]

@sripriya.nellore

specific to Gen 1 450, most are on 2G which makes OTA nearly impossible. There was an option to upgrade to 3G, but most customers chose to go for a model upgrade itself which we offered. Even mobile companies are unable to support phones on 2G.

Giving 2G as a reason is not fair, if Ather really intends to send feature updates they can push OTA and people with 3G dongle can install using OTA and others will get it updated in service centers