Some option will be available, however, we’re checking the technical and finacial feasibility of these upgrades. It won’t make sense if the upgrades cost more than what you’d have to pay to exchange your 450 for a 450X. We’ll announce the options soon, over the next few months.
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@abhishek.balaji… I had posted this way before the ama events and before the clarified structure of the subscriptions were announced😂… Thank you… It makes sense much better now after all the doubts were clarified
Great, that’s good to hear…
Now, should I cancel my current 450X order or keep it active until then?
I think ather dont want to comment on this. I do agree that, Ather is trying to suck customers in name of subsciption. They will understand one day that they are trying to sell scooters to people in India not to america. Hope everybody read the release of Nexon car, MG car and yet to release electric car. Even cars which give a mileage of 200km/charge costs only 7-8lakhs without any subscription charges.Ather team told that they incur high loss with selling of Ather 450. But they did understand that they are going to even more loss and lose market with release of high funda scooter like Ather 450x. @Ather.Team @abhishek.balaji
It will last 8-9 years, if you’re a light user. In this case, it would make more sense to go for the upfront purchase option rather than the subscription. We call them performance packs, since they assure consistent performance throughout the lifetime. You won’t have to wait for the battery pack to degrade to a state where the performance and range become unsuable. If the battery health dips below 80%, we replace it and your scooter performs as new 
To answer the comparisons with tesla and 4 wheeler EVs, they have a massive battery pack and much longer range. When you have longer range in EV cars like the tesla, they’re less likely to be charged and discharged completely. This increases the life of the battery and hence are able to provide the warranty.
There are also two different kinds of warranty - warranty against failure and against reduced capacity. Further, they’re able to offer this kind of warranty because they have a large buffer between the installed capacity and the usable capacity.
While the battery pack of the 450 and 450X have similar buffers, they are nowhere close to the buffer found in much larger battery packs. The Ather 450 and 450X are also designed to be used within city and for daily commute, so you’re more likely to discharge and charge completely.
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Bluetooth access along with the other hardware, fast charging speed, range etc is not just about enabling the hardware, but there’s a lot of software development and maintenance costs that go into it. Today, both the Plus and Pro have the same hardware, and the subscription plan allows you the flexibility of choosing either based on your usage. Enabling higher torque, more range, and more power on the scooter does make an impact on the battery, even if it’s minor, and this has an impact on the cost.
In the future, if there’s enough demand for the Plus variant, we’ll consider differential hardware between the Plus and Pro, to further drive down costs. This practice is actually pretty common in the auto industry.
That is certainly not the intention. At this point, the hardware for both the Plus and Pro are the same, since it simplifies production. In the future, if there’s enough demand for the Plus variant, we’ll consider having hardware differences to further drive down costs. It’s pretty common in the auto industry especially, where the top end variant has all the features, and there are subsequent variants created with minor hardware differences, and software controlling features. This enables OEMs to streamline manufacturing and support.
Further, if you go for the subscription performance packs, you have the flexibility to pay for the features you use.
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Here is a story from future happening in 2096: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html The story was written in 1997 by Richard Stallman. The Ather 450X subscription plan has some resemblance to that story!
Took some time to get to this question, but responded here 
The battery pack for the 450 and 450X resides in under the footboard, where the center stand would be fixed. This causes a lot of issues structurally and is dangerous to have the center stand so close to the battery pack. This warrants a major rework of the frame, which was not feasible in this model. The design team did try.
However, there’s overwhelming feedback on the center stand, and it’s being evaluated for future models.
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Not at all. You can choose to buy the scooter at the upfront price, at 1.5L or 1.6L, depending on the variant. This gets you the regular battery warranty at 3 years, unlimited kms. If your battery capacity dips below 70% in the 3 years, you get it replaced for free.
If you don’t want that, you can buy the scooter at 99k, but choose to pay for the battery monthly. This gives you unlimited warranty, which means, you don’t need to wait for the battery to dip to 70% to get a replacment. Anytime it dips below 80%, we’ll swap it out with a new one before you feel any degrdation in range or performance. This ensures you have consistent performance throughout, without worrying about keeping the battery state healthy or modearating your usage.
Between the Tesla Model S and Model 3, there was a Model X. 
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Is there any chance of having a new set of rear view mirrors for the 450X considering that the current ones aren’t necessarily the best for on-road commute? And also seeing as to how the 450X is still in the beta stages maybe a change can be done with respect to the mirrors before they are rolled into full production.
Hehe… Does this mean a model 3 type scooter is coming next? 
… That would be great
Hey @darthveda,
+1 on your username
The actual price of the Ather 450 would be much much higher if we were to even break-even on the cost at which we produce it. We have been selling it at that price point because we wanted to create a market for EVs. And we can assure you that no one can make a scooter that has the specs of the Ather 450 at a cost that will justify its old price of 1.13 Lacs (On Road Bengaluru). If you observe, recently launched EV Scooters from the likes of Bajaj & TVS have far lower specs but the same price as that of the existing Ather 450. And even on that they are making losses!
Hence, the 1 lakh price of 450 was an artificially maintained price and it had to go up for it to become sustainable for us. And more importantly, for the market to be anchored properly. Basically, if we kept selling one of the best scooters in the country (perhaps in the world) at such a low price, how would others price their lower-spec but decent EV scooters any higher?
Even 450X has been priced just about at the point where we will barely break - that too if we sell a loooooottttt… of vehicles next year. So, despite our best efforts and best interest, we could not have prices the 450X any lower. We could only try to make it more accessible to as many people as possible - which is what we tried to do with the subscription model.
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Hi @lajith4u,
Subscription is not mandatory. You can purchase it upfront, and choose to not take any subscription along with it. This would mean that data services and related features would not work.
This is true for traditional OEMs, where they sell you a product and then that’s it. But the 450X is much more than that, with it’s constantly evolving nature. There are software updates every few months, that bring in new features, improvements and fixes. Apart from that, we do incur costs such as the navigation features, data storage and pipeline costs, and software development costs. it’s only fair that we ask you to pay for these as we consistently provide these services.
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Hi @ydigwal88,
85k is the upfront price in Delhi that you’d have to pay if you’re going for the subscription model. In this, 85k gets you the scooter, without the cost of the battery factored in. The monthly subscription allows you to pay the cost of the battery over time, and includes Ather Charge (with unlimited charging at Ather Grid, OTA updates, data and connectivity charges, and data storage and pipeline costs).
This post should hopefully clear up your questions: Discussions on pricing and subscriptions
Hey @thesravan,
Answered this to another question:
The actual price of the Ather 450 would be much much higher if we were to even break-even on the cost at which we produce it. We have been selling it at that price point because we wanted to create a market for EVs. And we can assure you that no one can make a scooter that has the specs of the Ather 450 at a cost that will justify its old price of 1.13 Lacs (On Road Bengaluru). If you observe, recently launched EV Scooters from the likes of Bajaj & TVS have far lower specs but the same price as that of the existing Ather 450. And even on that they are making losses!
Hence, the 1 lakh price of 450 was an artificially maintained price and it had to go up for it to become sustainable for us. And more importantly, for the market to be anchored properly. Basically, if we kept selling one of the best scooters in the country (perhaps in the world) at such a low price, how would others price their lower-spec but decent EV scooters any higher?
Even 450X has been priced just about at the point where we will barely break - that too if we sell a loooooottttt… of vehicles next year. So, despite our best efforts and best interest, we could not have prices the 450X any lower. We could only try to make it more accessible to as many people as possible - which is what we tried to do with the subscription model.
Here’s the answer for that problem.
The centre stand has to be the shape of an H.
The top two ’arms’ bolt in to the side of the frame, the bridge of the ’H’ is to the lower side of the lower arms - and you have a centre stand.
The upper arms are ’bolted to the frame with bearings for stability.
The OS itself will be locked down and we’ll take all possible security measures. That being said, this warrants a longer conversation, and I’ll try get a blog about this from our product team
Now for the GDPR-esque questions:
Android OS would have access to the hardware, but similar to current 450 dashboards, it won’t affect your riding.
We’ve written about the data points collected and how they’re used here: A Full-er Stack: Building a data pipeline inside and outside a vehicle
There’s no 3rd party access to the dashboard, so none.
Check this post for answers to all of them: Discussions on pricing and subscriptions
I’ll have to get back on this.
Similar to the 450 lease plans, exact modalities have not been finalizied. Will share details when we do.
Lithium batteries do degrade in two ways - calendar aging and usage aging. The estimate for replacement was the 450, where we guarantee that the battery pack would not go below 70% within 3 years. Even if the battery pack is at 75-80%, you’ll experience minor degradation in performance and range. The subscription pack is for those who do not want to compromise on the performance or range.
Under the subscription packs, if it dips below 80%, we install a new one for you.
More details on the differences between the two pricing models: Discussions on pricing and subscriptions
I don’t know if this was said in any of the couple hundred post since this post. But what tharun said was. With the current 450 architecture. It’s just not possible to pack a higher range battery pack. They have made it really really tight to fit the new battery in. And with the current battery tech. This could be the highest energy density that Ather can pack on the 450. If they had to put in a bigger battery they’d have to rethink the WHOLE design of the scooter. I’m sure in the future Ather will bring their other platform. To provide higher range.
This is so true. The bottom line is that very few people need a significantly higher acceleration and smarter scooter. Maybe the latter was required but that’s up for debate too.
I know tharun said this. But just wondering. If you are accelerating 0-60 in 6odd seconds, perhaps a motorcycle would be a more convenient and safer 2 wheeler to be on? So that logic is debatable. Then again. The athers seat isn’t designed to be ridden for such long distances too. Ather keeps saying that from the present customer data it’s clear that people don’t need more range right. Why is it that Ather is taking their scooters data to say this ? If people used it more than 40-50Km they wouldn’t have bought the Ather in the first place. I feel like Ather might missing out on some serious number of customers because of this. They’re a premium scooter. So they might not be looking at the quantity of scooters they sell. Then again I remember an Ather team member saying they’re making very little money on the 450X and so they’ll have to sell a LOT of 450Xs to make it work. I don’t understand how these 2 things- being a premium product and sell a LOT at the same time is going to happen.
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