21700 Li cells are not as mainstream as 18650. The advantages are many, but the price per cell is still higher. So ₹40k is not to be expected on the 450x pack, not adding other enhancements if any, to count.
65kms on a 450 is definitely comfortably achievable.
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Ex 450 could justify the new ather.
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Even now i am suggesting ather team
Plan to expanding 450 to more cities itself will be much much better to capture to market share…and compitative too
Hi @raghav.srinivasan,
I too own a 450. And I’m worried about the pricing too. But additional cost for pro makes sense ina way, they put additional stress to the battery and motor. Ather might use this additional 10k as insurance for warranty replacements
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ready to pay some decent amount for upgrade but not like Ather 450x price.
Ok guys, quick take on my views. @Ather.Team drops a huge amount (₹) on R&D and since I’m in the research field, i know how it looks like and how it burns a crater in your pocket. They have to meet ends. Honestly, the current plan is a hard pill to swallow, especially for users like me who take an average 200 km per month (₹ 600 in petrol or so) by scooter. Even though a lot of customers can use to the current plans and can break even with daily travel (business cases). I have a few suggestions and hopefully @Ather.Team have these already in their spreadsheets.
- Give a per kilometre plan, like mileage. This will put things in perspective to the medium/short range users vs petol charges Yes, go ahead and charge a premium here, so we have a “low mileage high power” subscription and economy subscription.
- Since Ather is not a scooter but am experience, there should be occassional hardware upgrades during service, covered under the plan or done with upgrade free. Just like paying for TPMS and super helmet, maybe add pillion footrest upgrade, USB charger upgrade, etc. Dual channel ABS, better mirrors, etc should come as a free upgrade soon. (Please don’t charge too much for the pillion footrest, or center stand mods because i right now asked you not to.
) - Software and apps should be open. You are not going to regret it, and you’ll soon have another family taking care of you. Sure do limit userspace but never let us root or mod. I love when my phone bricks while experimenting, but my family will not like it if the kernel panics while overtaking a truck or ANR strikes upward a bridge.
- Give incentives to people who refer others in, make editor’s choice apps, reach milestones, etc. You know what I’m saying.
- Now that this thread is here, others can continue below. (I’m too tired to think)
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Ather’s 450 strategy was honestly the best.
It gave the owner a peace of mind & they were only asking the price for the service the user is definitely gonna use(Charging, maintenance,RSA etc)
That’s the thing, people are ready to pay for the service they’re gonna use that’s why nobody objected the 450 subscription schemes.
The problem with 450x subscriptions are they’re asking a fee for the things a user might not use. For example not everyone pay 1600 or 2000 per month on fuel expenses. So if someone is not spending that much on fuel obviously means he travel short on daily basis and might not have to worry on battery degradation that much. So the idea of subscription completely failed there for light users.
What i suggest is decrease the subscription plan to 1000 per month and offer a battery replacement every three years at much lowest price possible. I’m sure the Battery can last enough for 3yrs and with this 1000 per month subscription user have to pay way less to replace the battery every 3 yrs.
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Very good suggestions. I hope Ather reviews the user suggestions and comes up with plans that are suitable for a wider range of users. I understand that Ather needs to be profitable and their investors were probably getting itchy, but it is still a relatively new startup and they need to first build the market and invest in factories and infrastructure before they can move on to worrying about profit margins.
Besides, increasing prices will not be enough to turn a profit if the volumes fall off precipitously.
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Sure do! They are not giants who think “ok, 450x did not fare well. Let us scrap it and focus on the other bikes we were making”, because they don’t have another bike (450 is almost the same). Hence they’ll surely re-strategize and give us something that’ll go with the need of the masses too, like seen in the forum. Just give @Ather.Team time to do the work.
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I still don’t understand since the dashboard has wifi, bluetooth, 8gb on board storage why do I even need to pay for data. I agree, I need to pay for OTA updates but why can’t that be ad-hoc. I am more than willing to:
- Use my phone’s hotspot to navigate.
- If #1 is unreliable, I would just download my city map offline and let google maps do the trick.
Why not just give the scooter for 149k plus whatever and let the owner do the math if the convenience or lack of it is worth paying additional money or not.
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I think you can do without the data plan. Only you won’t get the updates maybe, if the maps has offline data. That’s a question we have to ask @ather.team.
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I have conveyed this on multiple threads and on twitter and probably going to email them next. I haven’t heard back yet but theoretically it is do-able. Unless, they are adamant on charging for data.
P.S. I am fine paying on an ad-hoc basis for OTA updates / upgrades.
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I think the updates can be flashed during service.
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I see some tweets from Ather that they are working out on details and as tarun update as well they are coming up with details on plans and pricing , So i would urge everyone out there to hold on the cancellations if you can and let Ather come up with a sensible pricing model. If Ather still sucks at their revised pricing you have the customer care number…
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Hang on to the last!
I remember reading somewhere that the Ather connect plan is mandatory. If you are on the subscription plan, I think the Ather connect plan comes built in, but if you have bought the scooter outright, the data plan is compulsory for getting the OTAs.
I think that more than the end user, it is Ather that needs access to the user data, since they depend a lot on analyzing user data for making improvements to the 450 & 450x. So ideally the data should be free and included in the purchase price, but unfortunately, it is not.
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Couple of alternatives to this:
- Do it like an mi band or apple watch uploads data to the cloud. How? Using bluetooth (the dashboard already has v5.0). With latest bluetooth standards, this transfer is quicker and the data size will be very minimal.
Sync the scooter with your phone’s app and let your phone handle sending the data back to Ather Please note, this was not possible earlier but thanks to latest dashboard it certainly is a possibility. - As stated earlier, use Wi-Fi ( again, latest dashboard has it). They say what’s a smartphone without data. We say, here’s WiFi use as much data as you want.
Feel free to add if I missed something.
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The Bluetooth version 5.0 is for BLE - Bluetooth Low Energy. This is not a high-speed network and will certainly not be good enough for OTA updates or using maps and data transfer through your phone. 4G LTE and 3G still offer far superior data transfer speeds.
WiFi on the dashboard is added to enable Bluetooth functions to work better and is not suited for using your mobile hotspot. Being a smart scooter, along with features such as location tracking through the app, mobile data is still necessary through the e-SIM functionality.
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@abhishek.balaji why was abs not added in 450x also ? Since 450’s wheels gets locked up easily during panic braking wouldn’t abs solve this major problem ? When already cost for product exceeded 1.5 lakh you can’t expect ABS to be absent in such high value product right ?
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