Ather One and Subscriptions

I am really surprised (in a positive way). People (potential customers) here are analyzing everything in detail. In how many ways Ather team members try to justify (camouflage) their costs or strategy people are clever enough to understand it.

First of all Ather really did good at solving few EV problems.

  1. Looks
  2. Performance
  3. Reliability

But they have miserably failed at solving other important problems

  1. Range
  2. Selling price of a unit.

Also they brought more problems in EV

  1. Unnecessary features in a scooter - Features are good but not really make sense for 60KM+ range scooter
  2. Continuous maintenance cost in terms of subscription plans. EVs supposed to be maintenance free owing to Battery replacement cost. Ather says battery needs to be replaced after 50000 KM. even if it costs 25000 INR after 5 years we are still paying 5000 INR per year towards maintenance which is comparable to any ICE scooter . So only advantage left to encourage to shift to Ather EV is less fuel cost. But when we are forced to take up at least connected services then this advantage vanishes. Remember all this is after you pay ~65000 INR extra.

Final words.

  1. Ather is a scooter company and you should concentrate more on solving mobility problems like range. It is good to have IT enabled features but not at the exorbitant cost. Incidentally Indians are tech savvy and they can understand real software costs very well. Better you make all the connected service costs, OTA update costs part of the product price. Absolutely zero maintenance cost.

  2. This is very important - why you are expecting a customer to pay for the betterment of your future products?

  3. If you have figured it out cost is the biggest problem. What is stopping you from mass production and reduce the cost? Ather Grid? why we need Grid? Low range? then solve this first…
    We can reduce the dependency on the charging station to less than 5 % if we really have a good range (~100 km per charge in power mode)

  4. You are spending more resources on features but that doesn’t give you more orders unless you solve range and cost. But as soon as you solve these two and get large orders the existing big players take it to the next level. I believe Honda, Bajaj, Hero, TVS, Suzuki, Yamaha are already having better EV products than you but they are waiting for the demand to grow for mass production. By the time they enter your features may help you get the customers but these features should come at a cost of ~ 10000 INR to 15000 INR extra unlike 60000 INR.

P.S. I have booked my Ather 450 and waiting for it.

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You can either have a tight-knit eco system like how apple does for its products, this enables a unified experience to all customers.

Or you can have an all open platform like Android, where OEMs are at will to customise and tailor user experience.

It’s a tight line, and I believe Ather is trying to offer an experience to the user rather than just a bike.

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Apple uses its own custom pentalobe screws for God’s sake so that other people can’t easily repair. Vertically integrated seems to imply unnecessary expense and the argument that it provides quality is not convincing to me. I want Ather to be more repairable, and as transparent as possible and not have to pay for software updates. An unhackable uncustomizable Ather is very unappealing.

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When the likes of Honda, Suzuki, Bajaj come out with a viable alternatives in the same segment, competition will force Ather to re-look at its subscription model.

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This is great part. Cost of AtherOne is not correct. They should clearly break it into essential + AMC model - AMC being optional. Why pay back for charging? Then collect it back as AtherOne charges? Let users pay what they want? One should aim to get to profitability more transparently - for example lease the battery, like Mahindra does on e2o! Still the overall cost is cheaper than shelling out for petrol + oil changes

2 posts were split to a new topic: Can I not take any subscription after a free subscription period is over?

not at all… the internet connectivity on the bike will stop but it wont stop you from using it indefinitely !

We will be charged anyway for vehicle service if we take Ather Connect or Ather Charge plans. We won’t be reimbursed for electricity consumption with Ather Connect and Ather Service plans.

Only major thing missing for me will be syncing with mobile app and ride statistics. In my opinion, Ather should provide syncing for free. They can continue to charge

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I meant to add “They can continue to charge for on-board navigation, RSA, etc…”

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Nice idea…But the SIM and the data is the only communication channel. Without any subscription (and hence data connection), this communication channel will be cut and syncing may also be not possible. This is where Bluetooth is missed. Hope it in comes in future Ather models.

Otherwise for now, one more subscription plan, say for example, “Ather sync” should be introduced which allows only data for syncing with the app. That would be the cheapest (or bundled with the scooter) of all subscription plans :slight_smile:

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True… The basic plan should be cheap enough for everyone to subscribe to. Ather Connect plan should come down to 1500/year. Because we don’t have any option like buying our own SIM or connecting thru Bluetooth.

If it’s cheap enough, most people will subscribe to. It will scale enough for Ather to leverage by huge numbers.

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I really don’t mind paying for the Ather one plan at 8400/year + GST. I will tell you why. You will be paying at least 300 rupees for petrol every week. So 300x4x12 that is 14400/year and maintenance. So at least on an average you will be spending around 16-17k per year. I would take the Ather one subscription blindly over this.

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But the issue here is Petrol scooters are much cheaper (Activa 125 or Ntorq for ~Rs 75,000) than Ather 450 (~Rs 125,000). While the electric ones cost higher than petrol initially the expectation is that overall costs over a period of time (3 or 5 years) will be mostly same as the electricity is much cheaper compared to petrol.

I am OK with Ather having different subscription options at different prices and features. But they should provide syncing with mobile as its a very basic thing without subscription.

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Everyone’s usage is different. So having different plans is good. Ather did that already with our feedback.

Fuel reimbursement is not really a big benefit. Because either you reimburse the cost for you pay bescom directly.

Usage of charge grid also will be very less for most people.

The only big miss will be connectivity. I request Ather should reduce the Basic plan price and leverage higher volumes

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Comparison with petrol vehicle is futile. Don’t forget that the Lithium Ion battery pack has a fixed life. After that you need to replace it. Factor in the coat of replacement divided by average no. of years it lasted. You may find your savings calculator myth busted. Any petrol two wheeler would be more economical than owning any current day EV, until the Lithium battery price drops. However the trend of price of Lithium batteries has been continuously been one moving upwards.

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I hope you meant battery price trend going down

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Check out 5Y trend of Lithium (https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium). See which countries produce Lithium ore, which countries manufacture batteries out of raw Lithium, their trade policies. Then read (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium), which says:
According to the Handbook of Lithium and Natural Calcium , "Lithium is a comparatively rare element, although it is found in many rocks and some brines, but always in very low concentrations.

What does that say about the likely direction in which Lithium battery prices are going to head in future, as demand (especially from EVs) sky-rocket ?

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Point I was trying to make is, that those purchasing EV vehicles to save on running cost, may have some unpleasant surprise in store. EV’s are a lot more fun to drive, due to their smoothness, easier manuverability, easier parking, sometimes preferential parking in malls/offices, ability to refuel at home (which petrol/diesel vehicles hardly have), help reduce pollution (good for humanity and themselves once enough EVs are on road, and petrol/diesel vehicle density drops in comparison), and the “cool” factor.

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Makes sense. We say we are going “green” by adopting EVs, but where is the electricity coming from?
Majority of electricity production is from coal mines. These mines dump lot of pollutants into air. Well, some might say India is adopting solar… Again the percentage is very less. All in all, we have to think twice before we say go “green” :wink:

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Source of energy is still not clean… We should hope that it improves gradually from Majoriry Coal to Majority Clean (Solar, Windmill etc…)

Until then zero Emission is guaranteed though.