Yet another meet…yet another nicely arranged event!
The difference this time was except some 6 of us, all were new owners. The crowd was small but the enthusiasm, the excitement, the apprehensions, the questions were not.There were around 35 scooters in total that Attended the event.
Thirty beauty
I left home at 08:30 hoping to reach the venue by 09:30 to 09:45. Thanks to the Cold Sunday weather, the roads were literally empty, I reached the location at 09:10. Since the event was at 10:00, I was the first person to actually reach there. It was fun and the below snip from the ridestat shows that
Gowheee!
After registrations, the event started with @Saurabh_Sharma welcoming all the new owners.
The youngest…
…and the rest
He followed it up by the first major announcement. The free charging at public Athergrid is extended by another 3 months. So till next financial year, people need not worry about it.
Keep on charging
It was then time for some numbers. The collective distance covered by all athers till November has now reached 40,00,000kms
Then the comparison of how Bengaluru and Chennai rides was shown. The record for highest number of kms on a single charge remains with Bengaluru at 119kms. Once peoplelearn more about their vehicles, with Chennai’s flat lands I expect someone to break it soon though.
How does the two cities compare?
Then regarding the charging, Saurabh told that ghe favourite charging time for most users is between 18:00 to 22:00. It was surprising to me and he told that even Ather was surprised to see this.
Charging times
It was later my turn, as an owner-moderator of the Forum, to speak about the forum navigation and best practices on the Forum. @raghav.srinivasan followed me with details of the FAQ section and community rides
This was when I got to announce the next initiative by Ather…the Community Charger. Ather has provided @rajeshkav, @raghav.srinivasan and me with a portable charger each. This will be charger for the community that can be used by anyone with a request to us. The request has to be placed on the forum and can be used for long rides, emergencies or community rides for example and duly returned back to the host. We’ll soon make a forum topic for the same.
Then the announcement of the next community ride happened. It’ll take place on 15th December from Ather space in Indiranagar to Patel’s Inn in RT nagar. It’s a distance of around 10kms. But the exact route will be communicated later after permission formalities from authorities will be completed. I was happy that I can see many Athers together, only after I came home, did I realise that I’ll not be in station next weekend.
Then couple of selected and invited owners @AnaghDeshpande and @chethan.bn spoke about their experiences so far.
Ownerspeak-Chethan
Ownerspeak-Anagh
After this @gandharv.bakshi gave us a peek into the upcoming changes in the upcoming OTA update. Among bug fixes and stability updates, one update that I liked was that the forum will be integrated with the Ather App. What I didn’t like however was that I’ve to wait for more time for that elusive dark mode.
Saurabh later showed couple of nice how-to-do videos like how to use the park assist, how to do the OTA update.
It was then time for Q&A session where all users got answers for their questions from the Ather team and other owners.
This was followed by lunch and candid chat where all users got to know about each other at a more personal level. Meantime, people who had issues with their scooters got it checked with service team present in the location. By 2pm I left home. It was nice to meet known faces again and to know new faces. It also was a nice opportunity to link faces and names to cryptic forum handles I took some tired-of-answering cards and couple of Ather laptop stickers on my way out.
Owner-Accesories
Reflections
Unfortunately I’ll be unable to join the community ride next Sunday. However My Ather might still make it. With Patel’s Inn having a go karting track, I hope I get to see some nice pictures