Good that Ather has finally found a solution! covering it under warranty is good but Ather should actually issue a recall and make the necessary updates. 2973 vehicles (of which many would be company owned) isn’t a huge number after all for an issue as big as this.
Hey so, if it’s not covered after 3 yrs, is it something we have to be worried about throughout its life ? Am I better off inducing it to happen now within warranty and get it sorted out and not worry about it ?
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You can still shutdown, just avoid doing it on a daily basis. Occasional shutdown when you’re not using it won’t be a problem.
We did test this scenario extensively, and the probability of this occurring is really low. As long as you follow our recommendation on using it as a vacation more, it would not occur.
It involves opening up the battery pack and modifying the BMS, which is a very time and labor-intensive process. Also, give that this is a very rare occurrence, we’ll fix it under warranty if it occurs. Do follow the recommendation of using it occasionally when not using it for extended periods of time, and the issue shouldn’t occur.
Answered above. Do follow the recommendation of using shutdown when you won’t be using the vehicle for an extended period of time, and it won’t cause any issues.
Problem is I use my scooter for a short run once a day due to covid and use it again next day same time and I’ve lost 5-7% already and if I leave it for 2 days almost 15% I never shut down now, because of that fear and in that process I’m losing range on my scooter. Nowdays on a full charge I put it back to charge with 25-30Km from the last ODO and 12-15Km range left. Effectively 40-45Km range. Which could be prevented by shutting down this also makes my scooter go through more charge cycles. Isn’t that something to consider too ?
Now that’s the thing right. After 3 yrs the probability is low but, it can happen. For example imagine after 3yrs of ownership, I decide to sell my scooter. I need to pass this on to the next owner as a defect in the battery and to follow the recommendation if he doesn’t want his battery to give way. That takes away from the value of my scooter at the time. I hope you understand how it looks. 
From an owner’s perspective and more so from a seller’s perspective, Isn’t just inducing it within warranty and getting all the time and labor intensive job on the battery pack done for free, better than having to worry about all the time? 
Idk if I’m the only one who’s thinking like this. I wouldn’t trigger it, ( cuz I’ll use it till it goes through a battery change to become better than it was when I bought it with more range) but can’t help but think about it and if I can, I think more people would think of it that way.
(Or maybe not) anyone else on the forum look at it like this?
- Yes, That is something to consider.
- No, following their recommendation is enough
- Idk what is this BMS issue
- I own the newer scooter
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Actually - every time I speak about this, I feel as much angry (for Ather not resolving it) and guilty (for wasting the energy instead of consuming)
Last year during Owners meetup - it was mentioned that once a solution is found, it will be fixed for all. Few months later, when a solution was found - the stance changed to - fix will be done when it occurs.
Subsequently, shutdown mode renamed to vacation mode.
Even when I followed up on this and even asked explicitly if the stance has been changed from fix for all → fix on demand, there was no direct answer till now.
It could be a rare occurrence but it does not give one confidence to use it. I was using shutdown literally every single day. But, since the problem was known, I have used it only 2-3 times.
During covid, the idle drain is 10x more than usage drain. But, I still don’t use it and I keep charging it every few days. I have only one scooter for my commute. And, even if there was 1% chance of this happening, I would not want to take risk by shutting it down and be without a vehicle for few days. Since Covid, my family has been ultra cautious - Cab / Auto will be the last thing I will take.
After 3 years, when Ather might have delivered 50k-100k vehicles, these 3k vehicles are just a small number - could very well have been fixed. We are not asking to fix immediately. Do it in a phased manner and align it with 4G upgrade / 5k service / 10k service…
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Sorry to say this @abhishek.balaji but the initial users were only following the guidelines given by Ather in the user manual.
The manual doesn’t say how frequent is too frequent. It just says that it is advisable to shut down the scooter when not in use for more that 5 days. And the most important point is that it says that we have to shutdown at a battery percentage above 60% (page 49 of the manual)
Whatever it was designed for, it was not communicated. And the issue came up even though the users were just following the guidelines. I’m really disappointed today with the communication today…you’ve made it appear as though it was the owners’ mistake and you are still solving it under warranty as a goodwill gesture.
There is a known issue and you supposedly have a solution today. In such a case, you’ve to troubleshoot in the affected scooters…however time intensive, however labour intensive it may be!
As @prasathvishnu told, it need not be immediate, but it has to be done.
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Battery warranty should be 8 years just like for electric cars. There are too many unknowns with battery technology and BMS hardware and software as these are still early days. Also, degradation after 3 years is not covered which is a big negative. 3 years is too low for a vehicle whether it’s 2 wheeler or 4 wheeler.
Hope the govt mandates the battery warranty for at least 6 years if not 8 years.
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Over the period of days after this Shutdown Announcement, idle battery drain is eating my brain. Main reason is that energy is simply being wasted when we DO NOT shutdown. Being Green man is most walks of my life I am genuinely concerned.
Considering one does not shutdown his vehicle, I tried to analyze this scenario with some assumption. In below calculation, only ‘idle’ scenario is considered as it is a pain point.
In above graph, 450 is charged to 100% SoC. If the vehicle is not used or even if it is used sparingly, battery drains and reaches 50% SoC in 8 days, considering conservative drain percentage of 7% a day.
Now lets take a fact that 450’s battery has a total life span of 3000 DoD (Depth of Discharge).
Above assumption is based on this post.. Considering battery is charged and discharged daily basis, battery will reach 70% of its capacity in 3 years. i.e. again conservative case of 300 DoD per year, 900 DoD for 3 years, 1800 DoD for 6 years and 2700 DoD for 9 years and 3000 DoD for 10 years (all considering linear scale)
Now, let us go back to our IDLE discharge calculation
- 8 days to reach 50% SoC, in other words 0.5 DoD is simply lost
- So, in 365 days, 22.8 DoD is lost
- In 3 years, 68.4
- In 6 years, 136.8
- In 9 years, 205.2
- in 10 years 228 DoD is lost.
In other words, 7.6% (228/3000) DoD of life of battery is simply lost in IDLE state. It simply means, we could pull at least 1 to 2 years more if the idle drain is less or zero.
So, Isn’t it worth to shutdown our 450 when it is not in use?
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Yes defintely. I’m now considering triggering my battery to have it’s stroke and Ather to fix it for free 
just because they don’t want to take the first step towards rectifying the issue because they don’t have the time and effort to do it.
As your first few thousand customers. Is this too much to ask? When you guys can give away so many man hours into designing and manufacturing the transparent panel for the series 1 cuz they trusted in you. We aren’t asking for a call back. Even slots for a few scooters every week is acceptable. If not something on the lines of the 3G sim swap. at least in our regular scheduled service… After 3 yrs, you claim that
Firstly. Your new recommendations might not have reached every owners who can be affected. And the probability of it happening after the warranty is low. But if it does. It won’t be converted. That’s trying to push over an issue that should be covered in the warranty, to tip over into the post warranty period. Also there’s nothing stopping me from repeatedly shutting down at 100% to trigger the issue and Ather has to fix it under warranty. A recommendation of type of usage cannot be a way of getting out of a warranty claim is it ? I didn’t do this math that @rajeshkav did but, this scares me a lot!
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I have a question. I don’t if it’s me driving a little more rough than usual, but, I have a feeling that cold weather in Bangalore is having an effect on my range. Usually, on sport mode I would get around 75kms without pillion and regular tyre pressures. Now, I think without any other factor changing at all, my range has dropped to around 68-70km on sport mode. Is it the cold? Please tell me it’s the cold.
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@tarun @ather Any plans to have trials with these batteries? Looks like a pretty great addition. https://yourstory.com/2020/12/startup-bharat-bhubaneswar-based-nexus-power-ev-battery-startup/amp
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Unlikely it’s just the ambient temperatures, the performance variation is something you might notice at extreme temperatures. In fact in slightly colder temperatures like how it is in Bangalore right now, the performance would be more consistent since the battery and motor have a chance to cool down quicker. It also depends on your riding style, tyre pressure etc. If you notice it consistently across rides along the same route, do reach out to the service to get it checked.
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Thanks, that was helpful. In fact since posting this, I did one of my most efficient rides ever despite having a pillion and now the range seems to be normal. I believe that about 2-week episode might have been influenced by some other factor. Maybe it was me not checking tyre pressure at the regular place.
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Just noticed something with regards to this
From an old usage report –
From this I’ve consumed about 45*850 = 38.25kW And I had consumed
51unitsTaking a 10% loss while charging. That accounts to about 46kW consumed to charge the battery. But effectively I used only 38kW That’s an 8kW loss of energy in just a month’s time. Which I’m assuming is almost entirely vampire drain since my scooter was still relatively new at the time.
@tarun I think you should start taking this vampire drain a bit more seriously for future products and for the existing customers, we aren’t even allowed to shut down our scooter at higher SOC. I really think, you guys need to sort out this issue among old 450s in a regular service at least. This doesn’t look good. To be owning a known defective battery pack which could possible fail in the future when out of warranty.
Note to moderator. The original thread seems to be closed. I understand that this is the 450X thread.
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This is a pretty glaring issue to have persisted across two generations of the product, which leads me to suspect that they either cannot or will not fix it. I’m not sure which is worse.
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According to customer care 450x can be safely shutdown even at 100% and bms issue of 450 doesn’t seems to affect it.
Hoping somebody from ather team can confirm this ?
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How to get this usage report
This is scaring me. I always shutdown my vehicle after use for the day, I can’t leave it like that without shutting it down and loose energy like this. Now I am scared about the shutdown issue with 450.
As many of you mentioned in the related 450 thread, Ather team needs to fix this BMS issue (maybe yes, in a phased manner as many of the others have suggested, but soon - I vote for the 4G upgrade time as I am not seeing my 5K KMs reach any time soon because of the WFH scenario). @ather-bubhandari @tarun @abhishek.balaji Please take this matter as the highest priority and please sort it out soon. When there’s a shutdown option, not being able to use it is definitely bad, as @Suraj_madhu said, being the first few thousand customers, it’s not too much to ask. I am worried now about shutting it down anymore, so not going to do that and waste precious energy and may even end up not being able to use my vehicle when I need it at the most, what’s the point of own transport?
P.S - I also faced a situation where my 450 was in shutdown mode for 40-45 days during the first ever lockdown in March 2020. I shut it down with ~45% battery charge. I was really shocked to see 19% battery charge when I switched it ON after 45 days of shutdown mode. I immediately called up Ather service, they told me to use my vehicle, even if it is just for a little spin every now and then. I have been doing it ever since and I go nearly 2 weeks without using my vehicle now a days (shut down mode) and take it for a spin every 2 weeks at the least and I still see battery drain in shutdown mode, it’s definitely not huge but considerable. Not sure if anyone else has noticed this.
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This is only a problem if you own a 450 that was delivered prior to Sep 2019. The BMS issue (actually one itsy bitsy resistor) was permanently fixed in battery packs 450s delivered post that period.
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