That stat should be available to users on lease to determine a buy vs return decision. Not knowing that is as good as a gamble. Also another factor that is missed is temperature read out of the battery and motor that needs to be visible in some dashboard say advanced or something. So that people who care about the vehicle can go slow when thermal degradation is happening significantly…especially in hot areas such as Chennai.
Thanks Abhishek for pointing this out!
Hey Guys,
On the battery capacity remaining after degradation, the common term we use is ‘State of Health’ or ‘SoH’ of the battery pack.
While you all are right to say that this information should be available to the user and our intent is to make it available to you, we are working on algorithms to get better precision in measurement of SoH for the 450’s battery pack. Which will take some more time.
Any battery will always show 100% SoC regardless of the capacity remaining, as that measurement is based on the voltage of the battery pack. Assuming the battery degrades to 80% in 5 years, it shouldn’t stop at a 80% charge when charging.
However, the estimated range for a fully charged battery with 100% capacity vs 80% capacity should be reflected based on SoH.
When 1000s of cells are arranged in a specific fashion with an integration of BMS, its not just individual cell data that would matter. So, Ather has to release this data(based on their R&D and experience of these in the test environment) not the cell manufacturer.
We are talking about end users here and not engineers who can digest the spec sheet of cells to reverse infer the battery life on a scooter.
I have a question. Multiple questions actually.
Why does the scooter eat up a lot more battery when switched off normally, when compared to when it’s ‘Shutdown’?
Is it because the BMS is running? If so, what does the BMS do at this time? Is it just managing the temperature of the battery pack?
I think it is because the scooter tries to sync the data to server and this uses some battery. During the owner’s meet, they mentioned that they have optimized this to consume lesser battery and sync at regular intervals with the server.
But I don’t see what it could be syncing with the server for so many hours apart from ride stats after your ride.
Do you know what else it syncs to server on a regular basis?
It doesn’t sync continuously with the server. I guess it syncs every few hours, so that the ride stats and vehicle location details are updated. Also, it probably pings the server to check if there are any OTA updates.
One the new OTA update is available, Ather team claims that the sync would be at regular intervals and would consume lesser battery, instead of the current situation where there is a lot of battery loss during the off hours.
The dashboard s like a tablet with OS and Ather apps. They just put it into Idle when we turn off. Just like any tablet will drain some battery in Idle mode, this also drains battery.
But, obviously here drain is more than ideal, which is what Ather needs to optimize and I think already in their radar.
Folks came across this link on the new battery technology not sure if this was shared -
I have been using ather 450 for the past 2 months but my usage is little low and covered ~300 Kms so far.
Day before yesterday, when i tried to go for a short ride, scooter refused to start (already has 90% battery charge) and no power supply at all. and tried hard resetting but no use. Contacted customer care, and towed my scooter to Ather service center (Ather arranged a tow vehicle and they picked up the scooter from home).
It seems to be a problem with BMS and temporarily swapped my scooter’s battery pack with a loaner one(ather claims its new one) and planning to deliver the bike to me today. As per CC, they sent my battery pack to factory for further analysis and will update on the status later(if no h/w issues ,they will replace the loaner one with original one!). Initially they said some BMS software issue and s/w update is good enough and now entire battery pack was swapped.
Not sure if any one faced this issue but surely not expected in a brand new bike which was sparingly used (and always parked under shade and no rough usage) and little disappointed.
I have the same issue
Hi Anagh,
What was the fix they recommend in your case? Replaced battery pack? I am not really comfortable with the idea of swapping back the battery pack (assuming they swapped original one with new one) and thought of discussing the same with Ather CC.
Thanks,
Krishna
Why is the entire battery being swapped if the problem is with BMS. If I am not wrong battery is just a dumb component. BMS is the one which manages fluctuations and takes care of uniform charge and discharge in each cell. And just the IC could be replaced right ? Correct me if I am wrong
Had same thing they replaced battery PCB but not entire battery in my vehicle. This kind of issues in brand new vehicle makes me feel what will happen after that 3 year warranty.
The whole battery was replaced. I’m not really worried about it as of now. We’ve still got 2+ years of warranty. So if something goes wrong again we can have it replaced.
Its not about just replacement. There are some forums, where people have shared their experience on long drives outside Bangalore.
What happens, if battery or BMS malfunctions on one such trips?
I am from Auto-Ancillary industry. We have something called FMEA that tries to identify potential failures that may occur in a part, assembly or product. Battery or BMS failure may be a rare occurance, but severity is high (rating of 9-10, meaning failure of primary function of the product). Every product manufacturer always maintains robust fail safe features on parts that may cause loss of primary function (in this case getting stranded mid-way as the scooter cannot start).
As a Product Company Ather must do an extremely robust FMEA for Battery and BMS and ensure such issues do not occur at all…
But as customers and potential customers (one of whom is me), we at this juncture must give Ather some benefit of doubt and support them to better an already good product.
Okay. But the information i am getting from CC is not really making me comfortable.
in first call i got the info that , only BMS s/w needs to be updated and second time, they said, battery was swapped and third time they told, BMS + Battery together form a single unit and thats why they swapped the battery unit. What i dont want is a situation where i am getting stranded in the middle of the road with dead-bike or towing/pushing that to home on my own.