Background
As a December 2022 Gen3X owner, watching the Community Day 2023 happen just a month from my vehicle’s delivery last year had me FOMO’ing really bad – especially with attendees getting the Seat Upgrade for free. My back reminds me of it every single ride!
Anyways, that experience had me dedicated to attend the event this year! Being active in the forum throughout ownership had me eager know intricate details of our vehicle, especially from an engineer’s perspective.
Last year’s Community Day introduced Fireside Chats – a way for regular owners like you and me to talk to the very people who make our Ather whee. It didn’t help that last year’s Fireside Chats were private and unrecorded/unpublished.
All the more reason to attend this year.
Travel plans
On March 2nd, I got the message to RSVP. I immediately did it, got verified on March 9th and date was revealed - April 06th. Bangalore is not too far from my town, Belgaum. Just an overnight bus journey and I could stay with relatives. It would be fun, especially as it is on a Saturday and I could return home on Sunday.
On way to KTPO Convention Hall
Bus journey wasn’t bad, had light breakfast and freshened up before making my way to KTPO. Upon reaching, the entrance itself was hype -
Never I have seen so many Athers at the same place (unlike some competitor’s service centres):
At the event!
Went past all the decorations, had another round of light breakfast (they had Poha, Pongal, fruits alongside tea/coffee) but lots of rush.
Made our way to the main hall. We were not early enough to find any front seats, so made-do with sitting far away. Still better than those who missed shuttle buses and had to stand the whole time (kudos and condolences to y’all)
Started off with some owner’s experiences interviews, some hype building cold-start exercises. Then was the Ather Unlocked:
A group whee session before moving on:
Session by Shri. Amitabh Kant, G20 Sherpa & former CEO of NITI Aayog.
They discussed EV ecosystem in India, with Kant making really hard-hitting points on how India should move forward in a pro-EV manner.
After this point, I tried focusing more on understanding the content rather than documenting it 
Went quickly through Halo, Atherstack 6 and Rizta launches. Tarun demonstrating everything really well, like he always does. No need for any Hoezaay’s for half-informative launches 
More than the scooters, it was nice to see @tarun and Swapnil up close!
I didn’t get to meet them personally. I saw them after 6 PM but Tarun was busy debriefing the staff and Swapnil was with his family… I didn’t wanna intrude either 
Other experiences, the good and the bad
As soon as they showcased Rizta, people started moving out immediately without the scooters even showing up on stage. A huge rush for lunch. Apparently without any facilities to wash hands, for which people used mineral water bottles in gardens and dustbins 
I waited till the show was over, prices revealed and all. Heading out, so many people! Decided not to go to lunch immediately as I had double-light-breakfasts.
Saw a cool IONIQ5 on our way, thought it was either Tarun’s or Swapnil’s (idk who owns EV6 or IONIQ but they do):
Made our way to the Apex MagicTwist experience! First time seeing the Apex up close, it definitely looks better in-person.
MagicTwist is really, really powerful! I just wish it was backwards compatible (more on that later…)
They hooked up the brake lights to the horn, so that you had to go around a course without using brakes. It was a nice demonstration and definitely impressive one-pedal driving mode.
Later made our way to the experience stalls. This was at 1:30 PM, when the Fireside Chats were supposed to begin. We just had a look around stalls but it wasn’t long until they started at 1:45, with the first chat.
- Charging Operability and Solutions:
A good chat, it had good discussions like “Why is charging charged on a per-minute basis?” - the answer to which is “in charging, time is currency”: you are supposed to charge as per needs and leave, not hog a charger just because it’s “free” or cheap (a scenario I have been stuck in multiple times). It’s meant to lower waiting times.
Other things discussed were the business sides of Charging Infra, challenges they faced and how the grid has scaled 100x over a period of 5 years! The main point of discussion was the relatively-recent BIS standardization of Ather’s LECS standard. My question about their thoughts on the NACS situation in NA didn’t have enough time for an explanation 
Also @raghav.srinivasan moderated the chat well
- Second chat was on the Ather Battery.
A great discussion on the making of the battery, the taboo topic of Battery Fires, and how Ather Energy was supposed to be a solid-state battery solutions company before switching to EVs. The moderator did a good job of making the technical discussion fun! Audience questions involved battery-drain queries and how the battery depletes faster at low SOC. Answers included “we own scooters with the same behavior. It will be patched in the future update”. Other stuff like Battery Recycling were asked about. We met Suraj, Controls Engineer at Ather for some further discussions 
- Third one was on Atherstack.
The Operating System function of Atherstack is just the Patty of a burger, there are many other fillings that make up the whole burger! Loved the discussion as a Computer Science Engineer, especially as they talked about the design aspects of the new app and hardware-software integrations. My question was “There’s so many things happening on the Ather - data collection and analysis, UI rendering aspects, constant communications with the cloud… How does a Snapdragon 212 manage to handle so much, and do you not feel limited with such an old platform?”. They replied “that’s the magic of Atherstack!” Lol
Anyways, they said they know they are overdue for an upgrade, and it will happen in the future.
Other audience questions involved UI bugs and laggy-ness which staff said they also experience on their vehicles, and it will be better in Atherstack 6.
- The last talk was on Magic Throttle and other design aspects of Ather, mechanical and product.
It was an interesting conversation and involved technicals of control algorithms, the ADC and some stuff I’m terrible at remembering 
One audience questions was asking for the Magic Throttle to be backwards compatible, gaining many "Amen!"s from the crowd. And there came my highlight of the day - a response basically saying “We will look into it, we usually design hardware keeping in mind backwards compatibility. But there are stuff like Homologation which keep us from implementing it.”
Homologation, the word describing whole 2023 year of Ather. At least they are giving Coasting Regen to all Gen3+.
After the talk on their way out, I talked to one of the staff and told them how much I appreciated the blog posts they put out, and I hope they continued putting them out.
It was an enjoyable experience gaining these technical insights. But it ended at almost 5:00 PM.
Post-Fireside Chats
Now, I gave up on lunch. I had to go around and see the experience stalls before it’s too late (5:00 PM was when we were supposed to be kicked out)
At the beginning, there was the Ring Toss game with a big queue, where you could win accessories. My quest for knowledge made me miss the game, as it was all over by then 
Then, “Speed Strike” supposed to be some bowling game. Didn’t participate.
“Spin the Wheel”, I didn’t even notice what it was. I wanted to see the technical experiences
Technical Experiences involved showcasing of new Atherstack 6 features, including “WhatsApp on dash”, “Location Sharing”, “Call Reject message”. UI for them seemed very similar to Atherstack 5, with these features just “hacked-on” like jugaad.
Some other experiences were scooter hooked up to a lidar sensor and computer to generate musical notes when standing on tiles.
Speaking of music, another experience was generation of music from motor by pulsating PWM vibrations like they did in a early demonstration of Tom and Jerry music on an Ather motor (scroll down the link)
if all the good stuff from Apex was available in older models nobody would want to buy Apex. This would mean fewer people buying the best and latest vehicle. If I’m wrong please let me know.