So, we all are well aware that Ather scooters have 3-5% of idle power consumption in a day.
But that is still huge amount of power consumption. Even if we considered min 3%, that still amounts to a whopping 97Wh (Considering the usable battery of 3.24kW). A avg mobile phone with a battery of 5000mAH has 18.5Wh (5A * 3.7V) energy capacity. I’m comparing phone because Ather uses SD mobile chip.
If we consider the background sync processes, for ride logs, statistics and other stuff, it is still a huge amount. This is not a rant or complaint post, just genuinely curious about what is gulping so much amount of energy.
I can think of other tasks/processes that might me using power in the background, but please do correct me if I’m wrong.
It has GPS in ON state permanently
Active sensors, for motion detection and so on
BMS might be trying to re-balance the battery cells (I’m not 100% sure on this one)
It would be interesting to hear from owners who also have other EVs like Nexon EV or Ola. Do they have similar idle power consumption?
The first 2 points you have mentioned are exactly right. AFAIK cell balancing happens only when charging from Home charger/Slow charger. Now being a Nexon EV owner as well, I can tell you that there is slow drain from the car too but it’s not as much as the Ather because Nexon’ battery pack ranges from 30.4 kWh to 40.5 kWh compared to Ather’s 3.2 kWh battery pack and the car does not update it’s last known status to Tata’s backend every minute.
For eg, My Nexon only updates it’s last status if the car is unlocked otherwise it just shows the status and location on the app when the car was last locked. Only the intrusion alert stays active in this case and notifies to the app.
In Ather’s case, every time you open the app it pings the scooter requiring it to wake up and respond with it’s location and battery SoC status.
So I think the main cause of drain is the connected scooter stuff happening in the background because key off status is basically like Windows Modern Standby. You can google this to know how much of a battery hog it is when turned on for laptops. In conclusion, Ather could optimize their firmware to run more efficiently but with the ageing SOC processor there’s only so much they can do.
That’s a good insight from a Nexon owner Thanks for that.
And yes, I agree with you they can optimise it much better.
As far as battery cell balancing goes, I have observed a unique thing. Few weeks back I used Warp for 7-8 Km in a ride and that too very harshly ( I was in a hurry). So, when I reached the destination battery percentage was 67% but after about 2 hours or so, when I check back it went back up to 69%. That’s why I thought BMS might be doing this cell balancing actively.
I think there’s a HUGE scope for optimisation. My scooter stays indoor overnight (with very weak signals) and it very common for me to wake up and feel the display being physically warm (which means the processor has been crunching numbers all night).
I don’t think that’s because of the app pinging the scooter. Obviously I don’t use Ather app when I’m asleep.
Even on Android, you can have the phone occasionally pinging location and not consume as much. I think there should be some choice in Settings to only update location when the app pings?
Yes, a valid point indeed. We got this number like 3-5% is normal from Ather. But not many people get the idea how much amount of energy that it is. An avg user get 1Km/1% of battery. And that is to move a heavy vehicle plus rider weight. So, this amount of energy is being used to send few KB of data for sync operation is huge.
So, I just received the update. Before the update the battery percentage was 77 ( I specifically checked as we are actively discussing this topic), and after the update the battery SoC dropped by 2% to 75. Now it took 17 mins to update and I’m sure it didn’t try to sync anything and all the sensors must be off. So the processor alone is consuming this much energy.
This is a serious software optimisation issue. Phone have 0.0185 kW (5000 mah) drain 1-2% overnight
And a scooter which is using SD202 is consuming 5-6% of battery which capacity is 3.8 kW battery, phone does have 12-14 sensors.
It can’t be more than 1% no matter how many sensors are in Scooter, it’s completely software optimisation issue
Scooters have 205 times more battery than a phone, which means it is dropping roughly 410 times more power than phone
Considering 2% drop in phone and 4% in scooter
Lol, you wish.
@ibbi have not subscribed to Connect plans, but according to him scooter is still connected to internet so Ather is still harvesting the data and it bottles down to the bad optimisation of the software, which hasn’t changed.
Yep. I also know someone who has managed to access the ride logs in the app, even without subscribing to Connect. So yes, even without the subscription, Ather is actively paying Jio to keep your 4G active so they continue to track you.
It’s not Ather who is paying, the people who bought subscription are paying for non-subscribers. The net cost should be zero or in negative to provide it as service.
I could accept the net cost to be zero but how could the net cost be negative until and unless Ather has found a way to pair and sell consumer data to isp directly to get any kind of waivers in basic data charges as Jio as a provider has never given out any unlimited data plans in a paid version except for servicing its own R & D.
Thanks for that.
And yes, I agree with you they can optimise it much better.
