Outside city limits and RSA - just booked and wondering about uneventful breakdown

Have just booked Ather 450x in Chennai at Ather showroom. While booking, it would not take my pincode as my home is outside city limit. The helpful associates pitched in and provided the showroom pincode and with that made my booking. I came back home planning on arranging the remaining amount. Next day when I was starting my Suzuki access, it would not start after multiple attempts. Called my friendly neighbourhood mechanic and he comes and fixes the issue. Now I get a doubt, what if my to be EV gets into such issues, like not starting while at home or somewhere in my neighbourhood ? So called up the toll free number, they suggested that in such cases I need to bring the vehicle to within city limits where Ather can come and fix the issue, if I had purchased the required service plan. My question is, how will I take my vehicle to such serviceable limits? Anyone who has been in such a situation? Leave the point that your home is outside city limits, what if you go on a long ride during weekend, and your vehicle stops, say 10kms outside Ather’s covered area, how will you plan to bring it back to serviceable area? I was all excited to buy my first EV, please help me get this doubt cleared or should I wait till Ather bring my area under its service wings?

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If you are outside of Serviceable area then Its YOUR RISK to ensure you take vehicle to Serviceable area for any Issue fix.

I am from TUMKUR about 75Kms from Bangalore(86KMs from AtherBlr) I got S1 from Bangalore with TR and registered here permanently in Dec 2020. Till now there were two incidents of vehicle not waking up or starting.

First Incident was on Delivery Day right when they were demoing me how to use Portable Charger. They had to connect a laptop to wake my scooter up.

Second Incident was during 10.0.3 Early access OTA Update. When the Update was pushed My Dashboard was stuck at ‘Installing update Please Remove Charger’ eventhough the charger wasn’t connected. So basically I couldn’t get past that screen to actually start and use the vehicle. This time they pushed a patch remotely and saved me from packing and shipping the scooter to Bangalore!

So your nightmares can and will come true. But your decision depends on Whether you are ready to face and take risk!

Summary:

  1. Some software issues can be fixed remotely

  2. Major Software and Hardware issues needs to be fixed in Ather’s workshop So Owner’s responsibility to transport the vehicle to Ather’s Serviceable area.

  3. Remember Ather markets it’s vehicle for URBAN COMMUTE ONLY. So if you are riding out of Serviceable area its your risk.

  4. Not trying to scare you here but making you mentally prepared so that you can still continue and make purchase now the buggy scooter or wait for things to settle down and your area is covered under service.

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This is important. It also depends on how far you are from Ather’s Service radius. If you are 5kms outside the radius, you can always hire a Tata Ace to transport into the serviceable area to hand over to Ather service staff.

However if you are far away like Ranganath, then it’s a risk!.

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I live in Virar which is 60 kms from Mumbai where Ather has its experience centre and service centre. At the time of booking, I asked the same question for servicing, they told me Ather has a serviceable area of 30 kms, if you bring the scooter within the limit then Ather will do pick and drop under the service plan. Not sure about the breakdown but there are customers from my area and the number is growing, they will open new service centres and charging stations sooner or later. But until then, you have a risk to some extent.

2 years in Bangalore. They are yet to open another service centre. But they have extended their serviceable area.

@Abhishek knows really well about being in this situation. His scooter had an issue quite far away from the Ather service centre when on a intercity weekend ride. He had to push his scooter into the edge of serviceable area for Ather to come and tow it for a service.

@akil333 another thing to keep in mind is To not go for any early access beta programs of any sort :sweat_smile: it’s like multiplying your risk many fold.

If your house is JUST outside of chennai city. It’s unlikely that it’ll be covered in a new Ather centre. So they might just extend their serviceable area like they did in Bangalore. If its under 10Km from serviceable area. I recommend you go for it. The risk is not as big as the reward you get by owning a 450X. But anything more than that, it’s always going to be a risk.
@sachinshastry12 had to ship his scooter some 300Km because it had a known battery issue

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@akil333 The Amount of bugs this scooter has , Opting early access OTA is simply multiplying Infinity with infinity! There have been incidents when legends have quoted that this is a One OFF Issue that my Scooter has encounter and they haven’t faced it anytime which itself indicates How much predictable this Scooter is! :slight_smile:

Point is we are all at risk with or without early access to OTA. As the issues reported in early access is not fixed when its rolled out to rest of the people! :smiley: and you will get that bug anyways sooner or later! :innocent: :joy:

We’ll it’s not predicable because it’s a bug :sweat_smile: that’s why it’s called so :person_shrugging:.

Couldn’t sugar coat this if we wanted to @akil333 the 450X dash isn’t really as good as they market it to be.

I wouldn’t say this with so much surety though. Beats the point of Early Access

:rofl: If you discovered the bug , you should be able to replicate it. If you can’t replicate it, then you simply haven’t considered all of the contributing factors leading towards the bug . That’s unpredictability!

And such things in Ather are called :point_down:

Thank you all for your responses. @ranganathsb your case gives me more confidence in buying the vehicle. First thing for me to check is that, up to which point near my home I get the ather service area. Will do this and plan accordingly.