The Ather Promise vs. Reality: A Customer’s Disillusionment
In December 2020, I proudly joined the electric revolution by purchasing the Ather 450X. Like many early adopters, I was drawn in by the vision shared by Tarun Mehta and the Ather team—a promise of a high-performance, “made in India” scooter backed by a battery designed to last. Specifically, the narrative was clear: “No worries for 8 years.”
However, five years and only 18,000 kilometers later, that dream has soured. During a recent visit, the service center informed me that my battery health has plummeted, showing 77% degradation (leaving only 23% health) or, even worse, suggesting the battery is nearing the end of its functional life.
The Math Doesn’t Add Up
For a premium vehicle, 18,000 km is barely the “run-in” period for the chassis, yet the battery is already failing. If an EV owner is expected to reinvest a massive sum into a new battery every five years, the total cost of ownership becomes significantly higher than a petrol vehicle. This “investment” is simply not sustainable.
I was once a vocal advocate for Ather, recommending it to friends and family. But after seeing the gap between the “8-year promise” and the 5-year reality, I can no longer do so. Reliability is not just about speed and software updates; it’s about the longevity of the hardware.
after buying an Ather and experiencing their customer care and product too, I can’t recommend it to anyone, customer care is truly horrible it took them around 4 months just to get my Ather app sync to work, random noises in my vehicle time to time especially the front axle which was fixed just a month ago in service , Ather can’t keep selling with the reliability tag anymore I was influenced by the same and now actively prevent anyone from buying it
77% degradation probably means imbalance. can be easily fixed in an EV specialized repair shop.
Ather Gen 1 BMS was probably dumb and let the cells get more imbalanced as time passed.
(Not blaming Ather here, they do offer a nice exchange program for these Gen 1 scooters, and besides, this is non-issue on Gen 3 and above as far as I am aware of).
5years warranty they gave battery range dropped after 40k , technician said that battery health is good but in real time after fully charged it is getting rage only up to 70km only in eco mode
I would not recommend this product to any one
Even spare parts cost is very high compared to normal petrol bike
He we are saving petrol money and giving back to Ather company through there services center even after buying bike at double cost campare to petrol bike
The battery warrenty for gen 2 450x was 60k kms. At 62k kms the battery suddenly fails to hold charge with upto 40 percent degradation. This is a similar pattern i have observed in numerous vehicles. So the life of Ather battery is max 60k kms.
There’s another joke. Vehicles run more than 40k kms have to shell out around 1500 rupees as service charges. I ask them what they did. Reply is software update, greasing and washing. Even my yamaha ice scooter after oil change is charged 850 rupees
Battery replacement isnt an issue,Ather has sorted that out with discounts but the quality of battery isnt guarunteed to be good.
my battery died at 14k kms due to humidity even though I used scooter only in city and never used grid but the replaced battery has really bad idle drain and my scooter has been sitting at service center for a month with no solution.
I used to love Ather but now am not recommending one to anyone as these poeple are making me accept that 40% idle drain in 3 days is normal as if I havent owned the scooter for 4 years and it did not do that on orignal battery
On 02/07/2026 my Ather 450x (February 2023 model) was not charging. So took it to nagarbhavi service station, bengaluru and was informed by evening that battery is gone and needs replacement. As per company records my battery warranty had expired on February 2026. But later i informed them that my battery warranty was for 5 years…so I searched my previous mails and got the 2 years extended battery warranty. And I shared the same with the service center on 03/07/2026. They told they need to take approval and will take 10-15 days to change the battery and hand over the bike to me. But today on 04/07/2026 I got a call from nagarbhavi service, Bengaluru that the issue is resolved and battery is charging and bike is ready to be delivered. I asked the service guys what exactly the problem was but no proper explanation was given to me. This is completely weird.. i imagined what if Ather company is targeting those bikes which are out of battery warranty and purposefully creating these battery issues by using software so that people will shell out huge money just to get their bike repaired..nowadays anything is possible.
Nope the scooter is standing at SC for month and they telling me to take it back and I got no option. Never thought I would have such a pathetic experience with Ather.
this is extreme case which can backfire but my scooter only had 14k kms so if they had to blame create this scenario they would target high mileage scooters with Grid usage.
In your case I think they just reflashed the BMS which can ignore few errors for sometime but most cases it will comeback later in future when Ather hopes you are out of warranty (happened with someone on reddit)
But Ather does have HUGE battery pack issue cause each time I visited SC they had atleast 20 boxes pilled up with new batteries for gen 2 to 4. so there’s something surely.
