I have one pertinent question to ask @abhishek.balaji@tarun for an official answer from Ather,
what is your stance on planned obsolescence,
till when will 450 be getting updates and support,
and what guarantee that you won’t degrade the performance of 450 through a future update which the customer does not have control over on similar lines to apple degrading the performance of older iphones due to battery degrading since it has been explicitly made clear by @tarun that they are not trying to be an automobile company but a tech company.
The last concluding owner’s meet was in retrospect full of lies from Ather. From the start, it was put across that Bluetooth was unreliable. No immediate upgrade plans and more importantly, battery is good to last for 5 years easily. Now, there is so much of marketing terminology being thrown around. No word on the life of 450 though.
Hence, official stance in writing would be highly appreciated.
They announced the new product launch in just 3 weeks after the last owners meet where they clearly told there is no new product launch in the near future! If 3 weeks wasn’t i don’t know what was!
AFAIK, I believe that has always been the plan, right? 450 in a new avatar will be now rolling out into the market as 450 Plus, which is actually just 450X that has been throttled as far as the performance and features go.
I own a 450. I went for the lease option since this was my very first EV. I was a bit skeptical about EV’s in general. I was convinced that “EV’s are going to become faster yet cheaper” in future. After the launch of 450X though , not a day goes by regretting my decision not to buy 450 outright. Upgrading to 450X doesn’t make any financial sense for someone like me. Currently I am keeping an eye on my charging cycles. Hopefully the battery lasts 4 years so that I can buy a new one from Ather (provided Ather still offers support for 450 4 years from now).
I hear you! Just so that I am sure I understood you completely, why was leasing a bad option for you? I did not lease my 450, so I am probably missing something here, but I thought you could always choose to end your lease early, and even if it ends up costing you extra to do this, the TCO would still end up being cheaper than, say, buying your 450, right?
Since the 450 and the 450x share a lot of parts, I assume they would be able to build them at the Hosur plant - if they intended to sell the 450 in secondary markets.
Since ather has stopped manufacturing the 450 and considering that ather has been promoting the sales of 450 a lot for the past few months and with Tarun saying they might bring it to a couple of cities. I’m assuming that they have a quite a few 450s lying around on their warehouse. And they plan on selling them off asap
Simple math actually, by the end of 3rd year I would end up paying Rs.1,63,000 to call it my own. Autovert covers ather one service in their plan (hopefully for all 3 years) but I would still end up paying a premium above the market price. I don’t see a better affordable scooter for the next 5-6 years.
I heard the Ather 450 last batch has rolled out of factory and stopped production line. Is this true? Are ather going to stop the production before 450X rolls out? @abhishek.balaji But still Ather website has active pre booking link.
