This post covers some updates about Ather from the last month.
FORUM
On August 4th 2019, it was the first anniversary of Ather forum! On that Occasion Ather promoted two members...two Ather 450 owners, as moderators. One of them was your truly! They said that a forum like theirs should have active and equal ownership by Owners.
The selection was based on the fact that both of us were one of the oldest owners and know about the product to a fair extent. In my introduction they wrote the following
Quote:
hemanth.anand is an active BHPian and will be able to help with some best practices from there.
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Thank you Team-BHP!.
It has given me an opportunity to see the back-stage things of a community and have a little say in how the community can be organised. I liked the fact that they have given us good freedom as moderators and the discussions are objective and professional. A Manufacturer doing this with customers who otherwise are no way related to them is worth appreciating.
OWNERS' MEET
On August 25th, Ather also organised a owner's ride & meet...their third such meet. By that time they had delivered more than 1000 Athers and hence the attendance was expected to be high. 200+ owners had registered and finally 150+ attended.
Because of this high number Ather planned rides from 4 different parts of the city and each part was lead by one of the owners. The two of us moderators were the leads for the south wing. We were around 12 from this side. All 4 groups converged near their office and rode together to the venue.
It was a nicely organised event. In the meet they formally introduced us moderators to the gathering. They introduced the new Ather Dot charger (
more on the Dot is here), they informed that the next city is going to be Hyderabad and finally they gave information about the things that'll come in the next OTA update which will come in September. A few owners shared their Chennai trip experience. It was followed by a Q&A session and Lunch.
The vehicles lined together The Hall The Audience Owners speak
Couple of other things...
Owners got an opportunity to ride scooters with the new upcoming mode-ECO mode.
Ather had made small info-cards...Interested people could take a few of those cards. There basically contains link to their websites and a small explanation of what is Ather. This was picked up from an owner who told that he was tired of answering people on road for questions about Ather. Nice way of marketing!
Ather made a small video of the event:
MOBILE APP
A new version of the app was released. The two major changes in the new version are the capability of push notifications and a new animation for vehicle charging. Teh push notification gives info if there is a new OTA update for the vehicle. Probably later they'll also start charge status notification. Regarding the animation, I preferred the looks of the older one.
New Charging Animation on the app OTA UPDATE
Ather rolled out their next OTA update two days ago.The update process was just like the previous times. Last time, some people had downloading issues because of poor connectivity and the big update size, but this time there were none reported.
The third riding mode - The Eco mode - is introduced. The top speed in this mode is 50 kmph while the TrueRange (what you’ll see on the dashboard at 100% charge) is 75 km. It is for those rare days when someone needs to go that extra distance or make an unplanned detour. It's boring for me, but a good compromise for additional range
The three modes The Eco mode screen with 75kms Truerange
Another small change in this update is that while charging is in progress, we can see the percentage number inside the progress bar on the dashboard.
percentage number
Motor fan noise reduction - Earlier, the motor fan (that cools the motor) would run at full speed when turned on. With this update, the motor fan speed will be gradually increased to cool the motor when the temperature goes above a threshold, thereby optimizing for the noise.
In the Owners’ Meet, they had spoken about a few more features and enhancements that were supposed to be a part of this update. However, due to some pending development and testing, they said they will release another update in the next few weeks. Essentially they've split the update into two. This splitting has also ensured that Bengaluru owners receive the Eco mode before Chennai deliveries begin.
ISSUES & PROBLEMS
1. After the latest update some users have complained about the touchscreen not working.
2. A couple of users have faced an issue with their scooters not starting suddenly one morning. Ather had taken the scooters to their office and diagnosed this to some issue with the BMS and working to find the root cause. The users had got loner vehicels till the vehicles were returned.
3. Due to some quality issue at the factory, deliveries have been delayed by around 10 days. People who had booked in July and August (including Chennai) were given a delivery estimate of September but it's now pushed to October.