Ather S340 electric scooter's launch delayed by a year

Bangalore-based electric mobility startup - Ather Energy had unveiled its first prototype vehicle, the S340, in February 2016. The company was aiming to start production of the vehicle by the end of 2016. However, the launch of the electric scooter has now been delayed by at least a year. This information was revealed by an e-mail to BHPian daretodream by the company's co-founder & CEO. (Click here to read the complete e-mail)

The CEO has accepted that they heavily under anticipated the challenge of developing a completely new product, on a new platform, using a technology that still isn't widely accepted in the market. He has also mentioned that building a team that could handle the challenges at hand was also something that took a lot of time, thus pushing the anticipated launch date further.

He goes on to say that, "Being a new product, we don’t have years of customer and field data. Working around that, (testing on the bench and in the field) meant we took longer than we thought it would. Also, building a vertically integrated company has meant that we are practically our own suppliers, putting the entire reliability, design and manufacturability in our hands. While this end-to-end control is exactly what we wanted - it comes at a large upfront time investment. A first attempt meant that we are doing technology development in parallel with product development - and that’s hard to parallelize."

The project has thus been postponed for at least a year. However, the co-founder hasn’t mentioned a launch timeline this time around. The mail further suggests that any new updates will be communicated to all individuals who have shown interest in the Ather S340.