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Brought home a River Indie e-scooter: Delivery & initial impressions

6th February 2024, 11:03 by Dev Shah

The scooter is really stable on roads, and it feels planted even when u go at higher speeds.

BHPian Prasidhi recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Delighted to share I took the delivery of River Indie, on 15th January. Here is my delivery experience and initial ride review.

Initially my delivery was scheduled between December 15th to December 31st, but It was postponed as they told me we would be getting the 2024 manufactured model which I felt was quite a nice gesture as most companies only focus on getting done with the sales.

The delivery was done in their Experience center in JP Nagar, it was the opening day of the center. Both sales and service are done here, it has about 5 service bays, and coming to the showroom aspect, its quite a big showroom and they have showcased their accessories (pics attached for reference) for the scooter seen in their website and also a few merchandise. Few of the accessories are still under development while the mobile holder, floormat, Visor (both transparent and tinted) and Floor cage will be available by next week.

The delivery experience was a really wonderful one. Most of the staff from various departments were available, including the co-founders who did the key handover to the customers. They were very polite, always available. Each scooter had a respective staff member assigned to assist with regards to its functions and technical stuff. They also gave a charging demo to show its working. They explained the invoice and also shared the PDI list which they have done and told us to verify.

The scooter supports fast charging, but the charging pin is different compared to other brands hence will only be effective when river brings its own fast charger, which they told they are working on it and planning to launch soon.

This is fully loaded version with all accessories.

The back seat support and side step. I understand the side step is still under testing and will take some more time to come. The pannier mounts will be available by default for only the pre-ordered customers. New customers will be getting a side lid as seen in the pic above and can purchase the pannier mount as an additional accessory.

Above are the accessories and merchandise in the showroom.

Initial ride impressions:

I am very much impressed with the scooter’s overall performance, however there are a few things I felt that could have been improved.

Lets first talk about the pros:

The scooter is really stable on roads, and it feels planted even when u go at higher speeds.
Acceleration is great in ride mode, amazing in rush mode but the eco mode is a bit underpowered in my opinion.
The scooter has huge underseat storage (one of its USP), I was able to fit a full faced helmet (Vega) as well as a half face hemlet (Vega) and still a bit of space to keep few small things.
The suspension setup is good, I did miss a few pot holes but didn’t feel much impact, the scooter did handle it pretty well.
Brakes are very good, the dual disc brakes with CBS are really powerful. (this is in comparison with my 2018 ntorq and I felt it was a significant upgrade. I didn’t ride any 2 wheeler with ABS so can’t compare with that)
Display quality has improved especially the day time visibility which was one of the major concerns during test ride.
The vehicle is equipped with adaptive regen and although I am yet to figure out which regen level is in which mode, the regen in ride mode felt quite smooth.
Switching modes during the ride is pretty easy, I felt the button was a bit too far for my hand during the test ride, however I felt it was fine now.
The vehicle is easy to maneuver despite its large size, however it might be a little difficult in low speeds if you are used to riding lighter scooters but you will get used to it easily.

Now a few things that I felt that could have been improved are:

The mirrors are very bad. They are relatively small and quite difficult to see.
There is no brake lock feature which could be a problem while parking it on a slope.
The trip meter is inaccurate right now. Trip 1 and trip 2 are showing different numbers although the difference is small. (I don’t know whether it is for my scooter alone, planning to take it up with them during first inspection)
I also felt the high beam lamp projects a bit upward (again this could be an issue with my scooter, other river owners here please provide your input)
The reverse mode is a 3 step process which makes it a bit uncomfortable, I would rather preferred a switch to put it directly in reverse mode.
The connector type is unique and could not be identified to any standard type.