Ather Energy, an IT Madras based electric mobility start-up, has just launched two new electric scooters, the 340 and 450. After successfully bringing its first electric scooters to the market, Ather is now aiming a lot higher. The start-up will soon begin work on a high performance electric motorcycle, which will be launched in about two years from now. Tarun Mehta, co-founder of Ather Energy, has just revealed this in an interview to the TimesOfIndia.
Here’s what he said about Ather’s plans to enter the motorcycle segment in India,
Wannabe cars of India; From Maruti Vitara Brezza to Jeep Compass, to Bolero-Pajero & more“Scooters now outsell bikes in all the top 10 cities. It’s painful to drive a petrol bike in crowded cities. In
Bengaluru you can never leave the clutch, and you’ll have this wrist pain. You have zero storage space. With electric we hope to resolve some of that, you won’t need the clutch, hopefully we’ll be able to build storage space. Half our company wanted to build a bike, but we built a scooter. Very soon we should be starting work on a bike, but it’ll take two years.”
Mr. Mehta also revealed the kind of performance the electric motorcycle from Ather Energy would offer, by pointing out that a motorcycle would need a top speed of about 130 Kph to 140 Kph, and will also have a much more powerful battery than the one on the electric scooter. The electric motorcycle from Ather Energy is also expected to have a higher battery range considering the fact that high-performance motorcycles aren’t just limited to city riding, but also touring. Here are his comments on the same,
“Performance Bike needs much more speed, like 130-140 kmph. You have to deal with a lot of issues and frequencies that you don’t get at 70-80 kmph. The amount of testing, validation really goes up. The chassis is very different. The architecture of some of the components – like the charger, battery, battery management system, dashboard – could remain very similar, but all will have to scale up in terms of capacities.”
The electric motorcycle from Ather is likely to be at least about Rs. 50,000 pricier than the scooters, which means that it could be priced between Rs. 1.5-2 lakh. At that price point, the electric motorcycle will take on high-performance motorcycles such as the Bajaj Dominar and the KTM Duke 250. More details about this product is expected to be revealed in the next few months.
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