Dream comes true! Ather Energy unveils its maiden electric scooter S340 at Surge 2016 in Namma Bengaluru

The dream of building a futuristic and smart electric scooter, that was initially conceptualized by the founders Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain has finally come true. Their dream scooter S340 was launched among a lot of fan fare at Surge 2016 today, as reported earlier. This marks a Red Letter Day for the Bengaluru based start-up firm that was founded 3 years back.

During the course of these 3 years, there has been a significant progress for Ather Energy in terms of developing their famed e-scooter, raising funds from the likes of Tiger Global, Flipkart founders Sachin and Binny Bansal, thus expanding their horizon.

Getting to the facts and key highlights, the S340 is India's first smart, electric scooter which is completely designed in-house by Ather Energy and is in-line with the Honorable PM Narendra Modi's Make In India initiative. Packed with a powerful lithium-ion battery pack, top speed of 72 kmph and a range up to 60 kms, this maiden product from Ather Energy is sure to grab the attention of the youth and techies across the country.

Tarun Mehta, CEO and Co-Founder stated,

The future will be connected and inevitably electric and the Ather S340 has been built as a manifestation of this philosophy. It is an unapologetically electric vehicle, it has been designed and built mostly in-house with engineering precision.

At first glance, though the S340 looks smaller compared to the current scooters in the Indian market, the company claims that their e-scooter is structurally robust and is intelligently designed with zero lateral weight offset and low centre of gravity. The lithium-ion IP67 rated battery pack offers a shell life of 50,000 kms. The Fast Charging mode charges the vehicle to 80% in flat 50 minutes, and can be charged from any 5A normal socket in the Normal Mode. The S340 is also fitted with intuitive LED lights that can power On/Off automatically based on ambient light conditions.

The S340 is packed with a lot of technology for a two-wheeler of its kind. It has a capacitive and waterproof touch-screen dashboard that personalizes the ride experience using cloud-based data. To add to this, top notch features like user profile based sign-in, on board navigation, pre-configured drive modes like sport and economy allow a personalized experience. You can stay connected with the vehicle 24*7 using their S340 mobile app that can be used to configure ride and profile preferences and sync navigation routes remotely. Data collection and analytics play a key role in not only allowing the customized user profile settings, but also allows for customized vehicle OTA updates. Now, isn't this a really cool feature to brag about?

But with such remote connectivity features, there is always a fear of security breach. But fear not! The engineers at Ather Energy have toiled hard to provide a robust firewall system that prevents any such breaches and have also insulated the mechanical parts such as the drive train, braking and accelerator pedal.

No doubt the specs and features of S340 are brilliant and are very welcoming. But there are other talking points too about this "new kid on the block". Ather Energy is in the process of setting up a manufacturing hub at Whitefield, Bengaluru, and would role out its first vehicle by end of this year. As part of its effort in building trust and providing the best to the Indian consumer, Ather Energy is set to open Experience Centres to showcase their product and facilitate test rides. As part of their business model, they will also introduce an online-only purchase model with doorstep delivery and service. Pre-ordering would begin in Bengaluru, Pune and Chennai in the next quarter. As part of an overall package, Ather Energy also aims at setting up an ambitious public charging infrastructure  in every city it will operate in, partnering with the Government as well as other private enterprises.

Ather Energy hasn't disclosed the price of the S340 yet. They have indicated that the price would be revealed in the coming few months but have also mentioned that one might be entitled to a Govt subsidy of 25,000 to 30,000 INR. In order to facilitate a feeler from our readers, we had hosted a Twitter poll with expected price slabs. Following are the results:

I will buy the S340 by @atherenergy if it is priced: #AtherS340

— MotorFry (@MotorFry) February 24, 2016

Since it is pretty clear the vehicle cannot cost less than 60,000 INR given the type and capacity of battery being used, we expect it to be somewhere around 75,000 INR (excluding subsidy). We expect an official announcement in a couple of months.