Spending a prolonged duration of time with a vehicle really brings out the nuances of living with it and paints a more detailed picture of how it will fit into your life. In that regard, the Rizta has fared wonderfully well, but over the past two months, one recurring electronic issue has been dampening its otherwise trouble-free experience. But since I’m the sort to sometimes have my dessert before dinner, we’ll start with the good points.
The first thing is that the charger now comes with an elastic cable that latches into place. Where that helps is that you don’t have the charger’s wires strewn about everywhere any time you need to put something in the boot. It may seem small, but it allows you to neatly store your charger and free up more usable space inside the boot for your other belongings.
Another neat little touch is the small storage cubby just aft of the big 34-litre boot, where I routinely store my phone, keys and a soft microfibre cloth, which is used every so often to clean the Rizta (blame Mumbai’s incessant construction, road works and the dust they kick up!). Keeping your knick-knacks in this smaller area keeps them from getting tossed about inside the big boot on our woefully bouncy roads, something that is especially useful for our expensive modern electronic devices.
What puzzles me is that Ather hasn’t given the Rizta an external storage cubby, as I’ve seen on multiple other ICE and electric scooters. There is a lot of space to have one on the front apron, and it would save the user the hassle of opening the boot to store their small items every time they set off.
But the main issue is that over the past two months, I’ve been experiencing an electronic niggle that puts the Rizta into limp mode without any warning. The display shows nothing out of the ordinary except for the regen braking symbol indicating that it’s turned off. And when this happens, power delivery becomes very dull, and I’m unable to cross 25kph.
This issue gets resolved temporarily if I cycle the ignition key, but it’s not an everlasting fix, and it reappears without warning. Upon speaking with Ather’s tech team, we have been informed that this has occurred due to a fault in the connector of one of the sensors, and this is the first time someone has reported this occurrence. This electronic niggle has somewhat dampened my confidence in the scooter, and I have been mindful not to stray outside a 10km radius of my home with the Rizta. We will be giving the scooter to the service team for an overall checkup and to have this issue resolved. Once the Rizta is back with us, the rest of our tenure with it, hopefully, will be trouble-free!
Ved Janve
Soham Thakur
