Ather's new scooter Konarc is a broader bet for the electric two-wheeler maker to move beyond the relatively narrow customer base it has built around its technology-led products and compete for a larger share of India's mainstream electric scooter market. Konarc is the first product on Ather's new EL platform, which the company says was developed with safety, serviceability and scale in mind.
- Six different Konarcs with two available starting September
- Konarc doubles the service interval compared to a typical scooter
- AtherNode and True Health to help with charging and resale, respectively
Konarc is built to be serviced faster and less frequent
Ather says EV priorities have changed with times
The Konarc will be offered across S and Z lines. The 100km Konarc S is priced at Rs 99,999, while the 125km and 161km versions cost Rs 1.22 lakh and Rs 1.45 lakh respectively. Prices for the 200km S and the two Z variants have not been announced. The rollout will start with the S 125 and S 161 variants from September 21, followed by the 100km version in the first quarter of 2027. The Z line is scheduled for the second quarter of 2027, and the 200km S will follow in the third quarter. Once all Konarc variants are rolled out over the next year, Ather expects to have an option for 80-90 percent of the scooter market.
Ather's own assessment is that the questions surrounding EVs have changed. Ather co-founder and CEO Tarun Mehta said that when the company started, customers asked whether an electric scooter was powerful enough, reliable enough, or even practical. As adoption has grown, the questions have become more conventional: where to charge, how safe is the battery, how long it will last, how the vehicle will be serviced and what happens when it has to be eventually sold. The company wants to solve for the three main concerns: service, charging, and resale value for its EV scooters.
Serviceability is one of the areas where Ather says the EL platform is intended to deliver an advantage. The Konarc's service interval is 10,000 km (vs 5,000 km for most other scooters), while the number of service checkpoints has also been reduced. In a demonstration during the launch, the motor and transmission assembly was removed in 38 seconds and put back in 1 minute 33 seconds. Mehta acknowledged that service centres would not necessarily replicate these times, but said the architecture was designed to make servicing simpler.
Charging network has also been improved
Ather is solving for public and residential charging
Konarc owners will of course have access to Ather’s existing network of about 6,000 public fast chargers known as Ather Grid. The company, however, sees apartment complexes as the next charging bottleneck. To solve that, it has built AtherNode, a new residential charging system, which uses a building’s common electricity supply to serve individual parking spaces. It manages the available load, queues vehicles, and generates separate bills for residents. This could allow housing societies to add more charging points without immediately upgrading their transformers. Ather plans to introduce the system in six cities from December, beginning with Bengaluru. The Konarc itself gets a 450W onboard charger and supports combined charging; which means that it can be paired with an external 450W charger to refill the battery at 900W.
Ather True Health to help with resale value
The company remains committed to its software first approach
With the Konarc, Ather has attempted to put more conventional attributes of a mass-market scooter alongside the technology it has developed over several years. The company is wanting to solve not only the product problem, but also some of the ownership concerns that could prevent customers from switching from petrol scooters. As the third prong on that front, Ather has introduced True Health on its app, a digital report covering the battery, motor, charger, dashboard, service history and wear components for eligible scooters more than three years old. Owners can view the condition of major components, the battery’s state of health and an estimated resale value. Such a company-verified report could give buyers and sellers a better basis for arriving at a price.
Finally, the company expects software adoption to remain strong even as it moves into a more mainstream segment. For example, in Madhya Pradesh, the adoption rate for AtherStack Pro initially stood at about 40 percent, but eventually crossed 88 percent with the number of stores increasing. The Konarc is Ather’s aim at a much broader part of the market, but that means competing not only with other electric scooter makers, but also with established petrol scooter brands. It remains to be seen whether the company’s push to improve serviceability, charging, and resale value will ease that challenge.
With inputs from Nayan Jain and Stephen Raj Antony.