Ather has taken to its social media channels to announce that it will be launching three new e-scooters on August 11. The company has already confirmed that the first of these will be the new low-cost 450S, leaving us to guess what the other two will be.
With no other new models currently known to be under development, our best guess is that the other two new scooters will be variants of some sort of the 450X. After the recent (and sizeable) cut in the FAME-2 subsidy, prices for the 450X have shot up to Rs 1.47 lakh-1.67 lakh. The 450S, meanwhile, will start at Rs 1.30 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi, after FAME-2 subsidy). Perhaps Ather could introduce an in-between variant to plug this price gap.
As for the 450S, we know that it will forego the 7-inch TFT touchscreen in favour of a more basic and cost-effective LCD unit. We also know that the 90kph top speed will remain unchanged from the 450X, but acceleration is going to be gentler, hinting at slightly lower motor output levels. Whether these are the only changes or whether more has been done to help reduce costs, time will tell.
Ved Janve
Azaman Chothia
Dinshaw Magol
Vishal Venugopal
