Ather Energy has become synonymous with the electric-two wheeler category. The company sold over 63,814 units in the ten months of FY23, going past the 59,123 units clocked in all of CY22. Its success can be linked to its usage of AI and analytics across various aspects of the business. 

“We perform remote diagnostics both on the product and the production line, this helps us preempt any issues in the field and address them in the early stages. We also use data for internal usage. This data helps to understand consumer behaviour and environmental factors, which is ultimately used to make our internal test standards more robust and build a more optimised and quality product,” revealed Swapnil Jain, co-founder of Ather Energy, in an exclusive interaction with Analytics India Magazine. 

Elaborating on the product side, Jain said that they use intelligence to help with things like range estimation which is more accurate to individuals riding patterns. It further takes into account the individual’s riding style, the terrain they ride on and more to estimate the range better. “An advanced version of this will also be a part of an improved Trip planning feature, which will be released in the coming months. We are slowly building personalisation for consumers based on their riding patterns as well,” added Jain.

Interview Excerpts: 

AIM: Tell us a bit about your technology stack.

Swapnil: Electric Vehicles and Connected platforms go hand in hand. We are witnessing a real-time shift in paradigm, even in major OEMs moving their ICE vehicle platforms to reap the benefits of being connected. 

Ather has been a pioneer in the EV industry in many areas, including the introduction of the first field-proven technology stack; the first Smart vehicle implementation and the first OEM to introduce Over-the-Air (OTA) updates on a two-wheeler.  

Our technology stack comprises a far edge stack built on AOSP (Android Open Source Project) with apps using Kotlin, Java, GoLang, MQTT, edge connectivity via open-source MQTT broker to our virtual private cloud (VPC). The Cloud stack comprises Kubernetes, Kafka, ClickHouse, ElasticSearch and Spark.

On the software front, Ather rolled out ‘AtherStack 5.0’ in January 2023, the biggest upgrade so far to the scooter’s software engine. AtherStack 5.0 brings in a brand new UI for the dashboard in addition to launching ‘Vector Maps’, powered by Google. 

This feature enables Ather scooters to give the best navigation experience in any scooter in India. The Atherstack 5.0 also introduces AutoHold™ which ensures that the scooter does not roll forward or backward on slopes and helps riding on inclines and declines.

Read: Data Science Hiring at Ather Energy 

AIM: How do you see the two-wheeler EV market shaping in the next five years?

Swapnil: We feel that consumers are now accepting that E2Ws offer better performance and value and it is clearly an upgrade in terms of technology than petrol scooters. 

The two-wheeler EV market has grown immensely over the years. India’s overall EV penetration rate—including the two-wheelers—is roughly 3% of all automobile sales in 2022.

At Ather, we sold 59,413 units from January to December 2022 registering a YoY growth of 224%. The outlook for 2023 is exciting and we are confident that 2W EVs will go mainstream in the next five years, thereby capturing a large market share in the Indian 2W industry.

AIM: How does Ather plan to address consumer concerns about range and charging infrastructure?

Swapnil: Every electric vehicle purchase discussion includes questions and concerns about ‘ride range’ and having a charging infrastructure. This is referred to as ‘range anxiety’. The most commonly proposed solution is for EVs to have long-range charging stations to become as common in India as petrol pumps. While a more powerful battery would increase the cost of the vehicle, a widespread charging infrastructure will take time to establish before mass EV adoption. Furthermore, while cars can accommodate more batteries, electric scooters are a little more difficult due to limited space.

We discovered that scooter owners typically ride 30–40 kilometres per day on average across metros, Tier-I, Tier-II, and Tier-III cities spanning the country. This is enough for a single charge of an Ather 450X scooter with a 3.7 kWh battery to provide a certified range of 146 km and a True Range^TM of 105 km. 

The majority of Ather owners charge their scooters at home, with limited dependency on the Ather Grids. This suggests that range is a psychological barrier for most people who want to know they won’t be stranded on the side of the road with no charge left. Our fast charging network with 1000 Ather Grids across the country alleviates such range and charging anxieties and also allows consumers a solution in case of an unplanned trip or longer ride requirements. 

AIM: Can you speak about Ather Energy’s current market position and plans for expansion?

Swapnil: We have been experiencing encouraging responses from our consumers across India. In 2022, we sold 59,413 units from Jan-Dec 2022 registering a YoY growth of 224%. We had a great start to this year, registering our best-ever monthly sales by delivering 12,419 units in January 2023. 

Ather currently has a market share of 14.1%, making it one of the top 3 players in the segment. As we expand our retail footprint rapidly, we anticipate steady growth in demand in the coming months. While we inaugurated our second manufacturing facility in November 2022 taking our annual production capacity to 420,000 units per year, we are already in talks with state governments for our third facility to cater to the rising demand and capture a larger market share. 

Ather Energy has been pioneering the EV ecosystem in India, and we have invested heavily in building a sustainable ecosystem for faster adoption of EVs in the country. Towards this, we are rapidly expanding our retail outlets to ensure easy access to our scooters and plan to reach 100 cities and have 150 retail outlets by March 2023. 

We have also been building a robust charging ecosystem to support the growth of the EV industry and facilitate a hassle-free transition to EVs. We have 1000 charging grids across the country and plan to expand this number to 1400 by the end of FY-23.