Why should we prefer Ather over a 150 cc bike?

So here comes the most important question on everyone’s mind right now: Why should we prefer Ather; at a cost of 1.28 lakhs for the Ather 450 and 1.09 lakhs for the Ather 340 ? There won’t be any ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer to this question as India is predominantly a market for two wheelers with a price range of 50-85k and we already have 37 million motorcycles on the road running before before Ather launched its products in June 2018, after a long wait since Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain founded the company in 2013.

Being an EV enthusiast and person who is passionate about automobiles and a personal love for two-wheelers, I have tried to summarize the data on a sheet of paper and do a comparative study between my personal bike and Ather just to visualize the difference. So after waiting for long and getting the confirmation that Ather is not going to come to Hyderabad before 2019 I finally decided to own Yamaha FZ S 2.0 in August 2018 at an on-road cost of 99,180 INR. Being a Mechanical Engineer and someone who had made his hands dirty in college workshops during his Formula student participations,  I decided to keep track of all the expenses spent in the maintenance, fueling, cleaning and servicing just to keep a track of the performance w.r.t cost for my bike. After 7 months I got the stats for my bike in terms of all the expenses as shown below:

Type of expense

Spent in INR (for 7 months)

Fuel

7118.00

Water wash

832.00

Service

1919.00

Misc

200.00

Total

10069.99

This is exactly the amount that I spent on my Yamaha FZ S 2.0 since August 20th until 20th March 2019 (7 months ).

Being a fan of Ather since the very beginning, I have regularly followed their Twitter account as well as Rockstar CEO Tarun on twitter. It was an interesting question from one of the followers who felt that the initial pricing was bit on the higher side that made me create an Excel sheet and start comparing the after sales expenses for both Ather and my bike and astonishingly, I found the former to be cheaper by 38% with respect to the initial 7 months of analysis.( The final calculation did give a different result)

How Cheaper?

Well the ‘fuel+ service’ will fall under one ultimate plan given by Ather One Subscription. The details are in the link https://www.atherenergy.com/faq/vehicle/ather-subscription  but I would like to highlight few points which really impressed me a lot.

Priced at 8400 INR +18% tax= 9912 INR

Ather will inspect your vehicle once every 5,000 km at your doorstep and complete service at their service center once every 10,000 km (with doorstep pickup and return). Periodic servicing is covered under Ather Service and Ather One

Charging will be free at all the Ather Grids and the Ather Grid network is getting stronger day by day with more and more people interested to host Ather and even they have  tied up with other vendors for space to install the same.

Guess what! You get the full reimbursement if you install one Ather Grid at your home and submit the bills quarterly.

So Ather will give me a bill as shown below after 7 months

Type of Expense

Spent in INR(Calculated for 7 months only)

Ather one Subscription

5782.00

Water wash

832.00

Service

N/A

Misc.

200.00

Total

6814.00

On a Prorated Basis Ather is cheaper to me by 32.33% for these 7 months only in terms of maintenance, fueling/Charging, cleaning and servicing than my personal two-wheeler vehicle

Stats on monthly basis can be found below:

Type of Expense

Monthly Average Expense in Rupee- Yamaha FZ-S 2.0

Ather 450-monthly Expense

Fuel/Charging

1016.86

826.00

Water wash

118.86

118.86

Service

274.14

0.00

Misc

28.57

28.57

Why Ather?

So, on an average I will be saving INR 5580 per year on this.Well I can get one trip to my hometown on flight with this amount of money.

Note- Brake shoes,  sort of oil or consumable products are excluded in thisscenario because this will mostly be same for both.

Still not happy. Then I have more things which will make you a happy customer.

Ever struck in a parking lot where you must pull off your bike with full force just to travel 3-4 meters in reverse? Ather450 and Ather 340 comes with a facility to run it in reverse in those tough situations. Not sure if a combustion bike/scooter can provide you with this luxury.

Want to do something to curb the pollution in the city but not able to spend any time due to busy personal and professional commitments then, you must go with electric scooters to ‘go green’. They lead to much cleaner air, especially in the city’s most crowdy places. Deciding to buy an electric scooter is one of the best ways to contribute to the environment and society.

The verdict is all yours and people would like to know more about Electric Vehicles in India and the development and the costing part: “Every Penny count” and we Indians love to save money.

Coming up next will be an article on details about Ather 450 and Ather 340 and how they are cost effective unique.

Declaration: This is an independent article from an EV enthusiast and I am nowhere related to Ather Energy or nor being paid to write in support of the company or any of its products.

Please refer to http://www.atherenergy.com for more information

Follow me

Twitter – http://www.twitter.com/thesilentsoul07

Linked in -www.linkedin.in/mishrasantosh7