Ather Energy to expand retail footprint
Hyderabad: Electric vehicle maker Ather Energy opened its first experience centre in Hyderabad and sixth in India on Sunday. Pan-India, about 10 new centres are being set up in the country and by July 2021, there will be 27 centres across 27 cities.
Majority of the centres will be set up by retail partners and few will be Ather-owned. The company has set up company-owned centres in Bengaluru and Chennai and the third centre will come up soon in the country, said a top official.
The centres not only act as sales points for the company, but the customers can experience the vehicle, go through the design and internal frame of the vehicles, how the charging of the vehicle happens and how the installation of the charging points happen. Customers can also get a sense of their riding patterns after the test ride.
Made in India
Tarun Mehta, CEO and co-founder, Ather Energy, told Telangana Today, “We have brought on stream our new manufacturing facility with an installed capacity of 9,200 units per month, ten times more than our previous facility. We expect to reach 80 per cent capacity sometime next year depending on the sales.”
He added, “The new facility has improved our operations, output, assembly time and cost for assembly. We are working on new variants and products, but for at least next one year, we will continue to sell our existing variants of Ather.”
The 1,23,000 sq ft EV manufacturing facility in Hosur, Tamil Nadu, will attract an investment of Rs 635 crore over the next five years. The facility has the capacity to produce 1,20,000 battery packs annually. Ather Energy has filed 13 patents on the battery which has been designed and built in-house. It is the only EV OEM in India to make its own battery packs.
The 2.9kWhr battery of Ather 450X uses 21700 type Lithium-ion cells that give the battery a high energy density, charge, and discharge rates which enables fast charging and high performance. The Ather 450X and the Ather 450 Plus are completely Made in India.
EV adoption
When asked about the impact of surge in petrol and diesel prices on the electric vehicle segment, Mehta said, “Though these are early days, we are seeing a hike in footfalls in our experience centres significantly. Our Bengaluru experience centre recently experienced 250 walk-ins on a single day, which is the highest recorded till now. Same is the case with the experience centres in other cities as well. There is definitely an uptake in demand for electric vehicles.”
Ather Energy is seeing 30-40 per cent sales growth month-on-month as the company is entering into more markets pan-India. Customers are seeing electric vehicle adoption as an upgrade, not as a compromise. Customer interest is sky high as they see it as the future mobility, he observed.
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