Second report: Our Ather 450X has handled the monsoon impressively, but a couple of issues have cropped up.
One of the many apprehensions associated with EVs is their safety during the monsoon, and understandably so. We’ve been told ever since childhood that electricity and water aren’t meant to mix. Of course, all EVs today come with IP ratings to tell you that they’re safe, but genuine peace of mind comes only after you’ve seen them substantiated. And so we’ve been running our long-term Ather 450X through Mumbai’s notoriously torrential monsoon, and for the most part, it has impressed us greatly.
Charger still working even after inadvertently getting soaked.
Even before the monsoon set in, the scooter was inadvertently left charging under a leaking air-conditioning unit, and there was a heart-in-mouth moment when we came back to find the home charger soaking wet. However, this soon turned to relief when we realised that the charger was functioning completely normally, and the rest of the scooter has also held up similarly well, with the motor, battery pack and touch functionality of the screen all remaining unaffected by the rains.
TFT screen didn’t turn on after being left parked for a while.
However, when left parked for a slightly long duration, the 450X’s TFT touchscreen went dead, even though the rest of the scooter functioned normally. Turning the key on did not turn on the display, but when we went through the start procedure with the buttons and twisted the accelerator, the scooter moved forwards and worked as normal. Despite turning the key off and on multiple times, the screen refused to turn on, only occasionally giving a flash of the backlight. Finally, a hard reset is what got the screen going again, and since then, it has functioned normally.
OTA update process only completes the following morning.
There are a couple of points to note regarding the scooter’s software updates. While the 450X is capable of downloading and installing the updates overnight, it still only ‘completes’ the update when you start the scooter the following morning. In such cases, you are faced with a message on the screen saying “completing update”, and this usually takes about 4-5 minutes to complete, before you can start riding. On most days, this will be fine, but unfortunately for me, this happened on the morning of a shoot day when I had a tight schedule to keep. So in cases where you need to get a move on quickly, this can be quite frustrating.
A recent OTA update has brought in the new hill-hold functionality.
What’s also annoying is that some of the scooter’s settings seem to reset when you install an update. For example, I keep the indicator beeps turned off. But they seem to get turned on after every update, and I have to manually turn them off again from the settings menu. On the upside, a recent update did bring in the auto-hold function, which works quite well most of the time and comes in handy on steep inclines. However, the navigation capabilities could still use some work – the screen often takes a very long time to render maps and routes, and responses are slow when trying to enter and navigate to a destination. Once up and running, this is a more comprehensive system than any of the turn-by-turn systems on most other two-wheelers, but Ather needs to work on making this a slicker and quicker experience.
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