Electric scooter start-up Ather Energy has announced the launch of a new home charging point - Ather Dot, for its Ather 450 customers in Chennai & Bengaluru. The new charger has been designed specifically for the Ather 450 electric scooter and company says that it took a lot of feedback from its existing customers to make this charging point smaller, lighter and easy to install. The new Ather Dot comes with surge protection and authenticated power transfer so that it's safe and works only with an Ather scooter. The new Ather Dot also comes with several safety measures like auto cut-off function and it also gets app integration, which means owners can also monitor the charging levels through their mobile app.
In its official launch announcement, Ather Energy said, "Ather has been working with its customers in the past year to make improvements and changes to its intelligent scooter, the Ather 450. One of those was to take the charger off-board. Taking it off helps in improving weight distribution and also improves vehicle dynamics. All this without a drastic change in the charging performance."
The new Ather Dot comes with surge protection and authenticated power transfer so that it's safe and works only with an Ather scooter
The new Ather Dot unit weighs just 3.5 kg and comes with a 2-metre long output cable and 1.2-metre long input cable. The charging unit delivers a 60 V, 12 A DC supply, which is capable of offering 0 to 80 per cent charge in just 4 hours and 30 minutes, while 0 to 100 per cent takes 5 hours and 15 minutes. Ather says that the charging patterns data show that most Bengaluru owners charge either overnight or during the day at their workplace. So, the slight spike in the charging time will not affect the charging behaviour and usage of the owners. Furthermore, the charging time at the Ather Grid, the company's fast chargers placed across the city, remains the same.
Customers can get their new Ather Dot installed by the company for Rs. 1800, which includes standard installation, consumables, labour charges and even GST. However, Ather says that the installation of Ather Dot is a simple process, and for customers who might want to get the unit installed by their local electricians, the company will provide an installation manual as well.
The new Ather Dot charging point will be shipped to them post completing the payment for the Ather 450 and prior its delivery. While the unit will be delivered to all Chennai customers along with scooter, in Bengaluru, all the customers taking delivery after October 2019 will get the Ather 450 with the new charging point.
