Bengaluru-based Ather Energy has been teasing the S340 – billed as India’s first smart electric scooter – for a while now and many have been waiting for a chance for a test ride. The startup’s first smart electric scooter was unveiled at the Web Summit Surge conference in Bengaluru on Tuesday.

Ather Energy founder co-founder Tarun Mehta spoke about some of the design philosophies behind the scooter, as well as some of the challenges the company faced in cutting down on its cost and weight, and in extending the battery lifecycle.

While a test ride wasn’t on the cards at the company’s headquarters on Saturday morning, Mehta did share details of the dates for pre-orders, as well as a timeline for production and launch cities for the S340, detailing plans of its software features, such as personalised profiles, riding modes like sport and economy, and onboard navigation.

Ather Energy S340 Connectivity and dashboard features

Billed as a smart scooter, the S340 has GSM and Bluetooth connectivity. The startup has made a decision to move from Android to Linux for the dashboard operating system. While we weren’t shown the dashboard, a spokesperson later confirmed that it would use Google Maps for navigation through the web browser.

“It doesn’t really change much for developers, because the apps are still HTML 5 apps. Internally things haven’t changed dramatically,” Mehta explains. Users will be able to track the vehicle using their smartphones, remotely control and monitor the vehicle, enable fast charging by using a a slider on its app. “You could create custom riding profiles from your mobile phone itself, so that when the vehicle starts, on your profile, those settings will already be pre-saved. So you can specify, what kind of acceleration response, top speed you want, and then save them on your profile, and then go to the vehicle, and select your profile again, those are the exact settings you will find.”

Apart from vehicle location tracking, a lot of work has gone into providing vehicle analytics to the rider, on the dashboard and on its app. Users will be able to extrapolate their average driving speed. Mehta says that the team working on the data analytics love building their own profiles on the prototype, to gauge their energy efficiency.

“There’s this one guy who’s basically like a racer – he does the testing most of the time. If you see his throttle response, it’s either 100 or zero,” says Mehta. “He always does the fastest laps, but his energy consumption is nearly 80 percent more than another another guy who rides very sensibly, but takes 15 percent lesser time.” Vehicle analytics can read skid patches, and help inform the user if they are an unsafe rider who takes sharp turns, Mehta says, adding that good riding behaviour would not influence just the battery lifecycle, but other components as well. “It’s a long term thing, but the sheer power of what data can do for you is sort of hitting everybody in this team now, it’s gamifying the experience,” he says.

Mehta also says that the S340 will have remote diagnostics enabled, with sensor data from at least four of its components (battery, motor, charger and the vehicle control unit) so they can inform the rider when a replacement is due. “Electric drive trains already have most of those sensors and data logging happening inherently,” he says. “You just need to start tapping into it, and pile up software and intelligence on top of it, to come up with outcomes like this. As we get more and more data from the vehicles, our understanding and insights on this is only going to get far deeper.”

Ather Energy S340 launch cities and availability

The S340 will be available for trials and pre-orders in about two and a half months, at experience centres owned and operated by the company. “By the end of the year is when we’ll start shipping. We’re already in February, and March starts soon,” says Mehta. “A few months from now is when we start the preorders and the test trials, and five to six months from there is when we start shipping.”

The S340 will first be available in three cities – Bengaluru, Pune and Chennai. The company will have service centres and experience centres operating in these three cities, Mehta says, where people can come and take a test ride.

Ather Energy S340 production and manufacturing

Weighing in at 85 kilograms, the S340 smart scooter has been designed in-house, and every component (with the exception of the motor) is custom designed by Ather Energy, including the rim and the side-stand. These components needed to be redesigned to be as lightweight as possible.

“The rims specifically for lightness. The chassis for the most part is aluminium,” Mehta explains. “The philosophy behind that is that lightweight is important, any extra material that you ramp on is wastage. We redesigned the side-stand, because we did not like any in the market – ours is flush with the body, it merges very well with the overall body, went with our design language.”