Ather 450XThe Ather 450X scooter with a price tag ranging between Rs. 99,000 to Rs. 1.45 Lakh. It is available in 2 variants and 3 colours. Powered by a  Motor. The Ather 450X has Disc front brakes and Disc rear brakes. Over 3 User reviews basis Mileage, Performance, Price and overall experience of users for Ather 450X.

The Ather 450 was already a modern-looking scooter. It looks fresh even two years after its launch, so Ather figured, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” However, Ather has introduced a couple of new colours: grey with yellow highlights and cyan with white and red highlights. I particularly love the grey variant as it makes the scooter feel even more premium. The cyan variant is pretty funky and looks nice in the flesh, although it isn’t to my taste. 

From the front, the scooter exudes a distinctively feminine feel to it thanks to the hourglass-shaped apron. And from the side, it looks pretty lean and mean, with sharply cut and raked-out body panels. 

Behind the sleek side panel lies a properly generous 26-litre underseat storage. Open the seat and a strip of LED lights up instantly. The underseat space is large enough to fit in a proper ECE-certified MT Helmet length and width-wise. However, it isn’t deep enough, running short of an inch and a half to shut the seat properly with the helmet inside. That said, regular-sized ISI-certified helmets will easily fit in, with additional space to keep your knick-knacks.  There are extra cavities on the sides too -- to secure smaller essentials like toolkit, first-aid kit and paperwork. For extra practicality, there’s a retractable hook mounted on the apron, good for hanging grocery bags up to 8kg. There’s no extra hook below the seat, though, as the exposed frame gets in the way.

Most of us have the notion of electric scooters being slow and boring. With the Sport mode in the 450, Ather challenged that perception. However, in the 450X, the brand has introduced an even higher performance mode called Warp mode. If you thought Sport mode was a wild cat, Warp mode feels more like a feral feline from the depths of hell. 

Switch to this mode and the acceleration is phenomenally relentless from the moment you twist the throttle, even if it is short-lived. It felt surreal as I tried to come to terms with the kind of velocity the scooter was building, accompanied by its characteristic whine. There’s plenty of grunt up to 65kmph. Post that, the momentum eases off gradually until 80kmph - its claimed top speed (same as the 450). All in all, despite having the same top speed as the older scooter, the peppiness has gone up considerably. Warp mode makes the Ather 450X quicker than any scooter we’ve tested before, and we’re not talking just electrics here!

Ather says it has reduced weight in the dashboard area, bringing down the steering inertia by a big margin. A lot of weight reduction has also come from optimising the electronics packaging. So, overall, the scooter’s kerb weight has been reduced from 118kg in the first-generation scooter to 107kg in the 450X! 

The reduced steering inertia coupled with the 11kg drop in weight is immediately noticeable on the move. Pair this with the low centre of gravity and you get a scooter that can be flicked from left to right almost telepathically. Petrol-powered scooters generally lack the stability of larger-wheeled motorcycles and are tippy to the point of feeling twitchy. The Ather 450X is practically free of such issues. Like the 450, the scooter is well-balanced with neutral weight distribution, so it stays stable at higher speeds too. The front and the rear suspension felt a little stiff for my weight but it isn’t bone-jarring either. In fact, the stiff setup really helps with the scooter’s agility on well-paved roads, and this is something enthusiasts will appreciate. The ground clearance has remained unchanged, at 160mm, which is 11mm less than the Honda Activa 6G’s (claimed to be the highest in segment). Nevertheless, the ground clearance is good enough to not be a problem over bad roads.

The 12-inch wheels wrapped with 90-section MRF tyres offer good grip while cornering. Ather is also offering fatter TVS Remora tyres (100-section front and 110-section rear), which provides better feedback than the MRF tyres, as an option. However, these tyres end up increasing the scooter’s rolling resistance and thus might reduce the real-world range. All in all, casual riders would be better off sticking with the MRF rubber.

The only chink in the scooter’s dynamics is the rear brake. While the 200mm petal disc brake up front is really powerful and offers great feel and progression, the rear 190mm petal unit tends to lock up rather quickly. To compound that, most riders are used to having a rear drum setup, so we tend to grab the rear lever by handfuls. Consequently, the rear locks easily and steps out, which can be alarming for casual riders. The presence of dual-channel ABS, while not common in most scooters, would've greatly helped here.

This is where the Ather 450X delivers some and then more. Like the 450, the new 450X also gets smartphone connectivity, navigation, over the air (OTA) updates and the works. But the company has switched from Linux to Android operating system for easier upgradability, fewer bugs, and a more seamless and stable user interface. Even the processor has been upgraded with one that’s reportedly 30 per cent faster. 

More importantly, the 450X comes with 4G connection via an electronic sim card, an upgrade from the 450’s 3.5G connectivity. Thanks to the e-sim, you can change your service provider to whichever one works best in your area without the need to install a physical sim. Ather claims the overall data transfer, navigation, OTA update speed is significantly increased with 4G, and we have no reason to doubt them.

The 450X also comes with Bluetooth connectivity, which was absent on the 450. With this, Ather has been able to equip the scooter with a ‘Find My Vehicle’ function, the ability to control phone calls or music via the left switchgear, and even a voice assistant. That last one is still in the prototype stage but Ather should be able to polish it in a couple of months and send out an OTA update to all its 450X scooters. It also gets WiFi connectivity which acts as a supplement to the Bluetooth and helps in data transfer.  

Ather also says Bluetooth makes the scooter ready to be compatible with additional features like, say, a tyre pressure monitoring system. The brand says the accessory will be an off-the-shelf component for which there will be a native integration via Bluetooth, instead of relying on the smartphone to read the information. Another accessory which will be introduced in the near future is a Bluetooth-connected helmet, with which the voice assistant, call and music function, will be even more fluid. Ather says it will ensure native integration for all the accessories it might come up with in the future. So as far as the tech side of things go, the scooter should be properly future-ready as the core components are in place.