Ather Energy is not exactly a household name in the Indian auto sector, not yet at least. But in select circles the company has been able to make a mark.
The company is mainly known for its electric scooters, with the launch of its Ather 450X last year, to good reviews.
The startup has now revealed ambitions to go beyond electric 2 wheelers in future, in 4-5 years according to a news report. While 5 years is a long time in fast growing electric vehicle sector, one still wonders why they would want to do that.
Unless of course they are looking at 3 wheelers and not cars.
Electric car sales are not going well even for the majors (Tata, Mahindra, or international OEMs). There’s little reason why it should go well for new players.
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Electric 3 wheelers are doing much better – both for the passenger segment (e-autorickshaws) as well as the goods segments (smaller versions of Tata Ace or Piaggio Ape).
But on the other hand, the three wheeler market is quite different from that for scooters. Scooters is a hardcore B2C segment and Ather’s focus is currently the premium end of the segment where branding and customer comforts matter a lot. Electric 3 wheelers are however more a B2B sector (even e-autorickshaws are not the typical B2C segment we all know). So someone like Ather trying to crack it here could be a challenge too.
Considering all these, it will be interesting to know what motivates Ather to look beyond two wheelers, when that segment itself is in infancy.
