On a humid evening in Bengaluru’s Indiranagar neighborhood, a delivery rider waits by the curb, helmet dangling from one hand. His scooter, sleek and almost silent, hums faintly as he nudges it forward. A passerby pauses, noticing the green license plate and the unusual quiet. “Is that the Ather?” he asks, pointing. The rider nods with a faint smile, proud yet hurried, before zipping away into the traffic. The sound of the city swallows him whole.
This small scene is becoming increasingly common across India. In a country where the two-wheeler has long been more than just transportation, often the first major purchase for a family, a symbol of independence, and a lifeline for workers, the arrival of Ather Energy’s electric scooters has injected new urgency into the debate about how India will move in the future.
Betting on the Impossible
Founded in 2013 by two IIT Madras graduates, Ather was never supposed to survive the odds stacked against it. Building an electric scooter in India meant not only rethinking design and batteries, but also convincing consumers who measure reliability in decades and fuel efficiency in kilometers per liter. And yet, a decade later, the company is hailed as one of the flagbearers of India’s EV transition, with showrooms in major cities and a growing fleet of white-and-green scooters weaving into the nation’s chaotic streets.
But beneath the glossy launch events and government subsidies, the story of Ather reveals something more complicated: the contradictions of India’s push toward electrification, the political and economic stakes of a growing industry, and the very human anxieties of riders caught between aspiration and uncertainty.
The Allure and the Anxiety
When I spoke to Ankit Sinha, a 29-year-old software engineer in Pune who bought his Ather 450X last year, he described it almost like a gadget rather than a vehicle. “The touchscreen dashboard, the connectivity, the way it updates over Wi-Fi, it feels like owning an iPhone on wheels,” he said. But when pressed about range anxiety, he laughed nervously. “That’s the part no one likes to talk about. If I forget to charge at night, I’m basically stuck.”
Range anxiety is a phrase that crops up again and again in conversations about electric mobility. Reddit threads about Ather are filled with both praise and complaints. Some users post screenshots of the scooter’s energy dashboard, boasting about squeezing out 120 kilometers on a single charge. Others vent frustration over real-world performance dropping to 70 kilometers in city traffic. “I love it, but the anxiety is real,” one Redditor wrote. “I plan my weekends around charging stations.”
Charging as a Social Ritual
For Ather, this tension is existential. Unlike scooters powered by petrol, which can be refueled at any corner station in five minutes, the company’s survival depends on building a network of charging points across Indian cities. Ather Grid, the brand’s charging infrastructure, is scattered across metros, installed in cafés, malls, and tech parks. At a café in Bengaluru’s Koramangala, I watched as two young men parked their scooters side by side and plugged them into gleaming green chargers. They sipped iced coffee while their dashboards blinked with charging icons. “It’s like hanging out while your scooter refuels,” one said casually, as if normalizing a habit that still feels novel to most Indians.
A Price Tag Out of Reach
The government, eager to cut oil imports and curb pollution, has sweetened the deal with subsidies through schemes like FAME II. Ather’s scooters, once priced at a premium, have inched closer to affordability for the upper-middle-class urban buyer. Yet, affordability remains relative. In a market dominated by scooters like Honda Activa that retail far cheaper, Ather appeals to a niche of early adopters: tech-savvy, urban, and willing to pay for design and sustainability.
Tradition Meets Skepticism
But not everyone buys into the hype. In Chennai, I met a dealer who admitted that skepticism lingers among older buyers. “A father comes in with his son who wants an Ather,” he explained. “The son is excited. The father asks me, ‘Beta, will this scooter last 10 years like my old Bajaj?’ I don’t know what to tell him. We are selling the future, but the past still holds more trust.”
Giants at the Gate
There is also the matter of economics at scale. India’s two-wheeler market sells more than 15 million units annually. Ather, despite its buzz, accounts for only a fraction of that. Legacy manufacturers like TVS and Bajaj have entered the EV space, bringing deeper pockets and larger distribution networks. Chinese manufacturers lurk on the horizon, offering cheaper alternatives that threaten to undercut startups on price. For Ather, survival depends not just on engineering brilliance but on carving an identity that feels aspirational enough to resist commoditization.
A Start-Up’s Growing Pains
Inside the company, employees describe a culture that mirrors a tech startup more than a traditional automaker. Engineers obsess over software updates that unlock new riding modes. Customer service teams monitor online forums, responding to complaints about charging glitches or minor hardware faults. “We are constantly firefighting,” one employee confessed. “People expect their scooter to behave like a smartphone, always improving. But hardware is not as forgiving as software.”
The Green Promise and the Coal Reality
The political narrative, meanwhile, is racing ahead. Ministers tout EV adoption as proof of India’s green transition. States compete to woo factories with tax breaks and land. In Tamil Nadu, where Ather set up a sprawling manufacturing facility, billboards proclaim the state as India’s EV capital. Yet, as environmental researchers caution, the source of electricity still matters. If scooters charge on grids powered by coal, the emissions savings shrink dramatically. “We cannot romanticize EVs without cleaning up the power sector,” said one Delhi-based analyst. “Otherwise, we are just moving pollution from the street to the smokestack.”
Riders on the Edge
And then there are the voices of riders themselves, which reveal the uneven reality beneath the promise. In Delhi, a food delivery worker named Sameer had switched from a petrol bike to an Ather through a lease program. “It saves me money on fuel,” he said, “but if the battery drops mid-shift, I lose orders. I can’t afford that.” His story captures the fragile balancing act: a technology designed for sustainability colliding with the grind of urban labor.
The Silent Future in Question
Late one evening, I returned to the charging café in Bengaluru where the two young men had plugged in their scooters. By then, their vehicles were fully charged, glowing dashboards reflecting on their helmets. As they rode away, barely audible against the din of autorickshaws and motorbikes, I wondered how many more such scenes would dot Indian cities in the next decade.
The quiet hum of the Ather is both promise and paradox. It symbolizes a nation yearning for cleaner, smarter mobility, but it also embodies the contradictions of progress: affordability versus aspiration, infrastructure versus ambition, and technology versus trust. India’s electric two-wheeler revolution may have already begun, but its outcome is far from certain.