[Music] [Music] hello and welcome to motorink First today we're going to talk about ether's new scooter finally right yeah it's it's been a long time it's been a really long time coming and uh before we go any further we're going to park the Rista Risha family scooter analogy out of the way right that's what it's that's what it's aimed at right family scooter from ather yeah right yeah where would you like to start uh the point you made is actually a good one it's been a longterm coming yeah if you think about it ather is now what a 10 year old company and they took the first 6 years to build out the first 450 and then they've been circling the 450 block with the X then the Gen 2 gen 3 Gen 4 or whatever and then they added the S but it's only been the 450 correct so it's very important that a second scooter arrived of some sort yeah it has chosen to do the family scooter and I understand why they looking for more sales they're looking for more traction and I wish they wouldn't get distracted by Ola but Ola is definitely a distraction for them oh really yeah because see if Ola sitting there cutting prices left right and Center prepping for the IPO and all of this and in the middle of which you've got a 70,000 rupee scooter which looks like looks terrible honestly because they've cheap why do you say it looks terrible they' just cheapened it out Kik so if you look at the S versus the X the 450s X the S doesn't look cheap and to me the S is actually the better scooter than the X apart from the fun Factor but when Ola does this they take the disc brake off and put a drum brake in the front half the Plastics at the bottom turn black fit finish anyway wasn't great now it looks even worse okay after we tested the generation 2 S1 Pro and it did so badly in our test we basically said we are not testing products from this company so instead of us getting distracted by Olas I just like to return to ather which is what I tell ather also saying don't get distracted by this Ola company on the flip side what ather does well is they make good products we've never tested a 450 and come with saying oh that was just mediocre they've done good products so when they go to a segment that requires a mediocre product like a family scooter remember a family scooter can't do too many things too well right it can't be too exciting because it becomes too exciting then you'll put off a few members of your family it can't be too sporty because if you do that you'll piss off somebody else in your family and so on and so forth right so by design it has to be a really mild and literally to use the right word it has to be the average product because on average everybody in your family needs to like the scooter I i' I'd call it a generalist yeah see and I'll give you two examples so that you can immediately understand what I'm trying to say the Activa 110 and the AIS 125 are two prototypes of good family scooters but the access still is fun to write because the performance always feels a little bit punch and what Suzuki gets right it's punchy enough to keep you interested without being Punchy enough to make the 70y old in your family who still wants to ride a scooter saying oh this is too fast and I can't handle it right they got it right the Activa 110 is relatively speaking a lot more dull and we've dealt with it in the view Series so I'm not going to go into it but ather could have gone either way and if you think about aether's history you're going to think that the access is where they would go and honestly that's where they started because their first reference for how to build a family scooter was the Panamera was the Panamera if Porsche has a 911 as a sports car and they built Panamera as a family car wow right okay what should the Riza be like right and uh they're young excitable Engineers right so they started to think about this is oh maybe we doing too much here and we need to take it back a little bit so if you think about it a majority of the frame structure in the front is very similar to the 450s the battery pack is the same as the 450s okay and you get two Rista models one with the 2.9 KW battery and one with the 3.7 KW battery which is the same as the 450s battery no changes here they've changed the subframe so the seat structure Etc is slightly different and they've changed how they extract power from the motor and how much power they extract from the motor plus styling design and small elements here and there to create the family scooter so it is very much an offshoot of the 450 line even today 10 years later it's not a brand new scooter in that sense but thankfully it's not a a Panera either so does it get that expensive aluminium frame thing see always remember that frame is part of the heat sink structure of the of the scooter itself which is why athers tend not to overheat so I don't think ather is ever going to go away from using aluminium there because it just works to stabilize thermal uh efficiency across the board so they'll do all of those things for sure MH so everybody was expecting the risda to be brand new like a completely new platform it's an offshoot it's a significant offshoot but it is still just an offshoot and I was curious about how it would look and uh yeah that's a strange thing right how do you go futuristic but not too futuristic it needs to look fresh and cool like ather are supposed to look fresh and cool but not too fresh and cool so that people get and if you take the I Cube as an example there I was just going to say they took my favorite scooter electric scooter and they it feels like a cooler I Cube and which is just right that's right for ether yeah and if you think about the I Cube styling for example we've commented on this the I Cube began in a great place at the front and the further back in the scooter you go the older the scooter gets and then adding the Chrome garnish and the lit labels and all of that it didn't help the I Cub's sense of Class A lot right ather is cleverer than that at least on this one front so when you see the Riza for the first time all the body panels are slightly boxy but it's not a small scooter anymore in feel it is a larger scooter is it a large scooter no I'm going to hold judgment on that no no so I'll explain this like for me uh the 450x is as much as I enjoyed riding the 450x is not something I inherently felt comfortable with I always and I'm not tall right but even then sitting on the 450x I used to feel like it's a little cramped I don't know something something about it just didn't work for me right and uh I get what you're saying like all the other bigger scooters you feel like a little bit more spaced out correct so when you write the river Indie for example which is a much larger scoter than the X it's also larger than the Rista you immediately have a sense of not that you're reaching to The Handlebar but there's space in front of you there's space ahead of your knees your footboard is huge and you have a massive sense of space the RIS is somewhere in the middle does it feel compact like the 450 no super spacious like the river also no okay but is there enough space for you to not even think about space ever again yes that's what they is it fair to say that it would be about as much as the access or the little bit better than the axis I think Jupiter is a better reference because Jupiter is the 125 Jupiter is perhaps the most spacious of the IC scooters it's also the most uh it's the freshest recent design where they significantly re-engineered the scooter started with the fuel uh module having to go under the flowboard like a battery would go the Jupiter 125 placed it there that released a lot of space and lots of places but it also forced a fairly significant restructuring of the scooter itself so to me the Jupiter 125 is the freshest in terms of engineering of all of the IC scooters and it reaps the benefits of that the Rista more or less falls into that kind of a Zone in fact ather said that they will built the biggest seat on the market the next biggest seat is a Jupiter 125 ahuh okay nice yeah so that's a good place to be so in terms of size in terms of sense of uh the and it's an ather so finish levels are great there are little thoughtful details I think the baj chak actually has even more thoughtful details MH and I was I was as surprised as you are the chetak has a lot of interesting uh Rider friendly detail and Rider friendly not being Enthusiast Rider just the person who's operating the Chet there's lots of small things like the seat stays open at whatever angle you leave it and stuff the ather is supposed to do it but surprisingly at least on the hardware front the chetak does more than the ather the ather does more than the chetak on the software front give an example of the hardware oh so for example the ather Rista seat it's a large seat pan and it's mounted at the front look at the gesture you made yeah it's it's huge right the fit into this natively and naturally which has only ever happened on the river Indie on the river Indie you had to maneuver it into place and there was a specific orientation not on the Rista and the Rista has a bump at the bottom where the tire protrudes into the despite that okay so the Rista is that kind of spacious it's big but it's so big that I think it needs one more mounting point for the seat pan in the front Okay so when you open the seat the hinge feels weak and the front of that tray also moves a little bit between both of these the seat never closes in one shot it needs to be aligned at the end so that it slots neatly into its lock on the chak not only does the hinge feeling weak thing not happen it also has a spring so you just take it and leave it here and the seat stays there so one step up in the hardware like that okay right the athers charge port for example is spring-loaded to close but that makes it quite inconvenient because you need two hands now one to open it and one to plug it and it doesn't stay where it is M or even if it was a damped close where it would just slowly close itself you have time to plug it in and then the flap will come and rest on top of the charger no it doesn't and what about all the other stuff like the screens and the switches and all of that it's all from the 450s oh it is yeah yeah so do it have W no okay so so let's see what what they've done here okay first on the motor front it's the same motor but they're extracting less performance from it so the top speed Falls 10 km an hour from the 450 x to the Rista so this cuto maxes out at 80 km an hour we Rod around the nandi Hills area outside bangaluru so twisty roads not always fully flat always climbing and all of that did I feel a lack of performance honestly no okay then because the extract less performance they can add 10 km to the range but uh Power is down but what about torque torque is also down Tor is the same 22 Yeah so there's not a fundamental difference in the hardware there's not a fundamental difference in the weight but they're just taking less from this motor and they're taking their time about taking it out so it's calmer gentler scooter so if you see the 0 to 40 the scooter is a slower scooter therefore it only has two uh riding modes one is smart Eco and the other is zip okay so they only put two riding modes because they said look the more riding modes I put the more complicated the scooter becomes and then it becomes harder to share with members of your family a youngster will adapt to more riding modes but an older person may not it might be too much for them and I don't doubt that piece of logic because when I wrote the 450s and remember we got the 450s without the prop pack right which is basically like an IC scooter but with the electric PN because there was no features at all it was very nice to ride correct I could have asked them to have a better range indicator a little bit more data here and there but outside of that it was very easy to just get on turn the key that's all literally you can do and then you go I mean imagine it was parked here in the office and we were walking past it and I had I I didn't ride it but when we were around it sh said no you must take a look uh and he turned it on he showed me the display and all that he said that's it but it's so simple and it's so nice exactly simpler can be better yeah so the screens are very interesting okay if you remember the 450x has a touchscreen yeah TFT color display and the base 450s has a color segmented non-touch LCD display with the excellent joystick correct on the Rista the gradation is the same but the interface has has changed for the color screen okay so they've said the 450x can be considered a little bit too youthful little bit too aggressive so they've calmed all the graphics down it's a peace oriented peace oriented in the sense of the colors are muted pinks and blues that kind of it's a calmer gentler clearer interface and it's got two modes it's got navigation Etc on the test scooters that we had the software was early versions and it was super slow and glitchy okay so I'll show you pictures now of parts of the screen each of those pictures took minutes to take because we were waiting for the screen to refresh and uh reload okay in one case there was a village and I'm navigating through this Village and it's basically enter the village make a left go 10 m make a right exit Village the system recognized that I had exited the village long after I had actually exited the village because just running that kind of slowly okay now ather says software will update and these glitches will resolve and I would trust them that they would solve this but on the day that we rode the scooter it was in a very poor place because it just didn't do much I'm just wondering on this front uh the screen was already in use from the X yeah right yeah the software was already built out yeah but I think new interface and updating a new interface they might have changed a few features here and there plus they rolled out ather stack 6 which is their new software update in the process which adds more features I think something has gone and they will it's not like they've kind of decanted the hardware or something like that on the screens or no as far as I can tell the spec is one to one okay and I think for ather given how many scooters they make to have the Riza onun a completely different uh processor and all of that versus the 450 makes no sense to me uh and the interesting thing is that the base risda the S has the same segmented color LCD display from the 450x with almost no changes at all so instead of saying whatever sport normal Etc it says smart ecoin zip that screen on the 450s I think was the better of the two screens because the interface was so simple that was super easy to use I have a feeling that the ather risda s might have the better screen of the two once again and full compliments to ather for pulling off such a classy LCD display it's very hard to imagine that in 20124 you'd pull an LCD display out of the hat that works even better than a color TFT yeah so in in this case this is the electronics picture uh the excellent joystick has been used to create a few shortcuts we'll discuss those at the end okay in terms of riding I was a little surprised at how slow smar Eco is okay remember what they've done is they've reduced the power that they're taking on of the motor so everything is slower which amounts to 10 kmph lost in top speed but 10 kmph gained in range 10 km gained in range okay yeah so whether and that range goes up to 100 159 on the 3.7 Kow hour battery versus 150 on the previous scooter roughly 153 or something and it goes up to 120 something now whereas it used to be 110 something previously so if you take a 2.9 battery scooter and you can get the S and the X and 2.9 you'll get roughly 110 IDC ranges these are not real world numbers and and if you take the 3.7 which is only available as the X then you'll get 159 IDC okay okay 70% of that is roughly what you're looking at as a real world number understood but when I took it out in smar Eco first slope and I'm at Full Throttle and I enter this slope doing 45 and then it starts to lose speed as it climbs and over the course of the next 100 150 M of this slope I exit doing 30 and to me that's a flag why should it do that because how is this thing going to climb fly overs because there are flyovers that are definitely steeper than this one slope so then obviously nandi Hills was next so I went up it never Falls below 18 km an hour but it is so aggressively protecting your range that it basically will not give you performance so if you live in a relatively flat City I think smar Eco has enough performance but if you live in a hilly place or the city you living has places where it goes up and down the hill quite a bit I'd like you to check out smartio up one of those slopes before you commit to buying a Risa was smart e supposed to be but smart like you can prioritize one of the two I think on the ather performance got a lot more priority than it gets on the Rista they've reorganized their agenda so look it's the only eco mode you've got and you can't switch off the smart and it prioritizes range above all else so to me if I were ather I'd consider one of two things one is let me switch off Smart so I can access Eco in full performance because what it's doing is it's limiting how much talk the motor will give you right now the other way to do it is the baj way to do it which is when I open the throttle Beyond a certain point let me temporarily go into zip mode and then kick me out of zip mode 10 seconds later or whenever I close the throttle next is a smarter way to ride the scooter than it is right now okay I was a little surprised at how conservative they've been on the performance because in zip mode it feels actually completely you also spoke about flyovers like how much of an issue will it be in that kind of a scenario it will lose speed climbing for sure okay so what feel that I'm getting is that whereas with the 450x you felt in command and like let's say on the road you were actually in the in a way like somebody who's carrying Authority you were on a scooter but that electric made you feel steps ahead of yeah the traffic and this is not the riza's agenda at all so even in zip mode it's not like oh so fast never it's calm it's calculated but in the same scenario no no there's no problem in zip mode this is the algorithm messing in smar Eco alone ah so in zip mode there is no problem it's not fast I cannot call that's fine I cannot call the Rista fast and zip mode it is quick enough after that then it is a normal ather it's just a very calm ather okay if you remember 450x was aggressive 450s was a heck of a lot smoother the Rista has that kind of smoothness but without that level of performance it's just a little bit calmer in feel and the assumption is family scooter riders will never go really fast M and I think that is a flawed assumption so family scooter rider who wants to go a little bit quicker will have to go back to zip mode and if you live in the haly areas it might be the only mode you'll ever get to use and the 159 km so the scooter starts up in smart Eco by default whatever mode you left it in as far as I can remember again my particular scooter had a slightly broken mode switch so I had lots of trouble switching between the modes after a while I just gave up I checked all the other scooters there mine was the one with the broken return spring so basically when you switch a mode it wouldn't reenter so you have to fiddle with it before it recentered and ather said saying we don't know why this happens but this only happens to the scooters that I pick so I was like okay something to do with me if I not sure but is this what you meant by the Ola parallel because this no no no that distraction is a whole different strategy distraction has nothing to do with the product this is a regular ether I see differ why does it sound like this has been a little rushed it is is feeling a little bit rushed because I think the announcement on the Community Day the Prelude to the Rista was too long then the Community Day happened and then it's been what 20 days or 15 days since we waited for the scooter to be actually first right and I went to the first ride then there was glitchy software my particular scooter had a broken mode switch so it adds up to look like the picture is worse than it is but nobody else had these kind of issues apart from the software glitching for various people nobody else had broken switches my I had a broken switch I mean it can happen it's okay okay and they insisted that I should ride various other scooters but by that point of time I'd already consumed I had 81% when I started I was already 50% further down that road sure so I think uh okay I should also clarify it's because we're used to maybe ather setting standards which are higher than everybody else's in the EV yes and these are not production scooters yet and uh so this is an anomaly this is strange to hear about this stuff from ather we're not used to it and anyways once you get the test vehicle so um in uh ZIP mode I don't really have anything to complain about but I want to set your expectation correctly it is nowhere close to the kind of bubbly performance that we used to from the 450 series scooters it's not meant to be how let's take um IQ which we've said is on the karma side more recently you yeah so the biggest difference from ibe to Rista is actually not the engine performance it is the suspension aha yeah which we'll we'll talk about it in a minute so if you think that the I cube is a reasonably performing city scooter so is the Rista I can't honestly even tell you whether the Rista is faster than the I Cube or not perfect perfect because I rote the I Cube here in Mumbai a relatively flat place but I wrote that at the base of the nandi hills where everything was a slope so honestly I don't have a frame of reference did I feel like Zip mode caused me to think a f I wish there was more performance no honestly I didn't did I miss the last 10K mph yes I did but then I would right it's me on the suspension front the suspension setup is a lot better than the 450 suspension which isn't really saying much but remember the 450 was designed to be a sporty scooter these are relatively small suspension units there's not a lot ather has done with them even over the years in terms of retuning and resetting the suspension the scooter feels a lot more comfortable but I'm not saying the word comfortable by itself I'm just saying a lot more comfortable if you ride it back to back with the I Cube especially if you're a slow rider you will think that the I cube is a lot more luxurious and plush there is a flip side to the story when you start to go faster and hit larger bumps on the Rista the Rista stays composed this is the area where the IQ starts to lose control over its composure and it starts to bounce around as the suspension units can no longer absorb the hits so the I Cube might feel like the better setup initially but I think the Risa is the better setup overall I wouldn't call either of these two scooters a Marvel of engineering I don't think either of them achieve any new uh greatness in terms of how family scooters are set up in India today and in terms of tire sizes tire sizes are the exact same as before so they used to use you mean as the 450x as the 450x there is no change on that front at all again remember the power train most of the hardware Wheels brakes nothing has changed big change rear brake is now a drum okay because this is a scooter that's built to a cost there's no escaping that so where the ather used to have two discs uh no ABS obviously you've got a drum at the back and that's a good thing because the ather rear brake was pretty sharp if you remember it was very easy to lock up the rear wheel a setting that they they have not changed after so many years of telling them that this is too sharp the drum brake removes that problem drum brakes on scooters at the back especially work quite well you never really suffer saying a a drum you never feel like that but it's taken that sharp bite out so it's a very usable set of brakes now so okay okay solved in to me not the classiest way possible but solved so it's behind us now right they've also covered the bottom in lots of plastic shrouding because uh there was a complaint during the monsoons last year and there was a specific belt related issue where the belts would start squeaking from the filth that was going into the belt so now the shrouds have gotten ever larger so if you remember the Apex it already had a very large cover over the belt I think it was not possible to do it but they have the Rista has an even larger cover over the rear belt so the bottom of the scooter as it comes out of the bodyw work is just covered in black plastic on both sides it's not bad looking it's just wow that's a lot of plastic okay it makes for example re-inflating or checking tire pressures on the rear tire a little bit challenging they do have 90° valves so it sticks out but they're rubber mounted and it's very difficult to reach so when you put the tire pressure gauge against it and push it it just pushes back and releases Air instead so then you have to put one hand around like it's kind of complicated but okay uh I wish that when manufacturers do 90° valves which is an awesome idea don't rubber Mount them you destroy some of the functionality of the rub of the valve because every time I push the rubber bends and then it doesn't achieve the result right so brakes are good handling is very good again not sharp it's very calm considered Pleasant and trustworthy and I think trustworthy is a very good word for the scooter in that sense uh Comfort levels you'll be okay seat is good it's a massive seat and it's not so massive when you look at it the first time you won't notice it when you sit down on it and you start scooching back and realize you still haven't hit the halfway mark and I'm 6' tall then you really start to think yeah this is a big seat it's also reasonably flat so unlike on the 450s where you sort of slide forward a little bit doesn't happen on the Rista so they've solved that so this will be good for going triples uh idea is you shouldn't be going triples even though he suggested it but the idea is if you were for example carrying a backpack with you to school you could put the backpack between your legs and then your parent could be riding the scooter in front and you'd have enough space for the backpack between you and the parent without you feeling kind of squeezed in that sense the space is useful you can misuse things but you can misuse anything so ather cannot solve human behavior I mean we've been trying to do some of it no because invariably that is I mean I remember which was it you remember there was some motorcycle in which they somebody had done which had a floorboard on one side you remember Challenger or something it was a long seat and it had a floorboard on one side and they basically said yeah a lot of people write three up so we designed it to be easy to write three up and then there was like a full horror show because all the journalists were like what the hell is wrong with you yeah okay so uh yeah so overall it's a very pleasant Pleasant calm unexciting trustworthy scooter which are to me the right values for a family scooter then of course ather does this usual electronically on top of all of this right so for example they said this is the safest scooter that we can build so they've got traction control M okay and it's the simplest thing on earth they compared the two wheel speeds so which they added a wheel speed sensor if the rear one spins up cut talk so they're saying that we can cut talk at 1,000 Hertz so we can intervene a thousand times a second uh doing thousand times a second on IC is very difficult because there are so many moving Parts on the Chain whereas here is just telling the motor to produce less right so they're saying reaction time is so good that you can't tell whether it worked or not and that is true it's stupid but it's true how did you try it I did and I I have I think I have one GoPro clip of the traction control light uh it's called skid control officially so SC it's a tire with an sc in it I have a photo of that thing flashing away at me and there's no sign that anything is happening you were in a corner what no I basically found a dirt thing next to the road came to a stop and then wacked it and IN Zip mode so it should spin I mean it's electric it makes talk quickly instead it just accelerated just accelerated away like I did the most normal thing on earth and it's only later I'm looking through the GoPro footage to see if the damn thing blinked or not and I think it did but it is good enough for you to never realize that it works okay so ather is going to market the crap out of this I'm sure because they have built a good system and if you use it you're never going to feel it so I I don't know it's a good thing or a bad thing but for what it's worth it works m what I would have hoped that they' built instead was ABS M which legally they're not required but if they're going to talk about making the safest possible scooter then I think the bottom of that pyramid is first ABS you're not even offering it as an option I don't think that they have a Deployable production ready ABS system at all remember when ultraviolet did that they work with Bosch and UltraViolet claimed to have the first electric ABS system because remember when you put ABS into an electric you have to deal with Regen so when I do this region comes on then there's a physical disc then there is the ABS system that has to intervene when a lockup happens it's not as easy as doing it on an IC because region itself is a pretty complicated system but why does ABS have to interfere with region because it's all part of the braking movement so for example when the wheel starts to lock up you have two systems that are causing the lock up simultaneously one is the region system and one is the hardware breaking system where does ABS start to intervene and how do you play with both against each other and uh on this again with magic twist remember magic twist yeah single so this has magic twist this has magic twist and a much better setting so it's a gentler setting okay and therefore it feels more controllable okay and if if you remember when we did uh spoke about magic twist we had two issues with it one is it wasn't very consistent and I think there are still consistency issues with the magic twist system and consistent meaning if I do this will it do the same thing every single time which I expect my breaks to do but they hadn't achieved it yet they had gotten close but they hadn't achieved it yet this time I came into the hotel to return the scooter with 1 kilometer and 1% of charge left on my scooter and I had done this once before when I stopped for coffee so you come down the same slope that I spoke about in the beginning you come down the slope and then about maybe 150 M down is the hotel entry the first time I was using magic twist successfully to enter the hotel without touching my brakes and it worked it worked predictably I was very happy with it that was with 30% charge left but when I came down the slope with 1% charge left and I did this I basically went past the hotel entrance and I had to intervene with the brakes at the last minute and turn so there is some inconsistency left so I asked ather that is there a relationship between Magic twist working and the state of the batteries charg because it's the only variable in this but I know empirically 30% is successfully used magic twist to enter this hotel 1% I successfully failed and I had to use the brakes to enter the hotel so I don't know what's going on which doesn't make sense again but I took the scooter at 81% charge it ran predictably and there's not lot of brake force in there so it actually feels like you can modulate it calmly and it feels really usable so there were lots of stretches where I was actively not touching the brakes because I knew what magic twist would be able to do which is to me an improvement over what we saw in the Apex so whatever they've done they haven't given us the details magic twist has definitely taken a step forward M okay the other systems are still there so the auto hold system is still there and um what their fail safe system where if you drop the scooter then it cuts the motor out so if you lifted by the throttle won't accelerate away from you by mistake flashing of the lights when you break hard all of those systems are still there now the fun part after this is that you have WhatsApp in the scooter oh this doesn't sound either at all to me man yeah so I was a little bit taken a whack by it too but what they've done is basically uh there's a small indicator on the dash which will show you you have incoming WhatsApp messages one feature second when you stop it'll show you your last five recent messages and you can't really interact with it as far as I can tell it can just show you that oh mom sent a message saying where are you and then Mom got upset and sent it four more times that's all and you can I think press upwards three times on the joystick and that's a shortcut to send a live location to a preset contact so for whatever reason you're feeling unsafe or you're trying to report your location you click click click must remember you have to set up the preset contact first so it's not like you can select who to send it to that's not possible so if I've selected him as my contact whenever I share live location go to him one and two they couldn't tell us how long the live location would be shared for so on WhatsApp if you remember it says 8 hours 1 hour 15 minutes or whatever I don't know what the default setting is but whatever it is is the default setting it's not like you can select a different setting so if the scooter shares for 15 minutes that's what it does okay so in that sense they've kept the functionality minimal which I like but do I need the distraction of of WhatsApp on my scooters Dash honestly I'm not convinced when TVs did the TVs X they also had this viiti system where you could see cricket scores and all of this kind of drama I don't know that I want to see all of this on my scooter screen honestly I have enough distractions in my life without my vehicle screen also trying to distract me the whole time and for me this is uh like it's a scooter so in that sense you're living in the urban environment predominantly in traffic and so all these things will be more frequent distractions in a more cluttered environment right which is suboptimal for sure yeah it is more than suboptimal I would always always always want the simplest thing possible nothing else like this uh thankfully none nothing else no speakers no drama no going on ather did announce a new helmet called the Halo oh right yeah I think manufacturers trying to make helmets is an absolutely terrible idea why so because it's not their expertise don't do stuff are they actually making the helmet or they partnered with well they're going to partner with somebody for manufacturing but the design will come from them because ather being ather will do will see apply things you know like helmets are so inconvenient so we decided to improve the convenience so we found this great fabric that you can put on the interior cheick pad okay and then we decided that you feel so disconnected from the world we can build a system that gives you enough traffic awareness but is able to give you music and phone calls and stuff on top of that okay so it has a intercom builtin so it has an intercom built in then they said but intercoms are inconvenient to use so we integrated the intercom so you've got a plastic band on the top of the helmet at the back which has all of the hardware in it and then they built in a very clever wireless charger which is part of a system there is a either a 15 or 18 watt charger in the boot okay and you can have a wireless charging attachment which connects to the helmet and charges this device so convenient yes I get it but when you put this helmet on across the back of your head is a plastic piece which is full of metal hardware pieces m I would never wear a helmet that does that okay when AR makes these shells and I'm using AR as a reference because to me they make the best helmets on Earth they are very cautious about how to make the shell what shape the shell is and what goes inside that shell and they don't do sun risers because they think it's too much Hardware entering the Shell at this point and that causes other compromises right I don't know that I want stuff honestly why should I mince my words I don't want added to my helmet in the first place and then this helmet is 15,000 rupees for which you can get a ECE ated helmet with an isi certification in India why the hell would I spend on this helmet but when they build helmets like this one they have to pass one they have to pass yeah they'll pass isi and they know so little about helmets that they think saying do certified is a good thing do is an inferior standard to the Indian Standard in the first place and it's an honor System which means what ether if I were to build a random helmet even I could stand up and say I'm do certified not until do shows up to do a random sample check and disproves me am I not allowed to say I'm not do compliant you remember those Nazi style helmets the half helmets with half your yeah so they're all do certified really yeah oh wow if you take your baseball cap and leave it in the microwave long enough that will also be Dy certified what the hell is this nonsense so to me this helmet thing ather I'm telling you I told you this in person I'm telling you this again this is a terrible absolutely terrible idea it takes one person in a serious accident wearing one of your helmets for all of this to just become bad PR for you this is a terrible thing you shouldn't do it and of course they have a half face version of this called the Halo bit that's helmet sing to each other in all of this drama if you guys were thinking about buying the ather Halo helmet please don't do it there are far better helmets that you can get for the money and the Bluetooth is not the reason to get one the convenient charging is not the reason to get one helmets are there to prevent you from having a serious head injury that's all it's supposed to do the rest of it is all all all bonus and in this case it doesn't look like a good bonus but when you did you try it on no I will never try it why without that how will you know whether it's working or not I am not going to be part of a helmet experiment Karthik it's not going to happen that sounds not fair to be honest I will not be part of the head experimentation process if it is ECE certified I would have still tried it because I know it's third party tested to the highest possible standard today so if ather were to say that is EC 2206 I would be a lot more interested in tying that helmet if it is if they are saying it's do they don't know anything about the standards okay if they're saying it's isi it passes one of the weakest standards on Earth I have no interest in this say you're willing to try it if it's ECE absolutely ah okay at least meet my standard right that's that's all yeah I thought you're discounting it just because of feature s it's not a feature sight issue first I will not ride with this helmet because there's stuff on the outside of my shell which I refuse for it to be there one second it's not even certified that's a fair concern I'm saying the certification proves that that is let's say like uh what was the last um uh the shy ones the one with that very aggressive shape they break yeah exactly they snap off they designed to snap off ether never said that we designed it to snap off that's the first thing they would have said that yes we added all of this Hardware the first thing happens in a crash is it separates completely from helmet and leaves you alone then it's a whole different conversation correct that's what I was trying to the big flag is do when somebody says my helmet is brand new and it is do compliant they're basically saying we don't know anything about the standards people who don't know how safety standards work should not be touching safety equipment okay fair enough right back to the scooter so this is the picture of the scooter the scooter should start delivering by like price yeah I'm going to that so a scooter should start delivering by July mid and the prices start at 110 and they go up to 145 so that's below the ather yeah it sorry below the 450x yeah yeah yeah this is a built to a price let's sell many of these kind of scooter so if you buy the base risda s it's 110x uh we don't know what the new EV policy will'll do in terms of moving these prices around we'll see that will happen when it happens uh the base models only come in in single colors okay the upper models come in single colors as well as very nice dual tones yeah so there is a navy blue and white which I rote which I really likeed there was a nice bright yellow also white and yellow which also look nice there was also this weird greenish Gray colored scooter end to end I didn't like the pictures of it but in the flesh it doesn't look so bad and there were a lot of people who are fans of that color so there are some interesting muted and bright colors in the color scheme also so that's more or less the whole picture of the scooter there were a couple of gaps in there I told you and uh ather has also been slightly confusing about their subscription services and their service packages service packages ather has said they're working on it and they will come and I'm not sure why there is a delay because for a generally a very clear company why they had to be unclear about this I'm not so sure about but they are for whatever reason uh ather connect is included in the which is their subscription for connected Services Services is available for 3 years as standard and I was asking tarun sing why don't you just reveal the price post this three-year period why don't you reveal the cost of the battery post the warranty which is 5 years or 60,000 km or whatever and he was like do you think that what do you mean cost of the battery one of the big concerns with e is that if my battery fails what do I do right now to me you're already saying look 5 years 60,000 km we've got you under warranty okay ether is not very communicative about what happens at the end of those three years but they're quite happy to tell you what happens after those three years if you ask them this question okay so for a website which is so remarkably clear as a manufacturer website why don't you just put that information up there so what happens after so for example when you're ather connect runs out at the end of 3 years it going to be a subscription that might be a th000 rupes or less so I said why don't you just put a price and finish this discussion so everybody knows right it's over but battery and the battery scene is that ather already has a pretty substantial battery warranty program in place and aether's data says these batteries hardly fail there's some magic number in there okay some three-year-old 5-year-old ather running at 90% of original s so today so if tun were to say if were to say for example that look the battery cost 45,000 R to replace the 2.9 let's say but the chances that you will end up replacing the 2.9 battery is almost nil I think it solves more than being unclear about what happens next and I would just say close that chapter by giving the information out some people will worry about thisy and maybe they're not your customer today they're not ready to buy an e they'll have an inferior scooter experience because they bought an eeve and then worried about it for the rest of their ownership period maybe they're just not ready and it's fine why should we push you let them come to EVS 5 years later when they realize hey nothing seems to be happening to these EES right so there are some small confusions like this but apart from that it's a pretty simple straightforward scooter it works quite well I think we'll ride it in the traffic properly when it comes here and then we'll have a more closed picture of everything that it does we rode on effectively empty rural roads with some slopes and that kind of thing in that environment it did a reasonably good job in fact the reason the price went I did a double take at that point was because strangely enough through the entire conversation the combination of that it is larger right that it's their latest product now uh and that somehow in the way that you're describing it to me I perceived slightly higher quality I don't know why why I thought of it but that's why I in my head started building up as oh it'll be as expensive or maybe more expensive yeah so the interesting thing is that I think battery prices have come down to a point where they can be a little bit more rational about prices now they don't have to make it expensive and in the riza's case it's job is to sell M you know how on the Pulsar ns400 Z we said that if the price is super low and that is the core of the discussion then by inference it has to be a thing that must sell it has no other job cor so the Risa conversation is not that uh polarized into one aspect of it but being a popular product is very much part of the risas agenda it needs to bring the Aether name to a lot of people in the south of India in the west of India where they are unnown brand I don't think they're going to face too much of a challenge they're going to play the price card hardest in the North and the East where their traction is the lowest and it's not even traction it's just people are not even aware of who ather is okay there were people apparently they went to up or whatever and people said compy IND which means they're completely unaware that this is a bangaluru based company it's been here for 10 years it's done a lot of the work this message has not reached them so their challenge there is how do I open that conversation and to have a full-fledged family sized electric scooter for 1,000 rupees I think is a great way to start a conversation m is it the classiest way to start a conversation perhaps not but will it be effective yeah I think it will be okay great anything else remaining uh you also have Alexa integration so if you have one of those Amazon devices in your house then you can walk up to and say Alexa what is the charge of my Rista and then it'll tell you it's whatever Char but what about uh charging setup and all same it's the same as before no change so you can get that home fast charger thingy yeah yeah there's a new charger which they called Duo okay I'll put the charge times up there are there's a 350 W and a 700 W charger and the duo seems to be the idea that it is portable but there is a wall mounting option also so you could either wall mount it or you can take it off and put it in the scoop if you like which is a good idea uh I haven't actually seen it I'll try and get a picture from ether and put it but for what it's worth two Chargers are there no fundamental changes on that front there's nothing magically different happening from from the 450x that's it your your turn time to go man okay so the ethera is the first ather in a long long time that's all new or is it it's not really all new because as shumi said I was expecting it to be like grounds up but there are some shed bits with the 450x uh the rear subframe is different because this is meant to be a bigger scooter with more space and as the name suggests Rista Risha it's about to be for the family so for many people and that's why they had to make the rear seat longer and that's part of the charm of this that it's a more relaxed feeling a more friendly scooter for more people in the family where the ather was very clearly focused on the younger uh riders or those who wanted something sportier correct uh the design of this is also similarly not sharp I when I saw it it reminded me of the TVs IQ but a more modern and more cohesive design as it were as with the 450x you have the same battery options here which is a 2.9 Kow and 3.7 and it's even using the same motor but as would be expected the motor is less is being demanded of it to provide more smooth and more consistent performance and slightly better range top speed has gone down by 10 km an hour and range has gone up by 10 10 km so the top spec variant gets a range of 159 km right uh claimed IDC and uh the lower variant is 20 or thereabouts um it has two modes one is the Smart Eco and the other is the zip yep yeah zip yeah yeah Mahindra hello Mahindra so the smart Eco uh strangely enough felt a little bit inadequate in when shumi was dealing with inclines where he found that he lost speed as he went up the incline it was a distance of about 150 M as he tackled that he was uh on the outskirts of bangaluru near nandi Hills so nice rolling roads around there so nothing too serious but it was a bit of an incline yeah it's not serious because it's not like it falls to zero once it gets to 18 no I meant the gradient the gradient no no gradient was not serious at all as shumi said IN Zip mode it that's not an issue right it just you can comfortably travel even on those inclines and how it actually performs in traffic we will see uh once we have it here in Mumbai so this thing is just down to how the software has been calibrated for the Rista which is meant to be a gentler family scooter in the zip mode it was fine usable is it exciting no um in terms of comfort you have the space as a rider you will feel more at ease and of course the seat is ultra long so you could uh a great example of how it should be used is that let's say if somebody's sitting behind you they they don't have to hang their backpack off further behind they can place it between the Rider and the plion and sit comfortably that way um suspension and that's something that I was interested to know how root Fair because that is something I didn't like that much on the 450x while it is well balanced even with a plion on board and that continues to be the case here with the Rista as well where it stays clean even as you travel at higher speeds and uh over bumpier surfaces it remains more settle than something else like say a Jupiter Jupiter sorry not the Jupiter the I Cube the electric Jupiter uh it feels the the TVs will feel more plush this has a bit more control to it so it can be felt as a little bit firm at times but that's the better setup for a family scooter which will maybe carry stuff or have people ping on it more often yep right the screens are the same as the 450x which is the uh TFT uh and then you have the basic segmented uh LCD uh you didn't see the segmented LCD no I got pictures I didn't see the screen so as is it'll still be good it's useful simple and better for it um you get the joystick thingy which has some shortcuts as well now for you to uh send your live location to somebody correct and it has WhatsApp integration it has Alexa integration which means you can get a status of your scooters charge Etc from your house just by asking Alexa you have threee standard warranty and uh connectivity uh post which it'll cost about 1,000 rupees a year or less not exact prices but they saying why don't you just put it uh in terms of finish build this feels solid it's a well-made scooter pricing which is 110 for the base and 15 150 for the 145 for the top spec so it's meant to be a value oriented scooter and that's how it's been priced as well y uh how the exact pricing settles down once the fame subsidies Etc are yeah we don't know what the subsidy picture is right now it's in a flux some new policy will come prices will change but as of today if you were to book aista you're expecting to pay 110 to 145 depending on which model you pick and deliveries haven't started yet it will be from July mid right anything St no okay tires also the same size as the 450 yeah the only other thing I remembered in the context of the helmet oh sorry you know I I can't let it go because I'm so upset about it honestly telling you when people start doing things with helmets I really get annoyed cuz it's Mission critical life saving equipment don't mess with it I'm sorry I want to say goodbye to the Halo helmet right now only hello no no goodbye goodbye okay um so you know how to P sh me off again right just just talk about do like the easiest thing in the world sorry okay fine uh to Halo I'm just going to glance through it no we will not glance through okay forget we will not we will not glance through it no we will not glance through it we will not open face helmet will not discuss this any further you will not buy the ather helmets trust me it's a bad idea get a better helmet for the money that ather wants for these helmets even on the discounts that they're on offer right now there are far superior helmets that can be had don't buy open face helmets at all you need your jaw to talk you need your jaw to eat stop man why the only because you imagine these things not all all of them are imagining these scenarios yeah as realistic as they are okay don't buy these okay we'll stop there yeah right anything that we missed no um and but yeah the ather updated software speed will go back to most ather I think up to Generation 3 please check if you have one of these cters you'll get some new features or whatever in the process uh usual the Rista is part of the update cycle so when the next version of software updates come then this Cooter will also get updated if you do go get a test ride of the Riza if you leave us a comment telling us whether your screen experience improved from what we saw or not that will really help because we had a really slow screen like imagine that I've dismissed a menu and I'm sort of sitting there waiting for the menu to get dismissed while it is thinking about how to dismiss the menu or whatever if that improves for you if you leave us a comment at any point of time doesn't have to be tomorrow it will really help us sort of get the picture of the Risa better of course we will get a Rista for testing at some point and then we'll have stories on that the Simo that's it thank you so much for watching uh that's what we know about the aista so far after riding effectively one full charge in the Foothills around the nandi hills outside bangaluru so not a representative situation of what you would actually see so this is what it is uh we'll get the scooter for testing and have more details in the meantime if you have any questions please do leave us a comment we'll try and get back to you with as accurate an answer as possible in these within the limits of what we know uh and if you'd like to listen to this podcast uh Audio Only uh you can go to Apple Spotify or Amazon uh Google it'll go away in June so while we will upload it I don't know that post Jun will have access to Google podcast if that's what you use you have to start looking for Alternatives uh uh and we do have a solution coming you'll see and hear more about it maybe by the time this comes out maybe a little bit later stay tuned for that we're very excited about it but we'll tell you more later thank you so much for watching