Ather eyes 150-300cc electric motorcycle, launch likely in three years

The company was still working out the exact product and believes understanding what motorcycle buyers want is much more important than any technological challenges

Ather Energy plans to target the 150-300cc performance motorcycle segment for its first electric bike, with a launch expected in about three years, Cofounder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Swapnil Jain told Business Standard in an interview on Monday. 

The company is still working out the exact product and believes understanding what motorcycle buyers want is much more important than any technological challenges. “The biggest challenge with electric motorcycle is not technical, it is about understanding the customers really well. It’s not as simple as a scooter, which is a bit more of a utility product. A motorcycle is a very emotional piece,” Jain said. 

He said Ather has spent almost a year trying to understand motorcycle customers, but has not yet completely figured out the wide variety of products and preferences in the market. “We still believe that it will be somewhere between 150cc and 300cc sort of a segment. But what exact form, what exact addressable market, it needs a bit more refinement before we can talk about it,” he said. 

Jain’s comments have come as Ather has repeatedly been pushing back its electric motorcycle plans for keeping its focus on electric scooters. Ather had initially planned to launch its first electric motorcycle in 2026, but its cofounder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Tarun Mehta later said the timeline was unclear. In August 2025, he said the company was targeting the 150-180cc segment for electric motorcycles. In August 2026, he told investors the motorcycle was “probably two years plus” away as Ather prioritised its latest EL scooter platform. 

The CTO said Ather wants to get the product right rather than launch an electric motorcycle that fails to establish a strong market. He said motorcycles are much more emotional than scooters, with buyers having very different preferences around riding position, suspension, performance, and design. A motorcycle, he said, can be a representation of the owner, rather than simply a means of getting from one place to another. 

“We are currently doing two things in parallel, very similar to what we did with the EL platform. We are first independently building a platform which can take a certain range of battery pack, which can take a certain range of motor power, which has certain elements of Ather in it for sure,” he said. 

The engineering team was, therefore, developing the motorcycle architecture independently of the final product. It was working on parameters such as voltage, top speed, battery cells, and battery chemistry, while the product and marketing teams are separately studying customers and working out what kind of motorcycle could appeal to them. 

The two exercises will eventually converge. Jain said the company first needs to define a broad technical boundary within which different motorcycle products can be developed. As customer research progresses, that work will feed into the final technical design. The company was also building proof-of-concept products, or early versions used to test ideas, to identify what creates the strongest emotional connection with buyers. 

On August 29, Ather launched the Konarc, its first electric scooter based on the new EL platform, at a starting price of ₹99,999 (ex-showroom Bengaluru). With Konarc, Ather wants to expand beyond its more premium electric scooter range: 450 and Rizta.

Asked if Ather wanted to launch its first electric motorcycle three-four years down the line, Jain replied: “We want to do it much faster. Maybe in around three (years) or less.” 

Ather does not see battery packaging as a major hurdle for its electric motorcycle. Jain said the space normally occupied by a petrol motorcycle's fuel tank is sufficient to accommodate a battery of 8-10 kilowatt-hour (kWh). A kWh measures how much energy a battery can store. “An 8-10 kWh battery is more than enough,” he said. 

Jain also questioned the need for very large batteries and extremely high claimed ranges. He said consumers had earlier argued that electric scooters would need 300-400 km of range to become practical, but real-world usage has shown that around 120 km can be sufficient for many users. The company, therefore, wanted to distinguish between what customers actually need and what they may simply want. 

It was also not looking for a joint venture to develop its electric motorcycle. Jain said Ather believes it has built sufficient expertise in electric two-wheelers and does not see much reason to work with another company on the core technology for an electric motorcycle platform. 

This approach is similar to Ather's philosophy with the 450 platform. Jain said the 450 was not just an attempt to build a scooter but also to challenge the perception that electric vehicles (EVs) were boring, slow or unreliable. For the motorcycle, the company is again trying to identify a combination of performance, price, and usability that can establish a new benchmark.

The company was, meanwhile, taking a similar data-driven approach to components. Ather regularly collects data from vehicles in use to understand rider habits, component temperatures, and how different parts perform under real-world conditions. Jain said this data helped the company avoid over-engineering components for conditions that customers rarely encounter.

The same approach helped Ather deal with the rare-earth magnet supply disruption. Rare-earth magnets are powerful magnets used in electric motors. When supplies of heavy rare-earth materials became a concern (due to export restrictions placed by the largest rare-earth magnet producer China last year), Ather shifted to light rare-earth magnets and saw no difficulty in sourcing them. 

Jain said heavy rare-earth magnets offer higher temperature ratings, but Ather's field data showed that such ratings were generally unnecessary for its vehicles. Most usage takes place within the temperature range handled by light rare-earth magnets, allowing the company to reduce its exposure to the more vulnerable heavy rare-earth supply chain. 

India’s motorcycle market is roughly 13 million units a year, but electric motorcycles remain a tiny part of it. The volume sales of Revolt, which is the largest electric-motorcycle maker in India right now, were less than 1 per cent of India’s overall motorcycle market. Most of India’s major two-wheeler makers, including Hero MotoCorp, Honda, TVS and Bajaj Auto, have yet to launch an electric motorcycle, leaving the category largely to newer EV players. 

On battery cells, Jain said Ather has generally not faced supply problems, although demand spikes could create temporary pressure. The company maintained inventory to absorb such fluctuations without disrupting production, and it can hold as much as six months of inventory, depending on the situation.

 

Ather was also working with Indian companies trying to establish domestic cell manufacturing. Jain said the company is evaluating their cells and helping them understand the technical requirements. He, however, said cell manufacturing needs an independent business serving a much larger market than any single two-wheeler maker to become financially viable.

 

Hero MotoCorp, which increased its stake in Ather last month to about 32.8 per cent, has remained hands-off operationally, according to Jain. He said the motorcycle maker has not sought to interfere in Ather's day-to-day operations and has allowed the founders to continue running the business independently.

 

“They have been completely hands-off in the business. They have never even tried to get any support from us or give any support to us…or to seek any information or any interference at the operational level,” Jain said.