The Ather Rizta is a little bit different from the competition. Ather already have the 450 series in their line-up for outright performance, so they did not try to make the Rizta a jack of all trades; instead focusing on specific areas relevant to family scooter buyers. We lived with it for a few days to find out how much it delivers on that promise
Story: Sayantan De
Photography: Sanjay Raikar
The Ather Rizta was launched to much fanfare in April this year and then we got to sample it for a short burst in May. While it was impressive going by our first impression, this time we had the opportunity to find out if our initial experience with the scooter would corroborate our scrutiny over an extended period. We had the scooter with us for a week, so we used it thoroughly. Here is what it was like.
We picked up the Ather Rizta with about 36 per cent SOC, which would have been a cause for concern under most circumstances, but when I plugged in the location of the office, the app happily informed me that I had enough charge for the ride. Then it was a simple matter of pushing the location from the app to the scooter itself and I was ready to navigate, with detailed maps courtesy of Google. Before I started, though, I went into the settings to make sure that some of the more useful features of Atherstack 6.0 were enabled, such as Magic Twist, Skid Control, auto brightness adjustment for the dashboard, auto-cancelling turn signals, and hill hold.
I started in the SmartEco ride mode to maximize the distance on the remaining charge. Unlike most other eco modes in various electric scooters, the Ather SmartEco ride mode doesn’t cap the top speed at a pre-set value; instead, it optimizes the battery drain. I even managed to hit 55 km/h in the SmartEco mode and if the battery had more than 80 per cent charge, the acceleration was brisk even in this mode. However, once you switch to the Zip mode, you’ll only return to SmartEco when necessary. The Zip mode unleashes the full potential of the motor, which amounts to 4.0 kW, but, more importantly, 22 Nm of torque is available from one rpm. You reach 60 km/h before almost everything on the road, which enables you to shock people on much more powerful machinery. Claimed top speed is 80 km/h, but I managed to hit an indicated 81 km/h on the highway.
The Ather Rizta is available in an array of single- and dual-tone colours and its sharp lines, which seemed conservative in isolation during our first ride, now contrast sharply with the traditional aesthetics of most of the electric scooters in the market. It looks more futuristic than other scooters and I have a feeling that the design will age nicely, like iPhones of older generations that we still appreciate because of the simplicity of the design. The design is distinctive enough to make people stop me on the road to enquire about the scooter and comment on the scooter’s looks.
I mentioned in my first ride review that the Rizta handles like an Ather should, but that was on the smooth tarmac surrounding the Nandi Hills area in Bengaluru. On the less-than-ideal Pune roads, the Ather still managed to dance through the traffic like a skilled Milonguero at the Buenos Aires Tango Festival y Mundial (World Tango Dance Tournament). It may be a family scooter, but it shares the basic underpinnings with the performance-focused 450 series and, just like the Learjet, was developed from a fighter plane; it can’t hide its origin when it comes to handling prowess. This handling comes without compromising the ride quality, for the Rizta manages to negotiate those dreaded black-and-yellow plastic speed-breakers, potholes, and road surfaces that resemble the moon. The front fork has a tendency to bottom out, though, particularly if there are two people onboard along with a full load of cargo in the boot, and the rear can feel a little under-damped, but, generally, the Rizta remains composed under most circumstances. One of the nice things is the hill hold, which is well-calibrated and works perfectly—a marked improvement on when we first sampled the vehicle.
The test unit came equipped with the larger 3.7-kWh battery, which provides claimed ranges of 105 kilometres in Zip mode and 125 km in SmarEco. During our testing, we managed to attain 93.4 km on SmartEco and 69 km on Zip mode. This was with very enthusiastic riding by everyone who rode the scooter, so with a little bit of self-control, these figures should improve greatly. The battery loses more charge in relation to the speed one is doing, as opposed to the load the scooter is carrying. A full charge from zero took six hours 11 minutes, as the Rizta Z with the 3.7-kWh battery comes with the more powerful 700 W charger. Also, with optimized charging enabled, one can plug the scooter in for the night and it will get fully charged at 5.00 am. This feature would have been a lot more useful if the time of reaching full charge could be adjusted, though, as not everyone would need to have it fully charged at the crack of dawn. That said, if you are charging the scooter during waking hours, the app shows real-time charge statistics and sends you a notification when the it is fully charged.
There are two things I must reiterate from my earlier impression: the size of the seat and the capacity of the boot. The seat is amazingly long and my previous impression held. It is a piece of cake to fit two adults and one backpack on it and the number of backpacks can be increased to two if these are not particularly large ones. As for the cargo hold, while the 34-litre capacity may not be gasp-inducing at first glance, the advantage of not having a fuel-tank is that it is long, instead of deep as in ICE scooters, and the result is that it can accommodate weird-shaped and long objects easily. The “Shopper” bag, a Rs 1,499 option, is tremendously useful, though the same can’t be said about the Rs 2,499 “Frunk” soft luggage that can be attached to the front of the floorboard. It got torn pretty easily at a corner, has absolutely no security, and can’t be taken off the scooter, though this last issue can be resolved by changing the mounting system from screws to magnets. The other problem with the “Frunk” is that it tends to pick up dirt quite easily and, being non-removable and made of fabric, is quite difficult to clean.
The Ather Rizta has three variants, Rizta S which misses out on the new display, the pillion back-rest, the more powerful processor and extra RAM, the updated operating system, and dual-tone colours. There’s an array of optional features that are also inaccessible on this base mode, the most notable of which are Google Maps navigation, Magic Twist, and Skid Control. Speaking of optional features, almost every feature I have mentioned that’s part of the software is optional on the Rizta and has to be added via the Pro pack, that is, Magic Twist, Skid Control, dashboard auto-brightness, auto-cancelling indicators, the SmartEco ride mode, hill hold, navigation, and real-time charge status. The price of the Pro pack pushes up the cost and this is a problem. The prices without the Pro pack are Rs 1.10 lakh, Rs 1.26 lakh, and Rs 1.46 lakh. With the Pro pack, those jump up to Rs 1.23 lakh, Rs 1.41 lakh, and Rs 1.66 lakh for the S, Z-2.9 kWh, and Z-3.7 kWh respectively. The higher prices are unavoidable, as even the SmartEco rice mode is unavailable without it. The other problem is that almost every rival offers basic features like eco ride mode, hill hold, and real-time charge status without additional payment. This makes the Rizta a harder sell.
While the Ather Rizta is a very well-engineered scooter with excellent attention to detail, if that comes at too high a price, it wouldn’t matter how good it is.
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