A Timely and Welcome Update

The Ather 450X is almost 12 years old now and it was in need of some changes. Are the ones brought about sufficient? We went to Bengaluru to find that out

- Story: Ajit Menon M

CHANGE IS PERMANENT. THIS IS SOMETHING one should keep reminding oneself. You get older but wiser. You become weaker but you find easier and better ways to do the job. Mind you, these are not the lamentations of someone getting on in years.

When Ather called us to say that they had upgraded their 450X with a whole new set of features, I was wondering what exactly would have been upgraded. I personally would have gone with a better battery pack to enhance the range. The Ather 450 had been in development for almost 12 years and has now been in production for about seven years.

Cut to the briefing and they had the upgraded Ather 450X ready for us. What are the changes, you ask? Well, to the discerning eyes of the viewer, there are none apparent outside except for the two new colours: Hyper Sand and Stealth Blue. All the changes are internal. First, you get three modes of traction control: rain, road, and rally. Now rain mode is pretty obvious. You don't need all the power in the rain, especially in a country like India. The road mode is also the same wherein you get all the power. The rally mode is the one that was interesting to me. It lets the vehicle slide away from you and brings it back in control the instant it starts slipping away.

Then there is the “magic twist”, which was a part of the Ather 450 Apex but now you get granular control. Say you want to slow down by 20 per cent or 50 per cent, then you can spin the throttle in the opposite direction by roughly the same percentage and the regen will take care of this. You would need some getting used to this feature, though, for the vehicle halts when you do this.