Ather starts producing electric scooters at its brand-new Hosur factory

Ather Energy has started manufacturing scooters at its new Hosur, Tamil Nadu facility after announcing aggressive expansion plans. The smart electric scooter manufacturer stopped production at its Whitefield, Bengaluru plant last year in December. The Ather Energy team posted several pictures of the same online.

Currently, the Hosur facility is capable of producing 3,000 units per month. However, the plan is to expand it to 8,000 units per month by early 2022. The Bengaluru plant had a production capacity of only 300 units per month and it is 10 times more than that.

In December 2019, Ather Energy entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Tamil Nadu government to set up a 4,000 sq feet plant in the state. Ather had committed a total of Rs 635 crore for the same.

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In a post, Ather Energy said,

“We have moved our manufacturing unit from Whitefield to Hosur, and we marked the new beginning with a pooja and with our team members in attendance. It’s a huge boost to our morale that we managed this despite the lockdown and related disruptions,”

The new production facility is supported by the Tamil Nadu government’s new electric vehicle policy. The policy is designed to produce 100,000 units of EV annually in the state and it can be scaled to 5 lakh units in the next few years. The new policy is aimed to create over 4,000 jobs in the next few years in the state that will push employment. Tamil Nadu’s nodal agency for investment promotion and single window facilitation congratulated Ather Energy on the occasion too.

Tarun Mehta, co-founder and CEO, Ather Energy, at the time of signing the MoU had said,

“A manufacturing facility at Hosur was an ideal choice considering that it is close to our Research & Development facilities in Bengaluru and most of the existing and potential future supply base is operating in the region. The availability of a built-up option of our desired scale and proximity helped in the decision-making.”

Future plans

Ather Energy now plans to expand its services to about 20 Indian cities by the end of this year. It is a part of the Phase-2 of the expansion and the manufacturer will launch the scooter Ather 450X in 16 additional cities. These cities include Mysore, Hubli, Jaipur, Indore, Panaji, Bhubaneshwar, Nashik, Surat, Chandigarh, Vijaywada, Vishakapatnam, Guwahati, Nagpur, Noida, Lucknow and Siliguri. The Ather scooters will be available across 27 cities by Q1 of 2021.

Ather currently offers two scooters – the Ather 450X and the Ather 450 Plus. They have also unveiled the collector’s edition vehicle Series 1, which is the only two-wheeler in India with transparent panels.

The scooter manufacturer raised USD 35 million in Series D funding led by Sachin Bansal’s investment of USD 23 million. Hero MotoCorp has also invested USD 12 million as a part of the Series D round in the Ather Energy. Ather plans to set-up Ather Grid fast charging points across the country over the next five years that will ensure the public gets easy and accessible charging points. The points will be open to charging any type of EV in the future.

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