The ‘Dark Side’ of the Ather Motor Controller — Part 1
The Ather Motor Controller has been under the hood of the Gen 2 version of the 450X (2021) for more than a year now. Powering the Warp mode in more than 1.2L vehicles, it’s been all stealth, and it continues its work quietly in Gen 3.1 as well, — launched at the Ather Community Day in January 2023. Tarun announcing and demonstrating the since-gone viral AutoHold™ feature as well as other upcoming ride experiences such as Cruise, Crawl, Advanced Regen, etc, has deservedly cast the limelight on the controller, which has been fully designed and developed in-house.
Needless to say the best is yet to come.
The Origin Story
The journey of the AMC started about 2–3 years ago, with an ambitious pursuit to do what nobody in India had done before — ‘build an indigenous motor controller from scratch’, for better customisation and finer control of the motor operation, to deliver the best performance and ride experience.
It’s true that various vendors in the market do offer motor controllers with good specifications but we wanted to push the limits further and explore crazy possibilities. The obvious question then is, “What is possible?”. We have been finding the answer through numerous prototypes, which have evolved the controller into what it is today — the most compact motor controller in the country in the e2W segment, at a cost much lower than other third-party controllers.
It is quite an achievement that we were able to get the controller successfully into production at our first shot with Gen 2, quite seamlessly at that! The challenge was to match the performance and reliability of the existing controller that was being used while also eliminating some of its issues and bugs. We would be optimising on cost, but also needed the flexibility to build advanced features. All this had to be done while we ramped up production from 200 units per day to 1200 units per day — a story that had its fair share of challenges, but was also executed seamlessly. It would be an understatement for us to say that we quite overachieved on every front from what was initially expected from this project!
As Swapnil emphasises, “How do you ensure that the smile remains on your face every single time you twist your throttle is something which we actually call the Magic of Engineering.” Our motor controller is one of the many such instances in the journey of the Ather 450X. Since Gen 2, the AMC has been warping away ‘whee’fully on the Gen 3 and 3.1 versions of the vehicle as well, while evolving itself and ‘glee’ing riders on the road (Here’s the story behind the signature sound of the 450X and the story behind the AutoHold™ feature — The Firmware and FOC story of the AMC).
The Dynasty of the Ather Motor Controller Primes
As avid fans of the Transformers series, internally we’ve named the controller versions as characters from the franchise, inspired by the thirteen original Transformers (referred to as Primes). We think that the motor controller has the looks to justify that (although there were debates among the teams on whether Darth Vader suited better! ). The designation also seemed to suit well from the AMC’s ability to actually transform the Ather 450X.
The genesis of our small ‘Cybertron’ world (Ather Power Lab) has been a few years in the making. The story of the AMC can be narrated through the ‘Primes’ and how they transformed, and are transforming, the Ather 450X.
Keep a lookout for the second part of this article which will elaborate on the “transforming and rolling out” journeys of each ‘Prime’ i.e. the Motor Controller variant.
Forging Onwards..
Since its genesis with the primitive Onyx, the Ather Motor Controller has helped us unlock newer ride experiences with Warp Mode and AutoHold™ being two features that have given the 450X its edge. The 3rd generation of the AMC — Alchemist has been predominantly ruling the roads with a few sub variants in between inside some of the older scooters. Currently, work is underway to develop the next generation of AMCs with Alpha Trion — the holder of the Quil, promising to write the future of Cybertron that will offer features and capabilities that we haven’t experienced yet.
Each of the Primes mentioned above has gone through comprehensive stages of design and development. In the next set of blogs, we will explore these journeys in detail and what they have meant for us.
And oh, here’s the video of the ever unpredictable Amalgamous singing — that too without a speaker!
Thanks to Rushabh Kapasi for patiently helping out with the content and Ardhra S & Udipto Phukan for helping out in editing and bringing context to the ‘dark side’..
