Ather Energy Partners with Siemens Xcelerator for Rapid Electric Mobility Development

Siemens Digital Industries Software announced that Ather Energy, one of India’s foremost electric motorcycle brands, has expanded its adoption of the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio of industry software to help the company reduce its design and engineering cycle time, improve product quality, and achieve faster time to market.

Ather Energy was founded in 2013 by Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras alumni Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain. In 2018, it launched India’s first truly intelligent electric scooter, the Ather 450, followed by the new flagship offering, the Ather 450X, in 2020, the 450S in 2023, and Ather’s special edition scooter, the Ather 450 Apex, in January 2024. Ather has also installed a comprehensive public charging network, Ather Grid, designed and built in India. With 1,600+ charging points across India, Ather Grid is one of the country’s largest fast-charging networks for electric scooters. The company currently has 175+ experience centers across India and plans to add a total of 250 outlets by March 2024. Ather recently forayed into the international market with two Experience Centers in Nepal.

“In the fast-evolving EV industry, speed to market is an important lever to succeed. Siemens' expanded PLM management enables parallel processing of engineering deliverables, a departure from the sequential approach, thereby reducing the lead time for introducing new products and features,” said Swapnil Jain, Co-founder & CTO, Ather Energy.

Stating that startups are the lifeblood of the electrification revolution in mobility and that Siemens is proud to work alongside the Ather Energy team to help them expand their capabilities to bring their breakthrough products to the Indian market, Robert Jones, Executive Vice President, Global Sales and Customer Success, Siemens Digital Industries Software—during a recent visit to the Ather Energy facility—said, “Our work with Ather Energy is another proof point of leading innovators and pioneers choosing the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio as the platform of choice for product development in the electrification of mobility and helping the world achieve cleaner, more sustainable transportation.”

Ather Energy adopted Siemens’ Teamcenter® software for Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) in 2018 to help it achieve its critical key performance indicators (KPIs), including faster time to market, reducing its design and engineering cycle time with the removal of design iterations, and adopting a right first-time approach. Since then, the Ather Energy team has also taken advantage of Simcenter™ STAR-CCM+ software for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Simcenter™ physical testing solutions to help with its in-house testing regime for durability, and noise, vibration, and harness (NVH). Most recently, the Ather Energy vehicle engineering team has moved to Siemens’ NX™ software for new product development and engineering from its legacy system for all existing and new vehicle platforms.

“The simulations and virtual testing we perform using Siemens’ tools enable us to crush timing and provide us with great savings in resources and money spent on repeating testing. The stack-up analysis enables us to get the design right the first time and avoids engineering changes. We are looking at expanding the Siemens tools into controlling the manufacturing processes by introducing the management of ‘Bill of Processes’,” added Jain.

Image Source: Siemens Digital Industries