Matter Aera 5000 Plus Review
There are two things here on this motorcycle that are great importance to average riders like you and me, things we’ve never seen before.
India’s First Liquid-Cooled EV
The first of them is that this is India’s first liquid cooled electric vehicle and the second is that it’s the first EV in India that has gears, four of them in total.
So why go down the complication of liquid cooling for a powertrain and a battery pack that really isn’t that big? We’ve seen bigger stuff in our market that continues to be air cooled. Matter Aera 5000 Plus
Matter says that they’ve done that to make this thing run as smooth as possible In India’s hot climate. The motor is liquid cooled and so is the battery pack.
That’s a fair explanation for the liquid cooling, but why give an electric vehicle four conventional gears when pretty much no one else is doing that?
Design and Familiarity
Matter says that they want to create a product that feels familiar to existing motorcycle riders and to do that, they’ve made a motorcycle that looks familiar as well. Matter Aera 5000 Plus
This looks like pretty much N 150 cc Street sporty commuter out there. Nothing about this bike looks alien and they’ve really tried hard to make it look conventional.
It looks like there is an engine down. You don’t really see a big battery pack hanging off the motorcycle and in general when you look at this thing, you will not think it’s electric.
Creating a Familiar Motorcycle
You’ll only realize that once you hear it moving. Continuing with the theme of familiarity is how you sit on the motorcycle. From the rider’s point of view, this is all quite familiar.
You’ve got a rather wide fuel tank. The seat is not too high, just 790 mm and the riding position in general reminds me of something like an Apache or an FZ. Really quite familiar and quite comfortable in general.
But things change significantly once you start riding because this thing is like nothing you’ve ridden before, petrol or electric.
Starting and Riding the Matter Aera
To start it, you have a little wireless key fob. It starts with a button and you have a kill switch like you get on a normal motorcycle, activate the kill switch, pull in the clutch. Yes, it has a clutch. Matter Aera 5000 Plus
Press the kill switch and the bike is ready to go.
Effort in Shifting Gears
If you’re not on the side stand now to ride the matter error, you simply pull in the clutch, put it in first gear and off you go.
It’s one down, three up like most motorcycles out there. And in some ways things are familiar but in other ways things are really quite different.
Performance and Powertrain
The one strange thing here is that even if the bike is in gear, It still move because there’s no compression from the engine holding it back so it can be in any gear, but the bike can still move. Matter Aera 5000 Plus
The second fun thing is that you can be in gear but you don’t really need to use the clutch like you would on a petrol motorcycle.
You don’t need to slip it, put it in gear, release the clutch, and off you go. This applies for pretty much any gear. Taking a U-turn, no problem, no need to slip the clutch. You wanna come to a halt in gear, no problem.
Clearly things are quite different when you compare to a regular petrol vehicle, but what about when you compare it to an EV?
Now, one of my favorite things about electric vehicles and I love commuting in the city on them, is the fact that you have instant effortless talk available whenever you want it. Matter Aera 5000 Plus
Top Speed
Here things are a little different. Yes, you do get a good shove of performance matter claims at top speed of 105 acceleration fields quite strong if you are in sport mode, but you get that instant effortless talk only if you’re on the right gear at the right speed.
If say you are on fourth gear, you’re going at about 30 kilometers now you want to accelerate and overtake someone, whack it open, you won’t really get much out of the motor.
You will have to downshift, get to the right here and that’s when you get the surge forward.
Now for me, this is a little counterintuitive for what I expect from an electric vehicle. They’re meant to be effortless and easy to ride, but here you do have to put in a little bit of work. Matter Aera 5000 Plus
The other strange thing is that when you’re riding a petrol vehicle, you know when you need to change gear, you can hear it in the engine, you can feel it.
There’s a lot of inertia coming off the crank shaft, which is rotating at high speed. Out here You really have nothing to tell you It’s time to change.
So it’s effectively like ride, you hit a wall, shift up ride again, hit a speed wall, shift up. There’s no sensation about when you need to shift up. You do eventually get used to it, but it’s quite an unusual experience.
10.5 kW Motor and Sport Mode
Now you’ve got a 10.5 kilowatt motor, which is quite powerful and again, like I said, in sport mode, this bike feels quick.
The top speed in city is still 80 KPH, which is quite high. The other mode is eco mode, which caps top speed to 60, but both city and eco reduce the speed in each gear.
So in eco, you will have to shift up quite early from first to second to third. Overall, I found city to be the nicest mode on the matter Aera.
Noisy Electric Vehicle
The final thing I noticed from the powertrain perspective is that this is a pretty noisy EV. You’ve got the sound from the motor, then you’ve got the sound of the gearbox, and finally you’ve got the chain drive sound. Matter Aera 5000 Plus
And in general, this is one of the louder EVs in India. Now, if matter was positioning this as a sporty bike, that would be okay, but their idea with this is to compare it against some of the commuter 150 cc bikes out there.
Chassis and Suspension
And you can see that in the decisions taken with the chassis, you have a trellis frame up front and that frame neatly surrounds the battery pack.
So the battery pack is well protected even in case of an accident, even in case the bike gets impacted, it’s well hidden inside there.
Comfortable Ride with Some Drawbacks
For the back though, you’ve got dual shock absorbers and Matter says the idea here is to make this a rugged, comfortable bike for any conditions in our country.
On the road, this thing’s actually quite comfortable. Small to medium bumps are soaked in well, but if you hit something really hard, it feels like the suspension is under damped, especially on the rebound stroke and wants to throw you out of the seat.
If you hit a big bump or you go over a speed breaker a little too quickly, that is something that could improve a little bit. Matter Aera 5000 Plus
Liquid Cooling and Gears
Something else that could improve is the braking of this motorcycle has disc brakes at both ends.
You get single channel ABS, but the braking needs a little more effort than I’d like. The initial bite isn’t very strong. You really have to grab the front brake quite hard to get this thing to slow down in a hurry.
Weight Compromise for Efficiency
The reason behind that is that this is a pretty heavy motorcycle. It weighs almost 170 kilos, which is significantly more than rivals like the revolt or the Tork Kratos, and it’s about 50 kilos more than electric scooters like the Ather or the Ola.
That weight comes across as a contradiction to the philosophy of this motorcycle.
You see Matter idea behind giving it liquid cooling and a four speed gearbox was to help keep the powertrain in the sweet spot of efficiency, leave it in that efficient zone for the maximum amount of time possible and be as efficient as possible with the thermals as well. Matter Aera 5000 Plus
Performance and Range Comparison
But when you’ve got extra weight to contend with, that affects things like performance and range.
For example, this has a five kilowatt battery pack, which is bigger than its rivals, but the claim range on paper is pretty much on power with what else is out there.
The same goes for the performance 10.5 kilowatt motor. You’d expect more than 105 KPH top speed, but that’s what this bike has to offer.
So it’s giving you something to try and be as efficient as possible, but those things come with a compromise of weight.
It’s interesting to see matter trying something different, but this platform still has some ways to go. Matter Aera 5000 Plus
While the matter Aera doesn’t offer anything game changing in terms of performance or handling or range.
Technology and Display
What I will say this bike does really well is the display Which is a seven inch TFT, which is bigger than most five inch screens out there and it’s a really nice layout, very intelligently designed, neat layout, lots of information good to look at, and it really gives the bike a premium expensive feeling.
There’s also some clever thought gone into how matter has packaged the charging cable.
There’s a nice compartment, you can keep a phone in there.
Packaging of Charging Cable
Other small things There’s a USB port in there, a small light and the charging cable comes in bag, not a particularly long cable. It’s about 1.5 meters long, but you connect it There and the other end goes into a power supply.
The bike is priced a little on the high end. The base model, which doesn’t have a few connectivity features, but effectively gets all of the stuff, including the seven-inch TFT display. Matter Aera 5000 Plus
Pricing and Market Position
That bike is 1.74 lakh Rupees Ex-showroom while the top Aera 5,000 plus with a few more features is 1.84 lakh Rupees.
That price puts it on power with bikes like the Karizma 210, and Yamaha R15, and you could even get Honda CB 300F for similar money. And that means that it is quite an expensive machine.
Conclusion: A Bold Step in the EV World
So what do we make of the matter Aera because this is a really unusual motorcycle. The company says that this is an Intra city machine meant to be ridden within the city. Matter Aera 5000 Plus
We also need to see what the final production machine is like in terms of quality. Mostly though I find myself a little conflicted by that gearbox, my expectations of an EV are an easy, effortless, low maintenance machine.
And this bike is a little against that. Remember that gearbox has gear oil in it. Gear oil is something you need to replace at a periodic interval.
So that is one more thing that adds to the maintenance that you wouldn’t get with a conventional EV.
Awaiting Market Response
Nevertheless, matter says that they have data that suggests that there’s a big crowd of people who want an electric vehicle in a conventional familiar motorcycle form factor and they want that geared experience.
So I suppose we’re just gonna have to wait and see as to how this translates over the next year in terms of sales figures. But for now, this is a bold and different step in the world of EVs.