Motor. Cycle.
Motor. Cycle.
UP FRONT
MARK HOYER
DAMMIT, I LOVE TWO WHEELS, MOUNtain bikes to motorcycles. And if the “engine” is me or a fully built turbo Hayabusa with 380 horsepower or a government-surplus ex-navy electric torpedo motor, I am happy as long as it keeps moving. Still, it seems as though motorcycle enthusiasts regard electrics with suspicion first and curiosity second. I certainly did. It’s pretty easy to trust gasoline and internal combustion because they are wellsorted and have been around a while. And as much as we may enjoy the environmental side benefits of 40-plus mpg and the notion that bikes use less raw material to build, fewer parts, etc., we do fundamentally dig motorcycles because they have flames shooting out the tailpipe (at least spiritually) and haul ass like nothing else on the road. They’re a bargain, too: Your typical $13,000 liter-class sportbike will blow the doors off of most cars short of a $1.2 million Bugatti Veyron, and even then it is a close race all the way up to 180 mph. Don’t know about you, but I’ll take the bike and keep the $1,187,000 handy for track days and tires.
So, sure, motorcycles are a good value and probably better for the environment than your average car, but at the end of the day they are incredible, life-affirming good-time machines that can turn the worst days into the best and focus our enthusiasm for living in a way that most inanimate objects cannot.
And so, I approach the electric motorcycle with curiosity because it has two wheels, and suspicion because, while it may have spiritual flames shooting out its tailpipe, its tailpipe is probably a couple hundred miles away and connected to a coal powerplant.
My commute is 60 miles roundtrip. If you’ve never had the pleasure of touring around this suburban megalopolis called Southern California, let me tell you it is take-no-prisoners, pin-it-to-win-it aggressive and surprisingly high speed (when traffic isn’t dead stopped). Mix this with a level of driver inattentiveness (cell phones, makeup, sandwiches, newspaper reading) that is frightening, and if you are choosing two wheels it is best to have every advantage.
Still, I have braved this commute on a 1969 Honda 90, a far newer Honda Ruckus, most modern streetbikes and, starting early this year, electric motorcycles. The first was a $7995 Brammo Enertia and most recently it was on a $9995 Zero S.
The first commute on the Brammo was a bit of a flyer. I was told it would have enough “fuel” to get me home, but I wasn’t totally sure. By the end of the ride, the excellent and informative power/range-meter dash was telling me I was almost out of electricity (6 percent remaining), and I’d spent the latter third of the trip cruising in the bicycle lanes to keep my speed down and save what I could. The Zero offers a little more battery capacity, so I was pretty sure about getting home.
And I did. I carried a slightly higher average speed on the Zero, and perhaps I worried less about running out of electricity than I had on the Enertia because the Zero’s dash offers less detailed information about the state of charge and remaining range. It does have a “gas” gauge with a little fuel pump next to its bar graph, ironically enough.
Out on the road, there is a weird satisfaction to riding something that is so quiet and, if it weren’t for the chain slap and other associated drivetrain noises, it would be very magic-carpet-like. The motor is torquey, steering is quick and the Zero’s claimed 273-pound weight makes it quite light in streetbike terms. It does feel fairly budget-bike-like, with rudimentary (sometimes harsh) suspension and a spongy, numb front brake. Throttle programming is about a B+ grade—not bad but not quite what the lifetime motorcycle rider comes to expect from twisting the right grip.
As I was gliding along and traffic had thinned, I found myself wishing for builtin speakers and an iPod dock, but wondered how many watts that would take and what possible effect it might have on how far I could ride. Still, with a vehicle this quiet, and minimal-wind-noise cruising speeds of around 40 mph to make the range I needed, I was wishing for some tunes. AC/DC, anyone?
My ride home, admittedly, is somewhat outside the use for the Zero and other e-bikes of its capacity, but it truly highlights the battery limitations faced at this time. Even the Brammo Empluse One Hundred (see Roundup, p. 14) with its claimed extended range and higher speed capability falls well short of a budget middleweight gasoline bike, and for its projected $13,995 MSRP, there are a lot of incredible gas options.
Still, there is utility here, and even a lot of fun, if your trip is short enough and you have long enough to stuff juice back into those lithium ions. On quick shots out to lunch or any ride under 20 miles, you will have fun and enough speed to zap anything but the most motivated car traffic off the line. How to extend range? When we had a Yamaha EF2000ÍS generator here for a product evaluation, we joked about making our own hybrid by wearing the generator on our backs...
Yes, we joke about electrics now. But they are real and they are going to get better. For the time being, though, 380-horse turbo Hayabusas are safe. U
