Two electric bikes ridden
In 2017 the government gave £1500 to anyone buying an electric motorcycle. Is now the right time to swap petrol for plug-in?
THE FUTURE? ELECTRIC bikes are already here. They have been for a while, in fact. The earliest electric motorcycle designs date back to the 19th century, the first mass-produced electric scooter arrived in 1996, and the first electric-bike race at the Isle of Man TT ran back in 2009. But at the beginning of 2017 something remarkable happened: the UK government started handing £1500 to anyone buying an electric motorcycle.
The grant was first taken advantage of in March and over the rest of the year electric bike sales have risen steadily. Numbers are still tiny, but their increasing popularity is in stark contrast to the sharp decline in sales of new petrol-powered bikes (down 15% in a single year).
So, should we be taking battery power more seriously? To find out we spent a week getting to know the two most promising plug-ins on the market.
BMW C evolution Plus
Yes, it’s a scooter. A big, lumpy, brightgreen scooter. But put that aside for a minute, as BMW’S C evolution is the leading electric two-wheeler from a mainstream manufacturer. It’s a plug-in pioneer; an electric guinea pig. Built using battery technology from BMW’S i3 car, the C evolution has actually been around for three years already. But in 2017 it was joined by this long-range version with a bigger battery: the C evolution Plus.
Officially it costs £13,640, the government’s £1500 subsidy taking that down to £12,140. That’s still a huge amount for a step-thru – especially one you can’t actually step through, given that space is filled with lithium-ion batteries. Total capacity is 12.5kwh (about 1700 Apple iphone 7s), and you can feel the weight of every cell as you lift it off its sidestand.
At 275kg it’s heavier than a fuelled R1200GS Adventure – who knew