‘Electric’s come a long way’
Anything over 100 miles requires a long stop to recharge
The Zero DSR is a good bike, there’s no doubt about that. It fires off the line like Usain Bolt with his socks on fire and handles way better than its semi-knobbly Pirelli MT60 tyres suggest it ought to. And at just 195kg, the DSR also dismisses any worries about electric bikes being heavier than an elephant. I convinced myself at the start of the year that the Zero would be the perfect commuter tool. A quiet and cool 20-mile morning ride along the back-lanes, followed by an allday charge up at work and a bimble back home at the end of the day all seemed like a perfectly sensible way to embrace the joys of electric motorcycling.
Only that’s not all I want a motorcycle for; I just didn’t realise it at the time. Anything over 100 miles (if you ride smoothly and sensibly; it’s 60 miles if you don’t) requires an eight-hour charge. Or a £2300 charge tank can be bought as an extra, but even that only reduces the charge time to three hours. So, anything over 100 miles in one hit isn’t really viable. Or, at best, it’s a pain to achieve.
It’s not until I lived with the Zero that I realised just how inconvenient that is. There is a fastgrowing network of charging points and it’s not hard to find them, but it requires planning and preparation. No more blasting into the blue, stopping at a garage as and when the fuel light comes on. Routes need planning and mapping in advance. The Zero DSR is a huge step in the right direction for electric bikes. With the Government giving buyers £1.5k off the price tag, the cost is slightly more palatable especially when you calculate how much you’ll save in fuel (about £300 a year based on 2000 miles).
There are other positives, too. It’s so easy to clean thanks to its lack of nooks and crannies, and the belt drive adds to its effortless nature. Silence is golden and you soon find yourself tuning into the other noises around you, no longer drowned out by a noisy engine. And there’s no heat from the engine trying to cook your legs, which was welcome this steaming summer. But, and it’s a biggie, unless you really are just doing sub-100-mile rides at a time with at least eight hours before you go again, the Zero just isn’t practical… yet.