The Leaf and the Zero are about equal in terms of practicality in their respective mode of transport (Four-wheel and Two-wheel). The Zero is however quick as a Tesla Luxury sedan at 1/10th of the cost. You already have a Leaf and you know that 100mi (?) range is limiting where you can use it. Why did you get a Leaf? Does a motorcycle need to have better range than the Leaf to be useful for you?
"What's the deal with buying a Zero" (in the USA)?:
I convinced my dealer to take $500 cash in my pocket as a down payment (they wanted $1000 or $2000 I think?) and they make an order for the bike you want, it gets shipped from Zero Motorcycles factory in Scotts Valley CA to the dealer, and then you go through the dealership for final payment + taxes + fees. I paid cash to the dealer because financing is completely stupid for me on a depreciating asset such as this. Zero Motorcycles does not have a license to sell to you directly so you have to do it this way through a dealership. The absolute best deal you could hope for is a dealer willing to sell you a bike just to look busy and move a unit through their shop, in which case you're looking at paying MSRP and an adjustment to include the taxes, plus some kind of ridiculous shipping and destination fee. You take possession of the bike as you would any other motorbike purchased from a dealership, subject to rules of the state i.e. insurance, registering at the DMV location for your county. Then you ride it as you like and if it is less than 30% battery state of charge when you're done riding for the day you just plug it into a wall socket or it can void the warranty leaving it less than 30%. The suggested state of charge to mind for best long term pack health is 60%-80%, though when you recharge just let it go to 100% and there is some firmware and battery management magic that works only above 90%. Leaving the pack at 100% doesn't have the drastic negative effect like it might on some early Nissan Leaf vehicle batteries. Keeping battery state of charge at least 60% is known to be helpful for long term pack health. The battery itself can take a 3C charge but the bike will prevent you from charging more than 1C, which effectively limits you to a 1-hour charge 0% to 95% if you can get enough charging electronics hooked up - Zero Motorcycles has difficulty to qualify all these electronics around the world so if you need a fast charging then you will look to aftermarket products for your part of the world.
On the matter of purchase price, warranty, and insurance. If you really truly want a purely practical ev motorcycle and don't need the "snap" of a performance model, know that the performance "-R" models are classed as sport bikes or super bikes by insurance underwriters, and cost $100's more to insure. I own and think a 2016 performance model is great, and suggest a 2017 "standard" model is just as fun. The 2017 performance model is wholly unnecessary loads of torque and performances I think you might find interesting if you don't mind the extra insurance premium. This may also be reason enough to consider a used 2016 Zero SR and compare to a new 2017 Zero S which is approximately equal amounts bike but perhaps different purchase price and insurance costs.
The key feature of 2017 models for long term ownership is they are built to allow a firmware upgrade at home without any dealership and this is great because dealerships tend to fuck up the service on Zero bikes, I don't know why, but it seems to be a trend at any traditional motorcycle shop they forget completely how to do their job instead of blame everything on the factory, whenever they see "Electric Vehicle" they just lose their minds completely and turn into stumbling idiots who cannot change a tire correctly. Ten out of ten times, in my experience, it would have been quicker and cheaper (even for a warranty-covered service) to avoid completely the dealership and just figure it out yourself. Thankfully the community is very active and we make our own Unofficial service manual:
http://zeromanual.comParts are not easy to figure out and then there is a one-in-three chance that even if the dealer orders correctly on your behalf, and the factory fulfills that order in good understanding of what you wanted, that the warehouse will just completely fuck it up and send out the wrong part. It happens all the time to me. I imagine that it will be a long time before all the problems of the past are uncovered, so you just have to kind of expect this if you ever order a part. Great dealerships who know how to interact with Zero Motorcycles will know better than to expect any part delivered to be the part that was ordered.
The bike itself is easy but a new bike will not have any fancy technology gadgets. I've added a windscreen, handlebar guards, heated grips, handlebar 2-in riser, 10kW of charging electronics on-board (for a 1C charge rate), top rack, top case, auxiliary J1772 EV charging inlet, primary J1772 EV charging inlet bracket and cowl plastics, and 12V accessory power port. I'm about $20k usd into this $15k usd bike, and it is about par in my mind to a Nissan Leaf. A Leaf would be more useful on snow and ice roads. The Zero charges pretty fast the way I have it now and I can do a 300-500mi day if I want to.
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Topic: What's involved with buying a Zero? (Read 1725 times)