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[Richard230]

My computer still has a 3" floppy drive.     Unfortunately, floppy discs are kind of hard to come by.   

Where I used to work, we took many of our correspondence documents and letters and first put them on 5" very floppy discs and then later we started copying all of our correspondence to 3" discs. Then we started dumping stuff on to an office server, without ever copying the old files.  Piles of those old floppy discs are sill in the office somewhere, but there is not a single computer left that can read them.  Well, there goes 20 years of information.  At least we had a good excuse for not looking for old letters and documents.     I think the discs are dumped in the box with our old 1970 HP 9000 programmable calculator.

With computers, it appears that they can become pretty much useless after a while.  But I agree that electric motorcycles should have a longer half-life.   

[CliC]

I'd counter that even my computers have longer lives these days. I've never had a desktop just totally die; I keep them for 8 years or so until the motherboards are no longer compatible with newer peripherals. As with motorcycles, you rarely *need* the latest and greatest hardware to run most software.

I've bumped the RAM and replaced the hard drives with SSDs in all my machines, and I'm happy with them. I'll likely do something similar (small upgrades) with the Zero. Hopefully they'll offer a service manual

[BSDThw]

I'll likely do something similar (small upgrades) with the Zero

What upgrades do you have in mind. Let us know, maybe some has already done this.
 

[lolachampcar]

Absolutely, the correct answer in this case is to just hold onto the bike and enjoy what I have.  I can do that.

The shame of the situation is what I expressed to Richard.  I could have been a MY13 customer and my MY12 would have made for another unit through Zero's distribution channel.  More product through the channel, the happier and more committed that channel becomes.  Bike dealers are like any other, they go where the money is.  On the flip side you can obsolete your bikes leaving the dealers to dump their MY12 inventory and demos on EBay.  This has the follow on effect of taking the bottom out of the secondary market which has the effect of making your customers feel like schmucks for buying a $13K bike that is worth $7K in nine months.  Net result; dealers and owners not happy.  Time to find new of each.

It is my personal belief that Zero is being run by marketing and not overall management oversight.  The result will be a myopic focus on sales at the expense of building a loyal customer base.  Competition will come (it really is not rocket science to build one of these things once you get the battery sorted) once Zero proves the market and they will pounce on this situation.  I once bought an Audi RS6, lost my butt on it and have never considered an Audi since.  I LOVED that car but the beating I took will not be something I forget in this lifetime.  I LOVE my Zero but.............

[Richard230]

You should have seen the beating that I took on my fist car.  It was an 800cc 3-cylinder, two-stroke DKW Junior and it's value dropped by 50% the day it was sold.     So I am used to taking financial baths when buying a vehicle and it doesn't bother me any more.   

[cirrus pete]

As a pilot, I can tell you that automotive depreciation pales in comparison with what happens to a new plane the day it is flown off the lot
The good news is, about 20 years later (in piston single land at least) the values start to come back. 60 years later and you might actually break even depending on inflation...

[CliC]

What upgrades do you have in mind. Let us know, maybe some has already done this.

Near term , I  need to increase the bike's cargo carrying capacity. That plastic tailpiece looks cool, but is utterly useless when I need to lash something on the back. I also need to do something with the handlebars, as the default riding position makes me tend to slouch and I end up with a sore back if I ride for more than half an hour (maybe though that's a pilot upgrade...)

Farther out (as in when the warranty runs out), Harlan's Sevcon 6 upgrade looks attractive, as does suspension upgrades if the forks don't hold up.

[manlytom]

Sold my Harley and found that I could not recover as much as I wanted. prices seem down in general for second hand vehicles .... anyhow had to go as I did not ride it enough. as usual all the quick rides or a short day tour all on the Zero as lots of fun and easier ...

[s44captain]

I like the Sweden idea, I met a guy from Brazil that would buy used airplanes cheap here and sell them back at his home. When you have big tarrifs the savings on used bikes is great. Maybe we could get the guys at Zero to offer "certified used" for the offshore markets. Also, San Luis Vespa/Zero offers 0% commission selling your bike when you buy a new one from them. 

[lolachampcar]

The airplane analogy is interesting to me as my hobby went from purpose built race cars to aerobatics.  Over the past two years I've moved three Extras and my "hobby" has been better than break even!  That has been a very pleasant surprise

As for choice of bikes, the Zero sits next to a BMW S1000RR.  I can push either out of the garage each morning and I am hard pressed to get on the BMW enough to charge the battery (lucky if its once a month).

[protomech]

Seems like there might be a viable Australian import market : )

[cirrus pete]

I like the Sweden idea, I met a guy from Brazil that would buy used airplanes cheap here and sell them back at his home. When you have big tarrifs the savings on used bikes is great. Maybe we could get the guys at Zero to offer "certified used" for the offshore markets. Also, San Luis Vespa/Zero offers 0% commission selling your bike when you buy a new one from them. 

Thread hijack (sorry), but pretty much every single JetProp, the plane I fly, available in the US used market recently has been bought by Brazilians because of the tariff structure. The plane is registered as a piston but converted by FAA authorization to a turboprop, so for international operations it still carries the piston designation making it much more appealing in high tariff/user fee environments (like most of the world outside the US/Canada).

[cirrus pete]

The airplane analogy is interesting to me as my hobby went from purpose built race cars to aerobatics.  Over the past two years I've moved three Extras and my "hobby" has been better than break even!  That has been a very pleasant surprise

That is pretty sweet. My partner and I aquired our current plane at the bottom of the used market and it has actually appreciated, which is pretty sweet for an airplane!