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[MUEV]

Guity-

Don't forget, if you go with the MX, you either need an extra charger or need to carry the charger with you (not that big of deal).

Q- Do you plan on doing any trail riding or "short cuts"?
Q- How much of your commute is at 55mph?  Hills?

I can tell you that either bike is more than capable of jumping ahead at stoplights.

[guity]

MUEV,

Thanks for the note about the charger.

For your first question, I don't plan on any trail riding in particular, though I do live adjacent to a large area of state park and might sneak out onto a dirt road or trail occasionally.

During the 9 miles of my commute, the only things that stop me from going 55 mph or more is traffic density, stoplights, and about a total of about a mile where speed limit is a concern.  The three miles closest to my house is one big reasonably steep hill (with a fairly straight road).

When TJ gets the MX then I guess he will set up a time for me to test drive that as well as a fully charged S.  I'm thinking I could ride my 1984 Honda XL350R to the test ride and TJ could drive each of the bikes next to me on my 350 for 50 yards or so to see what exactly I would be losing in each case.  If either or both are able to stay reasonably close to the 350 then I will be pretty happy.  And if I can drive the S for long enough to feel confident that it will get at least 40 miles of aggressive driving from a single charge, that will take care of my second concern.  After that the only issue left would be waiting for the rebate...

[picasso]

guity, Did you look at the Brammo Enerta? It's tempting me but so is Vectrix to transform into another bike.

[guity]

picasso,

I've been reading about it, but by now I have forgotten a lot of the specs.  On paper it didn't look as good as the S.  280 pounds, 45 mile range, 55 mph top speed, yet a higher price: $12,000.  I guess you can't really judge these electric motorcycles accurately at all though, if you don't spend some time tooling around on them.  There is a Best Buy near where I work.  I thought I could stop by and take a look at it last week (and maybe even a little test ride) but there was no Brammo in the electric bike section when I stopped by...

[Zero Hero]

Guity, If you live in So Cal why don't you come and ride my bike. Its a Street legal Zero X with perm motor and small sprocket. I ride it almost every day to work (10 mile commute). Part of my ride is on a 55 mph highway. Your right you could go by a Suzuki or whatever and save on initial cost. The Zero is a totally different type of ride. There is nothing like coming to a stop sign and hearing dead silence. Then you take off like a rocket ship. People driving next to me or walking down the sidewalk are constantly doing a double take. I ride this thing all over the place and no one hears me, its great! I had a lady riding her horse past me and she was totally amazed by the Zero. It didn't bother her horse one bit. She thought it was the best thing ever. If you want to ride it give me a call. 760-815-4000

[guity]

Thanks ZeroHero, I'll give you a call to discuss...

[wayner]

Sounds like a great offer to let someone ride your bike! I've been following the electric bikes for a while now and think Zero is on to something. No electric bike will outdo the gas powered bikes just yet but give them time and don't be too harsh on compairing them. It's not apples to apples and if you think it is then you need to get realistic. Like it or not it's the future, if you don't think so and are old enough to remember when computers came out what did everyone say...those things are just a fad, I'll never get one! ha ha look at us now!

[guity]

Actually, I pretty much agree with what you are saying, especially as I read and learn and talk and learn about this subject.  Of course I could see almost immediately from generalized specs that the two kinds of vehicles weren't going to be the same -- 60 miles at a max of 60 mph isn't going to compete well with a gas bike.

But lately I have gone over to the "V is for Voltage" forum, which has a very lively Vectrix community, and started reading about the Vectrix problems.  It finally started to dawn on me, as I saw those guys counting every amp and carefully laying out the best way to preserve their battery life: it really isn't as simple as 60 miles at 60mph. I mean we are talking weight of driver, wind resistance of bike/driver, incline percentage, stops-and-go's, and battery management systems that need to make sure your batteries don't get discharged too much or get charged too much, temperature can't be too hot, temperature can't be too cold, etc. etc.  If one cell in your battery array is damaged (either by your negligence or it was just a bad cell), then your bike can easily make your life a living hell.

There doesn't appear to be any company out there that has some magic bullet technology way ahead of all the others.  In fact, they all seem to pick and choose from the same somewhat limited array of batteries, controllers, BMS's, etc.  And a buyer really has to figure out a max speed and a range and a price that can be lived with and then try to find a model that fits best his needs.

With some of those ideas in mind I seem to be homing in on 2 companies (besides my fallback Suzuki):  Zero and Electric Motorsport.  My preference for Zero has to do with perceiving a good motorcycle, as being, at it's core, a dirt bike that gets tweaked a little bit so that it is street-legal.  The great thing about Electric Motor Sport, to me, is that they haven't gotten so big yet that they are making decisions about quickness off the line, speed and range that the user gets no control over -- they appear to be a lot more flexible about building bikes to suit customers' needs.

[wayner]

Other than the obvious of which bike is better, (IMO-Zero over Quantia and I like the fact they are American made-we need to get back to that moto for our own country's sake) I'd tend to go with who's offering the better warranty and who you think will be around longer...? Does anyone know which offers a better warranty?

[guity]

Electric Motorsport only has about 8 employees, I think.  But I don't think their survival depends on how many bikes they sell.  They have been in business since 2001 selling the components for the building of electric vehicles.  Actually, Zero has been (is?) one of their customers.  Since they don't depend entirely on selling bikes and perhaps because they don't have a large number of employees to pay, they actually might out-survive Zero.

Did you mean Enertia (made by Brammo, an American company) rather than Quantia (Quantya made by a Swiss company, I think)?   The primary Electric Motorsport motorcycle is the GPR-S.

[guity]

Well there's bad news and good news here.  The bad news is that I finally got tired of the same old-same old, so I jumped at a chance to purchase a new 72 volt GPR-S, so no more Zero.  The good news is that instead of plaguing the community with too many posts on the Zero thread, I will be plaguing them on the GPR-S thread....

[MUEV]

We'll miss you guity, have fun with your bike.