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[Richard230]

Consumer Reports has published another article about motorcycle reliability, starting on page 52 of their May 2015 issue.  Its is not clear to me if this is a regurgitated version of the information that they presented last year or compiled from a new survey, but it is nice to see them at least recognize motorcycles after many, many years of ignoring them.

Just to provide a example from an expensive name brand that sells motorcycles for even more than Zero (which are not represented in the survey) does: The statistics for BMW are that 40% of the owners who responded said that their bike suffered a mechanical problem.  However, 68% said that they would buy another BMW again.  The worse feature of their BMW motorcycle is the cost of maintenance (it received the dreaded black dot )and comfort was just average.

Of the things that went wrong on all motorcycle brands the electrical system was number 1 with 24% of owners needing electrical repairs.   

The most reliable motorcycle brand was Yamaha and the brand that gave their owners the most satisfaction was Victory.  80% of Victory owners said that they would buy another one again.  The least reliable brand was Can-Am with 42% of their owners suffering with mechanical problems on these reverse-trikes.  However, 67% said that they would buy another one again.   

[MotoRyder]

I saw last years article.  As I remember it was about 2 pages in length, not extensive, but as you said, its nice that they are now providing some reliability information on motorcycles.  Electric motorcycles are still out of their focus due to the very early stage of adoption that currently experiencing.

Their brand name alone can elicit responses from the general public that many other surveys couldn't address.

The machines are very complicated these days (electric motorcycles included), and the volumes are small (in comparison to the high-volume manufacturing of automobiles), such that it must be hard to shake out all of the mechanical/electrical snafus in the early stages of manufacturing because the batch sizes are so modest.