It seems like you just need to travel more than a few miles from your house. I've literally spent the last 10 minutes or so dropping into random places around London on Google Street View and pretty much every house has room to put a bike outside. The exceptions are flats, right outside or inside the City where the footpath is literally on your door step, and house that have a basement apartment underneath them. Those are a very small minority of the county, never mind the entire country.
Nah, the official numbers say an average of 44% of housing across London is houses. That means 66% flats. And not all those houses have front porches. Many, if not the majority, due to architectural styling have thin front areas mainly occupied by bushes/trees or no space at all.
https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/housing_in_london_2019.pdf
And like I said, those that live in flats tend not to be the kind to spend ten grand or more on a bike. Yes the bikes aren't for everyone but the lack of DC fast charging isn't the only or most important thing preventing those people from owning one, there's also the issue of cost and not having someone to park the bike other than on the street. People who actually buy bikes, any type of bike, tend to have the means to be able to park the bike close to their house where it can be charged (or in a garage). People who buy expensive almost definitely do.
There are many reasons why someone might choose a flat over a house that have nothing to do with socio-economics. Also, there might have been a misunderstanding somewhere, I never argued for DC fast charging on these commuter bikes (FXS, S). That would be awesome, but all I asked was if someone knew why they used 650w and 1500w instead of up to 3.3kw on the built-in ac chargers.
DC or just faster AC, neither is going to secure many sales for the reason that you're imagining. Sure there are some people who live in flats who also have the money for an expensive bike but don't have a garage to charge in, but they are a minority. The majority of bike owners, especially those who buy expensive bikes, have a means to charge the bike at or close to home over a period of many hours. It's as simple as that.
Zero caters to the home chargers, of which there are many, and there's nothing wrong with that. If you want something else then get something else, like an Energica, or a Livewire, or the Fuell Fllow when/if that comes out, or a Damon, or a Lightning, or get one of the many bikes with a removable battery and bring it indoors to charge.
As for why they're not 3.3kW, size, weight, cost, potentially heat output as the chargers are passively cooled and put most of the waste heat into the battery casing.
"The majority of bike owners, especially those who buy expensive bikes, have a means to charge the bike at or close to home over a period of many hours. It's as simple as that. " Im not arguing that this isn't true, I'm saying there are people - a lot of them - who would own a bike if they could charge it *slightly* faster.
I don't understand why having a slightly faster built-in charger would mean not catering for home chargers? And don't understand why people assume there isn't a market for a different use case than their own.
Would you be upset if Zero upgraded their built-in chargers on all bikes to 3.3kw or 6.6kw max? I can't see how that would break someone's ability to charge overnight if they can/want to.
Anyway, it seems people are uncomfortable withe the thought of Zero catering people they wrongly perceive as being on a lower socio-economic status which is certainly an unexpected result.
