Electric vehicles – why they keep blowing my mind

Solar Business Services

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Today, two very cool things happened.

Firstly, Zero Motorcycles announced their 2015 model range. After winning huge praise for this years model, its logical that they addressed some minor criticisms and made a few small tweaks for 2015. Price, performance and range have all improved slightly but crucially the new models come with ABS, Showa suspension front and rear and better Pirelli tyres straight off the production line.

I recently had a 2014 Zero SR for a few days and took the chance to ride it around Sydney in what turned out to be the wettest day in about a thousand years. Even my tried and tested wet weather gear couldn’t stand up to the sideways rain and I was utterly drenched by the end of it but riding the flagship model in peak hour madness on slimy, windy roads was too good of an opportunity to pass up.

So what is it like riding an electric motorcycle that can do 0-100 in 3.3 seconds, in the rain?

Fascinating, scary and then ultimately a total pleasure.

I started out in sports mode and was revelling in the ability to spin the back wheel with a twist of the wrist; roundabouts, traffic lights they all copped a test in the name of physics. This was fun for a while but in traffic and rain my brain did eventually engage and I selected eco mode (on my Zero app enabled iPhone) to soften the power. This made riding the SR simple and super smooth. I managed to maintain this for 20kms or so before my inner hoon took over again and reverted back to sports mode. Exiting the gentle rise out of the Sydney harbour tunnel, I gave it a handful to pass a car and heard that all too familiar sound of the rear wheel spinning its head off before I modulated a bit more carefully using my wrist and this is when it dawned on me; the huge delivery of torque is manageable on this bike because it is delivered so smoothly and progressively. Even in atrocious conditions the throttle response is so good that this is one of the easiest wet weather rides I’ve ever experienced.

However, the new model with uprated tyres and suspension will undoubtedly help and make an even better ride when they start shipping to Australian in the first quarter of next year. Although new models are always tempting, the good news is if you can’t wait I can arrange an astounding deal for you on 2014 models if you are quick; contact us here if you want to get on the road with a Zero for summer.

The other exciting news of today is that I finally got to ride the Zero of cars; the Tesla model S. Tesla have some demonstrators in Australia and I was invited to drive one by Tesla Australia and only had to be asked once.

So I spent this morning learning about the wizardry of Tesla around Pyrmont in Sydney and let me tell you; it lived up to all my expectations. In trying to describe it to young Tesla sales rep (who has the best job in the world just joyriding in a Tesla every day) I could only sum it up as “like a Porsche; but better in so many ways”.

Tesla’s proposition is similar to Zero; both have luxury price tags. Both are utterly remarkable. But both are quite simply this; available, very well made, immensely desirable and very, very real. Drive or ride one and you’ll start to agree with everyone else that the future has arrived.

The Tesla was furiously fast, plush and suitably kitted out with a vast array of technological wizardry; this thing makes a smart phone look plain dumb. We fiddled with pretty much every setting we could during our short drive trying out every combination of drive set up, monitoring and display systems and accompanied it all with an astounding stereo systems that max’s out at 11 just for fun.

Two things really struck me though; one was that it that for a relatively big and heavy car it doesn’t feel it and secondly that it is luxuriously comfortable and has a huge amount of space because of course, it has two boots (front and rear). It really is very practical.

In terms of performance well, I have been lucky to drive some pretty fast cars in my time including some very nice Porsche’s and the Tesla is (unsurprisingly) very, very fast. Like the Zero it has brutal acceleration and we managed to get the traction control kicking in a couple of times (again, in the name of physics). Interestingly I got the sense that it was a little more brutal than the Zero (although the 0-100kmh time is almost a second slower) which is probably logical because you don’t have to worry about flipping it and have the benefit of traction control.

Fun, luxurious and practical, assuming you have a lazy $100k or so.

 

Source: Solar Business Services. Reproduced with permission.

Comments

One response to “Electric vehicles – why they keep blowing my mind”

  1. Warwick Barnes Avatar
    Warwick Barnes

    The things I would buy if I had money and a job !!!.

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