BMW’s New Motorrad E-Scooter Concept Is a Blazing Electric Ride

6 thoughts on “BMW’s New Motorrad E-Scooter Concept Is a Blazing Electric Ride”

• 
  joanscooter July 13, 2011 at 3:32 pm

  This is really great news for the e-bikes and e-Motorcycles. having a big company make the investment is huge. visit www.chargedelectricscooters.com for additional information.

• 
  Jeana July 13, 2011 at 8:33 am

  Shoot, who would have tohuhgt that it was that easy?

• 
  tahrey July 12, 2011 at 9:34 am

  (hmm, this was my first comment, it seems to have gone walkies) Like the range, like the looks .... ... not too sure about the top speed! Give it the ability to hit 70-75mph if you ask that of it, and I'd be more interested. It's not like a more powerful electric motor is significantly less efficient at low speeds than a smaller one, like with a gas motor. 40mph is more what you'd expect from an old 50cc step-thru like the Honda Cub. And this has got considerably beefier tyres and brakes than not only that old soldier, but my current 125cc bike. Maybe the designers were expecting something a lot more potent and specified the running gear to match? You'll end up paying for their extra weight in the handling and range, and higher replacement costs, but never go fast enough to actually get any benefit. Of course, the range would drop once you went faster, but you'd probably still be able to rely on getting 50km out of it at full throttle. Which means my 60km-ish daily round trip on a mix of 30-40mph city streets and 60-70mph *official* limit motorways and rural roads would still be practical, particularly if I could plug in briefly at work if it showed my range as under 50% on parking up (and if there was a site power cut, I could still make it home entirely on the slower streets). Charge it overnight (100km of bike travel probably doesn't need more than three or four hours at a lowly 2.5kW rate; my 8.5kW bike can sustain 105+km/h...) and you're good to go again, without visiting the gas station. OK, I need 4 charges to match my current full-tank 400km, but if that just amounts to parking in the garage and hooking it up to a household plug, that beats going off to the filling station once a week, waiting in a queue, possibly having kitted up special to do it, filling the tank, digging out wallet, waiting for a receipt, etc... I do sometimes do longer journeys, but I don't think I've yet done more than 100k in a single "leg" more than 3 or 4 times. As this would be more of a second vehicle rather than someone's main transport, it shouldn't be so much of a problem.

• 
  tahrey July 12, 2011 at 9:34 am

  (Ah - and I almost forgot ... does it actually make that Tie Fighter style noise as it goes past, or was that dubbed on?)

• 
  tahrey July 12, 2011 at 9:33 am

  Oh, and I'm left wondering about two other things: 1. WHAT. IS. THE. PURCHASE. PRICE? I already ride an ICE bike as a money saving measure, and it's sort of breaking even at this point. If this costs more than £5000 (with, say, a 3-5 year lifespan, AND it replaces ALL your car journeys - a lower price/longer lifespan for more typical usage...) then it's simply not worth it. 2. "The first time car safety standards have been applied to a 2-wheel electric scooter". OK, which standards? And that sentence has quite a bit of qualification in it - should we assume that if it had 3 wheels, or a combustion motor, there would be competitors who had already done so? The overall shape puts me strongly in mind of the Honda / Piaggio SH-125/150 "Lead", something I had a ride on as a loaner a good 3 years ago now - with at very least ABS and "linked" brakes to provide decent control if you grab the levers in the wet...

• 
  caeman July 6, 2011 at 12:54 pm

  Only 62 miles? The gas-powered versions of these scooters get 70+ MPG and can usually hold 3 gallons of gas for -- easily -- three times the range. And before someone says, "It's a scooter, meant for the city , you need to read up on the toughness of some riders and how exactly they break the rules of common convention. A rider in Canada rode his scooter from ocean to ocean. http://scootercanada.weebly.com/ In Asian countries, motorcycles/scooters outnumber cars by a an almost exponential margin, carrying families, animals, cargo. You name it. As expensive as a BMW scooter is going to be, it seems a high price to pay for something that will be limited to city-only usage.