Get your creative juices flowing, EV fans: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has launched a contest in which you can win a cash prize for making a short video about your EV.
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Gas prices are ridiculously high and they just keep climbing. Your car isn’t getting any cheaper, but buying a new electric car also isn’t in your budget (and let’s face it, putting one more car on the roads isn’t helping anyone either). An electric bike would be a GREAT alternative, but maybe you just aren’t ready to go 20 mph on the side of the road with cars whizzing past your handlebars.
But there’s another great solution that you might have overlooked: the humble electric scooter. I’m talking seated electric scooters, like the Vespa kind – not the Razor kind. And here’s why you ought to give them another look.
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While many people think of electric bicycles as purely recreational, they have proven themselves as potent commuter vehicles. Not only do e-bike riders often outpace traffic, but they reduce everyone’s wait by taking cars off crowded urban streets.
When you add in electric motorcycles and electric scooters or e-mopeds, the results are even more impressive. But varied and often antagonistic laws across the US can make it harder for urban commuters to switch to two-wheeled EVs.
What if there was a nationwide class for these vehicles and a special license to make riding them safer and more convenient, while also reducing traffic for everyone? That’s what I’m proposing, and this is how I think it could work.
Shared electric scooters such as those used by Bird and Lime are winning over more riders every day. But Harley-Davidson wants to show those riders that they can do even better with the brand’s upcoming personal electric vehicles including H-D’s electric scooters and e-bikes.
Quadro Vehicles just unveiled an electric version of their popular four-wheeled Qooder at the Geneva Motor Show. The eQooder blurs the line between electric motorbikes and cars.
If you’re looking for a high end electric motorcycle, check out Zero’s 2014 lineup released this week. New Features include with increased horsepower and torque that put them into the superbike range but at the weights of offensive linemen. From Wired:
Everyone crows about horsepower, but torque is what you feel when you nail the gas pedal or twist the throttle. It’s a better measure of acceleration, and for 2014, Zero has cracked the infamous 100 pound-foot mark with its new SR electric motorcycle.
Torque is measured in pound feet — or, for the rest of the world, Newton-meters — and the Zero SR puts down 106 lb-ft — 56 percent more than its standard S counterpart, and a figure that brings it in line with some of the biggest, brashest, and beefiest bikes in the world. But unlike those bruisers and cruisers, the SR tips the scales at a relatively svelte 400 pounds. High grunt and low mass let you hit 60 mph in 3.3 seconds.
