Zero motorcycle followup: a rot on the culture of ownership & repair
- Thread starter soundwave
- Start date
Zero were one of the earliest electric motorcycle manufacturers (2006), but they've lost their way in the past few years. They're now geting eaten into by Livewire (aka Harley Davidson) and Energica at the top end, and Sur-ron, Super Soco, Piaggio, etc at the bottom end. Both Livewire and Energica have superior charging speeds, superior handling, and in the case of Energica superior range. Zero on the other hand have seriously messed up their offering (as the video shows), and are also failing to keep in touch technically.
What is interesting is that mainstream motorcycle manufacturers are near silent about their plans. Only BMW & Piaggio have an electric scooter - all the other brands have nothing, not a sausage, other than sketches, prototypes, occasionally rolling testbeds. Zero should be running away with the e-business side of things, but they're going to get squashed. Or maybe bought out if they're very lucky.
Anyway, this isn't an ebike thread, but if you want an electric motorbike and can afford it, get an Energica. It's design done right. Otherwise - sit tight for 3+ years and wait for mainstream manufacturers to deliver. Whichever way it goes, they make all ebikes look really good value for money. Eeek.
(The lock-in of services/repair also applies to Mahle / ebikemotion-base ebikes too, by the way (Orbea, Ribble, Lapierre, etc). The difference is that Mahle isn't taking the complete mickey over enabling lots of new features by a flick of the switch as far as I know. But you definitely have to go to the dealer to get the individual parts of the system to talk to each other.)
What is interesting is that mainstream motorcycle manufacturers are near silent about their plans. Only BMW & Piaggio have an electric scooter - all the other brands have nothing, not a sausage, other than sketches, prototypes, occasionally rolling testbeds. Zero should be running away with the e-business side of things, but they're going to get squashed. Or maybe bought out if they're very lucky.
Anyway, this isn't an ebike thread, but if you want an electric motorbike and can afford it, get an Energica. It's design done right. Otherwise - sit tight for 3+ years and wait for mainstream manufacturers to deliver. Whichever way it goes, they make all ebikes look really good value for money. Eeek.
(The lock-in of services/repair also applies to Mahle / ebikemotion-base ebikes too, by the way (Orbea, Ribble, Lapierre, etc). The difference is that Mahle isn't taking the complete mickey over enabling lots of new features by a flick of the switch as far as I know. But you definitely have to go to the dealer to get the individual parts of the system to talk to each other.)