A scooter that uses no petrol, runs virtually silent and can kill you with a bolt of pure lightning... like some sort of ninja, wizard camel that comes to kill you in the dead of night... This I have to ride!
Ok I made up the lightning business but I did eventually get the chance to spend a few days riding the EVT electric scooter, and I my first impressions are good, it’s like no scooter I have ever ridden before. The first thing that got me is there is no start button or kick start. Put the key in and turn it one click to the right, nothing happens - there is no idle - but she's ready to go. Then turn the throttle and silently move off down the road. It looks just like a normal scooter, there are brakes, wheels, everything seems to be where it should be, I don't have to spend hours learning to ride it. In fact, it’s hard to tell any difference… Well the exhaust pipe is missing but not too many riders will miss that. The model tested is designed to compete within the 50cc scooter market. It produces 2kw just like most of the 50cc models but the EVT does this with zero emissions (near the rider) via a series of four sealed lead-acid batteries mounted under the seat.
The electric scooter cruises along the flats at around 55kph, and will hit 60kph+ on even the slightest downhill. When it encounters hills however things slow down a bit, again compared with other available 50cc machines it is unfortunately at the slow end of the field.
An important aspect of an electric scooter, and one of the first questions anybody asks is range i.e. how far can it go on a charge. Now of course this isn't a easy question to answer, due to all the different variables, terrain, speed, wind, weight of rider..etc..etc.. But the most important question that people should be asking is: How many miles/kilometres do I travel in a day? The answer to that question for most people on a small 50cc bike is in the range of 10-20kms a day i.e. from home to work in the morning and home from work in the evening. The EVT electric scooter will work perfectly in this situation because it can do up to 40kms on a single charge. Of course if you look like Arnold Schwarzenegger or your diet consists of large buckets of fried chicken and donuts then things may change a little.
How does the charging process work? Well, it’s all pretty easy really, pull into your garage at home, pop the seat and plug the scooter in to the wall. Next morning it’s charged. The actual quoted specs are three hours to 85 per cent and 5 hours for full charge.
This infernal beeping is warning you that you are overloading the electric motors, it happens frequently when at “full noise” or on hills and is a warning to reduce power, if you don’t pay attention to this warning you can overheat and damage the electric motor. Essentially you can’t give full throttle on hills etc… there is sound reasoning for this and wringing the throttle doesn’t actually make the bike go faster in these circumstances but it is a strange process and feels wrong after riding regular machines where more wrist = more speed. There is also that little advantage whereby it is virtually free to run… oh and if you are the sneaky type you can have a lot of fun with the silent running… just watch out for pedestrians they don’t hear you coming and tend to step out into the street as you are about to hit them.
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