THE LAST WORD

BY DAVID BOOTH

I’ve made much of late of the fact that electric motorcycles don’t work very well for serious motorcyclists. Oh, electric scooters are most assuredly a good idea, especially if they’re built with the exchangeable batteries that Honda and others have proposed.

Ditto battery-powered motocrossers. Full-on, race-oriented bermbusters like Stark’s Varg with minimal cycle time — 20-minute motos — combined with prodigious torque and instantaneous throttle response are manna from heaven for berm-busters.

But that’s about it. Electric enduro bikes won’t work because they need to aimlessly wander the woods. Ditto race bikes — unless there’s a highpowered DC fast charger at your local track. On-road, anything batterypowered meant to be ridden further than a scooter will be severely hampered by their paltry range and slow charging. Despite what optimistic public relations mavens claim, the most you can reliably get out of a battery-powered motorcycle is about 160 kilometres, which means every hour or so of riding needs to be followed by almost as much time charging. There are literally no exceptions to this rule.