41 year-old software tester near Redmond, WA
Married, no children
Wife got me into riding 8 years ago; her father's a H-D veteran
Our road to EVs started with simply watching our budget to get out of college debt and vehicle loans. When it came time to replace a vehicle, hybrids seemed to be a reasonable choice for fuel economy, so we replaced two ICE cars with one hybrid and rode our ICE bikes when we could (there were no cheap EV bikes with useful range at the time).
Didn't consider the Nissan LEAF when it first came out, but circumstances changed, making it necessary to have a 2nd car again. To improve upon a hybrid, a plug-in EV seemed to be the logical choice, so after test driving the LEAF, Volt, and Mitsubishi i, we fell in love with the LEAF.
After the LEAF got me hooked on EVs, I started seriously looking into electric motorcycles that might similarly replace my ICE motorcycle. Encouraged by the claim of 100-mile highway range of the Zero S with Power Tank and after learning the convenience of charging the LEAF to full in 30-45 minutes with CHAdeMO, started saving up for the Zero with CHAdeMO adapter. Brammo's Empulse was 2nd on the list because it only had 50-60 miles of highway range and Level 2 charging, which at 3.5 hours empty to full was much slower. Then I learned that Zero's CHAdeMO compatibility was highly dependent upon the EVSE equipment supporting the lower voltage of its battery pack relative to EV car battery packs. Not being able to rely on CHAdeMO, Zero's advantage of greater range was thus defeated by it's abysmally slow 11-hour Level 1 (120V) charging speed. While that isn't much of a problem for daily commuting, having 100 miles of range tempts me into thinking it's ready for touring, but making overnight stops to charge after only 100 miles of travel kills the idea of the 200-300 mile day trips my ICE bike does comfortably.
So while I was agonizing over the decision between Zero and Brammo,
this opportunity appeared, and I finally snapped. Between reading all of the favorable posts about Brammo reliability and customer service on this forum, and reading the heroics that Terry Hershner and others have to go through to kit their bikes out with fairings and bulky external chargers, plus recent horror stories about Zero malfunctions and unhappy customers and potential customers, AND based on a surprise announcement that Brammo had just appointed
its first authorized dealer in Washington State, it became clear that it would be futile to expect this generation of electric motorcycles to be ready for touring, and made it more attractive to go with Brammo.
So thanks to Aqualung1, I am grateful to be able to experience the current generation of e-motorcycles and help promote them in an area dominated by wealthy tech employees who litter the streets with their Teslas and LEAFs, but where an e-motorcycle sighting is still a blue-moon event.
Glad to be here and thank you all for the information you're sharing to help us all learn about these exciting motorcycles! I look forward to learning and sharing with you.
--
MichaelJ