Electric motorcycles have arrived and they're here to stay: beside Vectrix, that is almost a veteran in the market, we had not had any news until last spring, when the market started to move again. Then came the new Quantya, followed by the Zero we tested last month, both of them "motorcycles" that, when limited and equipped with lights and license plate, may be driven without a driving license, but that are really closer to enduro motorcycles, with engines able to make us have fun and move much better than electric bicycles (which are themselves another boom currently, by the way...) As I mentioned during the test of the Zero, a technology has long existed that is perfectly suitable to offer a motorcycle or scooter with power comparable to that of a 125 cc gas scooter (15 hp) and a range more than enough for the daily commuting of a normal person (50 km or more). But traditional manufacturers have not dared to give the step, so it is in the hands of local manufacturers with inventor spirit to launch something new every now and then into the market. Until now: in China they are thirsty of new markets, and they have noticed this niche, and the demand that is starting to exist for these products. This demand is being politically generated, either directly (in the form of vehicles for police corps or other official services) or indirectly (by offering "enviromental" plans of transportation, that make headlines in the newspapers and are give a good image...), but it is a real demand, and when a demand exists, the offer appears immediately. The Chinese market, as it is well known, has numerous manufacturers that copy designs from each other, and the result is that there is a handful of models almost identical when seen from outside, but that may be quite different inside, depending on the experience and quality demanded by each manufacturer. Based upon these "base" models there are some electric scooters that are arriving to our market that, at least reportedly, offer performances that are more than enough for the common use of most people that have a 125cc scooter. We contacted the people at Kyoto Motor to have a close look at one of these models, and it turned out to be a pleasant surprise, not only to test it, but also to discover that behind this young brand, there are people not just willing to succeed, but also with technical knowledge about what they have in their hands. For more about technicalities I refer you to the box....

THE FUTURE...TODAY

SOMETHING ABOUT TECHNICALITIES I'll never get tired of repeating it: the great advantage of the electric engine is its mechanical simplicity. A scooter (or motorcycle, or car) that is 100% electric is not more complicated than a child motorcycle or a remote control car, that is, it suffices to have a battery, a controller, and a simple motor. We don't need a clutch, or gear of any type, and there's no need for auxiliary systems (cooling, ignition, fuel pump, exhaust). The performance is not a problem either, because there are electric motors as powerful as we want to take. They only have a problem: the range, that is, how to store the electric energy that we will consume. The traditional lead-acid batteries are no good, because apart from being too heavy (they contain lead) they don't have great discharge capacity (supplied power) and they demand slow charges. NiMH batteries already have an interesting energy density (not much weigh for the energy they store) and allow fast charges and discharges, but it's been the arrival of the batteries that use lithium as electron-donor metal what has revolutionized the battery industry: lithium is a light and very active metal, that enables to make compact, light and very energetic batteries. The first generations of these batteries had, in fact, a problem with that, because their electrolytes might become unstable in some limit conditions and cause fires and explosions. First, a better management, and later, advances in the composition used, changed this radically, and right now there are batteries based on lithium (all of them are "lithium ion" because they all use ions of lithium...) perfectly safe for home or transport use. Back in China, people there quickly realized the potential of batteries as a future "key" energy element, and a likely substitute for petrol, and many patents and scientific articles related to this topic have been Chinese for a long time now. And Chinese is also the factory that currently offers the batteries best suited for their use in motorcycles and cars: Thunder Sky, from where come the cells that make up the battery of Kyoto Edison and of most of the interesting electric vehicles that are appearing around the world. They are lithium batteries with an iron phosphate chemistry, the newest (and safest and of highest performance) of the market; the individual cells have prismatic shape (better exploitable than cilindrical ones) and those used in these applications are 40, 60 o 90 Ah, able to supply great amounts of current (power) and of charging in very few hours, even recovering a high percentage of their charge in only one hour. As to motors, just as Quantya and Zero use brushed motors (sized to this application), the next step are triphasic motors, that don't need brushes, with less losses because of drag and totally maintenance-free, although they demand more complicated control electronics (but affordable and perfectly known, since all this is technology of the last century).

EDISON 2009

A very appropriate name for an electric scooter, that of the famous American inventor: Kyoto Motor brought us a unit of its star model that, to be honest, was not a definitive version, and had been subject to many tests and disassemblies, and was far from its best shape regarding finishing details. Despite this, the general look is quite correct, in colloquial terms, better than the average of "Chinese scooters", and we liked specially the robustness of its chassis and suspension and the good performance of its brakes, because so many times we've had to complain about that in other similar models coming from the far East. The rear suspension, by the way, is a proper swing arm, since here you can't find the traditional propeller group whose housing acts as a body-on-frame element: the motor is a triphasic one of high torque and sizeable diameter, and it is located directly into the rear axle. Transmision is direct, which is exactly one of the great advantages of electric motorcycles, and which implies something obvious but worth to remind: there's almost no need for maintenance (revisions, oil changes, etc.) When lifting the seat, we discover a good trunk, wide but shallow (we will be able to close the seat with a jet helmet, but not with an integral one). If we disassemble the bottom of the seat (four screws) and lift it, we will see the "guts" of the scooter: the battery, that is the largest in this version of the model, composed of 21 cells of 60Ah (adding up to almost 70 V of supply and 4kWh of available energy), the box for the speed controller with its dissipation fins to radiate the heat and... well, and that's all. The charging inlet is inside the central bridge, and the motorcycle comes with an external charger that we may plug into any normal socket (220V) from where it will take around 1kW of power (like a heater or microwave oven) to charge the battery, taking five hours if it is completely discharged (you'll never get to that point).