E-Rider on the road | Nigel Morris | Living the life electric

In 1999 I visited a friend in the US who like me, has ridden and owned motorcycles since he was a young man. “When are you going to come and ride my electric motorcycle?” he asked. We had always shared our passion for motorcycles and the solar and battery industry so it’s little surprise that these worlds would collide and early adopters like my friend helped pave the way.

His bike was a street based Yamaha with a simple frame welded in to accommodate some heavy VRLA lead acid batteries and married to a home brew controller and DC motor.

I took off down a long hill on my first ever electric ride, flabbergasted at the sheer possibility of this new technology. It was crude, but effective and my mind was running wild at what the future would be like riding such machines. Sadly a battery problem meant it died and it was a long and very heavy push back up the hill, but the bug had bitten me.

For the next decade I dreamt of the day when I would be able to get “all the thrills and good times without spending so much time on maintenance or creating pollution every time I went for a blast”.

To be clear, I’ve always described myself as an environmental pragmatist rather than a hardcore greenie. I always felt that aiming high and doing what is possible was a very personal choice because everyone’s circumstances are different, so I’m not about lecturing or being evangelical. However, if there’s an exciting technology story to tell about what’s possible and myths to be busted, you’ll hear an opinion or two.

In 2012 I was helping a solar business owner to exit the industry and sell his business. He had envisaged that selling electric motorcycles would be a good add on to his business but had a 2012 model Zero DS left over that he couldn’t shift. “Tell you what, if you help me to sell the business that thing is yours” he quipped. Just a few months later, having got him a sale he made good on his promise and handed me my first all electric motorcycle.

I had a hoot on that bike despite its rudimentary nature and limitations. It suited my beachside lifestyle and short commuting requirements and the electric and mechanical challenges I had to work through helped me learn some invaluable lessons. I played around quite a bit and did some light weight customising.

Then in 2013 I again got to visit the US and this time made a bee-line to Zero HQ in Santa Cruz. I was treated famously well and got to test ride their all new bikes featuring AC brushless motors, a much more refined machine that was really leading the class at the time.

I came back smitten, started an online business helping connect buyers and dealers and promoting electric motorcycling called Moto Electro. Serendipitously, I also had an unfortunate collision with an errant driver which wrecked the 2012 DS, paid out some insurance and allowed me to upgrade to a 2013 Zero DS.

By this time a tiny but enthusiastic band of around 50 owners was emerging here in Australia and we even had a home brew electric race series for a year or so. We would get together for rides, hijack powerpoints anywhere we could and really tried to just normalise riding electric.

Over the next 7 years I covered almost 50,000 kms did some fun modifications, and even did some decent touring trips on my 2013. However, I ultimately continued to battle with reliability and lack of service and support, albeit with a lot of effort and some goodwill on Zero Motorcycles’ part. The bike was off the road for more than a year before it was finally repaired.

During the years, our small but steadily growing band of owners extended our reach overseas which ended up becoming an incredibly valuable support mechanism. Collectively an amazing ability to diagnose and support each other came to life and helped many owners with issues locally and abroad.

During this time I was also lucky enough to be invited to test ride and write about a great variety of electric two wheelers here in Australia. I wrote a load of stories for theDriven which is a top ranking EV focused web site in Australia and reinvigorated Moto Electro where I now post the occasional story and facts.

One of my highlights was releasing the first ever set of data and accompanying story about electric motorcycle registrations and ownership in Australia, courtesy of a very well connected contact. This enabled industry and owners alike to finally get a sense of the size and make up of our little market. Australia is an extremely challenging market for EVs and arguably even more so for motorcycles owing to the huge distances and harsh climate, so it’s been really tough going for manufacturers.

However, we have also been fortunate because many brands have worked out that “if you can successfully launch a reliable product that survives the climate and everything that those crazy Aussies will throw it, then every other country will be easier”

In 2020, I was invited to attend the launch of the Harley Davidson Livewire along with a bunch of proper journalists. I think I was the only one who walked away utterly smitten with the bike – the majority complained about having to find places to recharge and the lack of deep rumbling noise.

For me, it was simply the highest quality electric motorcycle I’d ever seen, had game changing DC fast charging and was powerful and stylish. My only question was which child do I sell to get one.

Luckily, I managed to flip my 2013 Zero, dig into my savings and grab an ex-demo Livewire which I still own and ride today. To their credit, even with only 75 or so owners locally, Harley has looked after us well so far and my bike has barely missed a beat.

When we started on our early bikes it was low powered AC charging only – with virtually no fast charging options in our vast brown land. Doing any sort of distance required us to carry around kilograms of cables, adapters and convertors yet we made it work. Today, there are thousands of ultra fast DC chargers – hell, we even have them in some of the most remote areas on the planet powered by solar, batteries and bio fuelled back up generators.

Twenty six years ago, I dreamt for the first time about the prospect of owning an all electric motorcycle and wondered if it would ever be possible – and here I am on my third bike, with the evolution continuing on. It’s still fun but for me is just completely and utterly normal now.

There’s no doubt that the premium electric segment is really battling to find its footing and build affordable enough machines with enough range even for skeptics (power, reliability and features is done and dusted in my opinion) but I have little doubt the industry will get there, just like solar power which was in the same position years ago and is now cheap and abundant here.

Nigel Morris is the founder of Moto Electro, a member of the Solar Hall of Fame, podcaster and technology advocate in Australia.