A Silent Road Warrior

The electric Zero DS ZF6.5 is the only city bike you need

- Hannah Elliott

FOR 10 YEARS, California-based Zero Motorcycles Inc. has been carefully breaking into the broader bike market, offering powerful emission- free motorcycles. Its newest bike, the Zero DS ZF6.5, is the two-wheel equivalent of the much anticipated Tesla Model 3: cute, reasonably priced, and superb for day-to-day use.

This is key, because even though consumers like to believe they’re altruistic, they’re in fact not. They say they’d buy an electric vehicle (if they could afford it), but studies show they’ll resist anything inconvenient. Who wants to worry about driving miles out of the way—and sitting and waiting—to recharge?

The DS 6.5 offers 74 city miles on one charge, usually more than enough for a day’s use. It’s easily topped off; you can plug it into your garage wall like a power saw (or even a lamp), and it will be fully charged from zero in four hours. A supercharger reduces that to 90 minutes.