Scooter Review

EVT 4000e

We know all about twist and go, but is the scooter world ready for plug and play?

Words by JEREMY BOWDLER, photography by LOU MARTIN

Okay, so I am officially freaked out now. I’m sitting aboard a scooter. I’ve turned the key, the dash lit up, made a few beeps and now ... nothing. No noise, no idle, no vibes. Nothing.

I twist the wrist and away we go. Silently, smoothly and ... slowly. To be fair, I just chucked that in because it started with an s; in reality, at least from rest, the EVT is quicker than most 50s. There’s a reason for that, but first let’s tackle the silent and smooth bits. If you haven’t guessed by now, the EVT is an electric scooter, the first road-registered practical mains-powered scooter on the Australian market.

The bike is silent because electric motors make very little noise, and most of it is generated by the rubber on the pavement. The bike is smooth because there are no reciprocating engine parts jumping up and down or side to side at up to 7000 times a minute. There is simply an armature, a sleeve built into the wheel hub and an electric current. The only moving parts are the wheels.

So all of those usual scooter things like fuel tanks, oil tanks, gearboxes, alternators, CVT transmissions and exhaust pipes are things of the past as far as the e4000 is concerned. Of course the space they liberate has been taken up by batteries, and heavy batteries at that, so that the EVT is, at 127kg, very heavy for what is classed by road authorities as a 50cc-type scooter and, while there is room under the seat for a shorty helmet at a squeeze, storage is limited. This is compounded by the chunky nature of the charging transformer. It fits beneath the seat easily, but if you are planning to ride anywhere and then charge up the scooter, then that pretty much accounts for the underseat storage. The EVT on test had an accessory topbox, which would be a handy addition.

As mentioned before, riding the EVT forces you to rethink your experiences. It is really eerie to sit at the lights on a totally still scooter. I kept thinking I’d stalled and reaching for the starter button. Only it doesn’t exist. Once the ignition key is turned, the scooter is on. The right-hand bar has a kill switch and an Economy/Power toggle switch, while the left carries the normal high/low beam, horn and indicator switches. There is a speedo and a series of lights that indicate fuel gauge. Once the yellow warning light comes on, you have between five and eight kilometres of riding left.

According to the distributors, the average range from fully charged to wandering around looking for a powerpoint is 50km – so it’d last for a week of Monday to Friday riding for me. Then it’s simply a matter of plugging it in overnight and I’d be ready to face another week of the commuter grind. The four batteries are rated for 300-500 full discharge cycles or about two years, though this can be extended by recharging the batteries before they get fully flat. Maintenance costs should be very low, since there are so few moving parts. Just keep the tyres pumped up and you should have no other dramas.

Once I got my head around the silence and smoothness, riding the e4000 was little different from riding any other massproduced Taiwan-basic scooter. This is hardly surprising since the chassis and body are pretty much par for the course for a cheap 50. There’s even a hole (and cover) where the fuel tank would normally be. Of course, there is a swingarm set-up in place of the more usual ‘engine as swingarm’. I did, however, notice the weight which, at about 45kg more than usual, meant that the suspension worked harder. The back end was okay since most of the weight is at the back and the difference between sprung (the scooter) and unsprung (the wheel) weight allowed the rear suspension to do a reasonable job (even if the rear wheel is far heavier than a normal scooter’s). The front struggled a bit, sending the odd jarring shock through the ’bars over speedhumps and potholes, something not helped by the 10-inch rims and narrowish rubber. The brakes, on the other hand, were excellent: discs at each end and calipers that provided sure-footed stopping every time.

The performance of the scooter is more suited to congested areas or short local trips, but it is here that one of the benefits of an electric engine comes into play. Electric engines develop instant torque, which is the opposite of petrol engines, and this means the e4000 is pretty zippy from a standstill, something that should never be underestimated in traffic. In Power mode, the most I could extract from the e4000 was a bare 50km/h and my extra special hill-climb test saw the EVT struggling up at 25km/h, much to the dismay of the tradey behind me...

In economy, top speed was knocked back to about 40-45km/h, so it was position P for me. I hasten to add, though, that the speeds are affected by rider weight and, at 95kg, I’m in the upper echelon of scooterists. The svelte among you might be pleasantly surprised.

It’d be short-changing the e4000 by writing it off as a slow, heavy, utilitarian scooter with a higher than average pricetag, given what it is trying to achieve. As the first realistic electric scooter it’s a valiant first step and offers running costs of about 0.4c/km according to the importers. It suffers from having to use lead acid batteries, which are very heavy and hard to dispose of. There will surely be a move to nickel-metal hydride power, which will cut weight, boost performance and present less of an environmental hazard. At present, though, it is more a scooter for those with limited usage requirements and for those who are committed to a greener world. You will have to balance your scooter’s zero emissions against the need to burn fossil fuels to generate electricity and the disposal question of the batteries, but there seems to be no reason why, when better battery technology comes on stream, you shouldn’t be able to merely replace the batteries without replacing the scooter.

If you’re concerned for the environment and don’t have far to go, then it’s just become easier to be green.

As published in TW SCOOTER MAGAZINE - 21/03/2006
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