Vectrix Maxi Scooter Brings a Charge to Two-Wheeling

Vectrix Maxi Scooter Brings a Charge to Two-Wheeling

There’s a new bike in town, a battery-powered electric scooter capable of jarring your socks off with its blistering acceleration while enabling you to cruise merrily past every gas station you see.

It’s the Vectrix Maxi Scooter, (www.vectrix.com) a green alternative for anyone who loves the freedom of two-wheeled motoring, isn’t shackled to a lengthy commute and has a budget big enough to handle a hefty $11,000 pricetag.

That’s a lot—as much as twice the price of a regular scooter—but Vectrix owner Paul Scott says he expects to recoup some of the difference from savings on fuel and engine maintenance.

Charging the Vectrix, accomplished by plugging the scooter’s 3-pronged electric cord into any conventional 110-volt outlet, takes 3 hours (2 hours to bring a drained battery up to an 80% charge) and costs only pennies, says Santa Monica resident Scott, a longtime electric vehicle and plug-in hybrid activist. 

Engine maintenance, as with any vehicle sporting an electric motor instead of an internal combustion engine, is virtually non-existent.  No oil changes, no filters, no spark plugs, no piston rings or valves to foul.

Rhode Island-based Vectrix Corp., (www.vectrix.com) claims that the scooter’s 125-volt nickel metal hydride battery pack is good for at least 10 years.

And Scott says that the bike’s regenerative braking system, which helps recharge the batteries, also slows the Vectrix so well that the real brakes—Brembo discs front and rear—barley need be applied in most cases. They might well last the life of the bike.

Indeed, on a short test ride, rolling the throttle backwards past the normal stop position not only slowed the electric scooter quickly, it put it into reverse once it was at full stop.  Having a powered reverse makes it easy to maneuver the 462-pound Vectrix into and out of tight parking spots, especially on downhill sloping streets.

There’s also the psychic savings, Scott says, of having fun while riding a machine that has no tailpipe emissions, consumes no petroleum-based fuel and is virtually noiseless—something the neighbors no doubt appreciate.

Still, the Vectrix isn’t for everyone, no matter how environmentally sensitive you might like to be.

The big issues are the price tag and the relatively short range, which knocks it out of contention as a fair weather commuter vehicle for the masses.

Vectrix Corp. claims the scooter will cover 68 miles on a single charge—but only at a steady 25 mph.

Scott says 40 to 50 miles is doable at more realistic pace that mixes a variety of surface street and highway speeds with a likely top range of 25 miles when running flat out at its electronically limited top speed of 62 mph.

Paul Scott astride his electric maxi-scooter

Its ideal use, of course, isn’t for high-speed highway cruising but for short trips to the mall, to school, to visit a local eatery or for commuting when you live and work in the same town.

Vectrix, which builds the scooters at a plant in Poland, says it expects its major markets to be in Europe, particularly traffic-choked cities such as London and Rome where scooters and small motorcycles already are the preferred mode of transportation for many.

The company—which is in the midst of a quiet period imposed by the London AIM Stock exchange and thus isn’t able to say much about sales—does say that it expects California to be its biggest U.S. market.

So far, it has only one dealership in the state, British Motor Car Distributors (www.bmcd.com) in San Francisco. The company also is opening a business office in Santa Monica to serve the Western U.S. market,  said Jim Plangenhoef, Vectrix’ North American sales director. 

The company’s other U.S. dealerships to date are located in Newport, Rhode Island; Salt Lake City; Austin, Texas; Portland, Oregon, and Kirkland, Washington.

Prospective customers who don’t live near a dealership can call the company’s headquarters or the closest dealership, Plangenhoef said, and Vectrix will set up an appointment to bring one of its scooters to them.

Oh, about that acceleration: zero to 30 mph in 3.6 seconds, zero to 50 mph in 6.8.

Who says green  can’t be fun?

John O'Dell, Senior Editor, Green Car Advisor.
 

John O'Dell:  is an AutoObserver Senior Editor. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter.