VOL. 50 ISSUE 27 JULY 9, 2013
Okay… a claimed 95 mph. I can
only vouch for 85 mph before I
opted to back out of it for obvious
reasons. But it's plenty fast and
it's really the torque you notice
most as it's got arm-pulling power never experienced before on
an electric bike. It's also got two
modes – Sport and Economy –
that you switch on the front of the
bike. To be fair, Kit rode the bike
P67
on the dirt, though mainly on a
jeep trail for a few miles. Although
you wouldn't want to motocross
it (there's the Zero MX for that),
the DS does just fine on the dirt.
Again, a better rear brake would
do wonders.
The suspension is better suited for the street than the dirt,
but it handled some of the rough
stuff just fine – even with a pho-
"
They've made the Zero go farther
and they've made it go faster.
They've basically given me what I
asked for. And, yes, it will smoke
the rear tire.
"
so you can use the CHAdeMO,
we're guessing it could also
stand for CHA-de-CHING! But if
you're in a hurry and you've got
almost two large in your pocket,
it's probably worth it. Or if you're
light on cash, you may be able to
charge it… ba-da-boom. Okay,
that's enough.
And the DS now goes 95 mph.
in Economy mode, but even he
will attest to the fact the bike still
has plenty of get up and go even
in its juice-saving mode.
What about the rest of the
bike? Since we've gone over
how it goes, let's talk about how
it stops. The brakes have been
upgraded to a two-piston 310mm
hydraulic disc up front and a
220mm single-piston Nissin at
the back. The front is adequate,
but the rear brake is a joke. I
thought the pads were glazed
over or something was "missin'
from the Nissin," but it turns out
they are just horrible brakes.
Even stomping on the rear brake
won't make it lock up. I didn't miss
it while riding on the street, but
it'd be nice to have a rear brake
that works for the times you might
want to take it off-road.
And we did take our test unit
tographer on the back. The rear
shock offers 7.69 inches of travel
with the front 38mm upsidedown fork giving you 7.0 inches.
Both feature adjustability. The
DS also gets uprated tires this
year – a 100/90-19 up front and
a 130/80-17 at the rear.
The new DS looks good, with
a tall, semi-off-road look to it. If it
looks tall it's because it is with a
seat height of 34.4 inches. The
bike is also hefty (thanks mainly
to the battery) with a curb weight
of 363 pounds with the smaller
battery and 395 pounds with
the bigger unit. But it doesn't
feel overly heavy when riding it
and our test unit came equipped
with the bigger power pack so it
was close to 400 pounds. For
comparison sakes, a Ninja 300
weighs 379 pounds and a Honda
XR650L tips the scale at 346
