bailing about halfway through the
Amateur main due to complete
and total exhaustion on my part.
It's clear the Surron can com-
pete for two hours or so on a
closed course like this. I'm sure
total range will vary on produc-
tion bikes and, really, just how
fast you're going. Remember
hard enduro is notoriously slow.
That's truer when I do it. With a
full battery and a couple races
on my shoulders, I wore out
before the Storm Bee did in the
final event of the day.
As the battery drops, a life
indication on the dashboard tells
you what's going down. As we
dropped under 30 percent, I
switched modes to proactively
engage more engine regenera-
tion and/or mellow out the out-
put to conserve power. I really
don't think regeneration (engine
braking) will make a huge differ-
ence on a slow course like this.
And it probably didn't. Also, I'm
"racing." So, just seeing "Eco"
mode on the dashboard was a
little odd.
To me, all this race-test range
business translates to a trail ma-
chine range suitable for shorter
days and smaller loops from a
home base. You could probably
get the 75 miles claimed if you
went 25-30 mph on smoother
trails. But this electric machine
is still going to fall short by miles
compared to a few gallons of
gas on a basic trail bike.
Charging the bike is simple via
a 110V charger (included in the
price of the bike) that claims to
fill the battery from dead to full in
four hours or less.
Before the race I did the bare
minimum of hard enduro race
preparation (sort of on-brand for
me). I adjusted the bars/levers,
ripped around a few fields to get
the feel for the bike, swapped
the stock front tire for a Kenda
Triple and found a take-off IRC
gummy rear tire next to a friend's
trailer (thanks, Joe!). I stuck with
tubes, because mousses were
hard to find on short-notice and
just dropped the psi to danger-
ously flat-prone levels. Hard en-
duro is about traction, after all.
During my tweaking I noticed
some high-quality build features
and fasteners, and some sort
of strange ones you wouldn't
see on a Japanese or European
enduro weapon. The strangest
RIDE REVIEW I 2023 SURRON STORM BEE F
P90
