Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/809757
FEATURE E-TOURING IN CALIFORNIA P102 them in the garage! The hookup was free, but you had to pay the same as a car or small truck to park it there. Shabby, very shab- by. Having a great breakfast at much lower cost right next door at the Driftwood Café made me feel better about that, then we spent some time riding around the gloriously scenic southern end of Lake Tahoe before head- ing south towards Sonora and the Gold Country. After a 168-mile day we stopped for the night in Sonoma at the no-frills Rodeway Inn run by the Singh family from India, and had a great meal at the Standard Pour brewery restau- rant while sampling some of their home-brewed beers and cook- ing. Well worth the visit. To recharge the Zero that night, I plugged it into the socket in my motel room and ran the ex- tension lead Zero had provided me with through the window to the bike outside. Obviously for security reasons you can only do this while you're in the room, but next morning the 24% charge remaining had been transposed into a full "tank" by the time we left after another great breakfast at Sonora Joe's just around the corner. We covered the next 80 miles into the Sierra Nevada at what I'll term sporting pace along the winding Highway 120, another great biking road that in- vited exploiting the Zero's beauti- fully mapped digital throttle that delivers thrilling performance in a liquid-smooth manner. Yet once again I was impressed at how responsive the 2016 Zero was with the reduced inertia in its new motor delivering great roll-on acceleration from 50 mph upwards to license-losing levels. And on the downgrade into Yo- semite I saw the charge reading rise again, this time from 25% to 34% right in front of me, and with 19% charge remaining as we rode into Half Dome Village after covering exactly 80 miles, it would be reasonable to expect the dash's claimed 33 miles of remaining range to be attainable, giving an overall range of 113 miles from a single charge at a good pace, but including the last 12 miles at the State Park's 40 mph limit. Hooking up for a free recharge at one of the Park's surprisingly few EV recharging points restored that to 100% in an hour and a half. After a day spent taking in Yo- semite's majestic scenery it was time to head back to the Pacific Coast, and after a last cursory ride around the Valley floor we headed downhill through sce- nic Bear Valley then on to the gradually descending and mostly straight road leading to Merced, 90 miles away, and one of the main cities in the huge Califor- nian market garden that is the San Joaquin Valley. There, I was invited to hook up by the large Merced Toyota dealership that "The closest thing to free travel you're ever going to get, at least in the USA." Cathcart heads to Sonoma on the Zero DSR after an overnight stop in Lake Tahoe.