FEATURE
E-TOURING IN CALIFORNIA
P96
kWh standard onboard char-
ger. "For most customers the
standard onboard charger is
all they'll ever need, since they
charge the bike overnight or at
work, and that's the maximum
speed charger you can safely
run off any standard 110-volt U.S.
wall outlet," said Todd Andersen,
Zero's VP of Marketing & Sales.
"But you're going touring, and
you won't want to spend all day
charging the battery, so we've
hopped things up to give you
more charging capacity with
a non-factory approved after-
market item that is promoted
and sold by our number-
one dealer in the country,
Hollywood Electrics in Los
Angeles." It was crucial to my
trip that they did this, for this
allowed me to use the same
CHAdeMO hookup as a Toyota
Prius or Nissan Leaf, which are
plentiful all over the USA. This
would allow the Zero's com-
bined 15.9 kWh battery pack to
be recharged from 5% to 95%
charge in less than two hours,
compared to almost 12 hours
from a household socket.
But it'd be nice to have com-
pany, though—and if I was going
to make an article about my
E-tour, I'd need photos. Which is
why I was accompanied on my
trip by my photographer mate
Phil Hawkins, a fellow Brit living
not far from the Zero factory in
the San Francisco Bay Area,
riding his Triumph Tiger 800XC.
This would have the added
benefit that he'd theoretically
be ready to push the Zero via a
footpeg to the nearest charging
station if I ever ran out of "gas"!
But how to find such charging
stations? That's easy, just log on
to www.plugshare.com, a global
resource which resolves the big-
gest issue you face when riding
an E-bike, namely finding some-
where to refuel it. Best of all,
this not only tells you where the
charge points are, but what type
is available, which ones are in
use and which aren't, and even if
one is broken and unusable. Plug
Share is a kind of online commu-
nity for EV vehicle owners that is
map driven—you tell them where
you are, and it lists all available
charging locations, everything
from publically available Charge-
Points, or Tesla stations nobody
else can use, to outlets behind
people's houses that they make
available to EV travelers, along
with a cup of coffee while waiting.
Yes, really—so strong is the grow-
ing American EV community that
complete strangers will let you
hook up to their home charging
points to get you out of trouble.
(Top) One of Cathcart's stops
on his 900-mile journey was one
of the most famous restaurants
in California—Alice's Restaurant.
