The BMW CE 04 electric scooter is lean, quick and runs solely on batteries. This revolutionary vehicle is priced from $20,350, but you won’t have to pay for petrol.
I’ve made the point before that a scooter can be the most premium transport of all, allowing you and your passenger to breeze past gridlocked cars and then ease your way into a parking spot right out the front of the theatre or restaurant.The BMW CE 04 electric scooter more than holds its own in traffic, going from 0-50 km/h in 2.6 seconds.
The idea has been in the works at BMW for some time, with “concepts” shown and a small production run of a model called C-Evolution to test the system . Now we have the CE 04, looking like a prop from a sci-fi movie, and with enough get-up-and-go to make it great fun, as well as quiet and clean-running.As for the name, C is for the segment, E is for electricity and 4 suggests equivalency with a 400 cc model.
The range between charges is only about 110-120 kilometres in the real world, but for urban commuting, at least, that’s enough. For us, it was just a matter of charging it on a conventional power point for a few hours every so often. Traction control and antilock braking are standard, and are lean sensitive in dynamic mode. One bugbear is that the CE 04 – the one that we had at least – can make a fairly unappealing whine during regenerative braking.There are lots of practical features, as you’d expect from this maker. There’s keyless start, a parking brake that goes on when you flick out the side-stand, and a big clear screen displaying all the necessary information, including navigation.