LMAO! He rides it like he's bowlegged, which can't be good for wind resistance (or comfort should he need to punch the brakes and keep himself from slamming forward), and then when he "leans" into a corner with what looks like a whopping 20 degree lean angle (that's 20 degrees from vertical, not 20 degrees from the road), the leg comes out and he leans his body as if it's straining the limits of physics.
Ummm... Where did he learn to "ride"?
He's hanging off, like superbike racers (and some wanna-be racers) do.
Well, yes, I knew what he thought he was doing. But, at those lean angles? They lean off because they are reaching the edge of their tires and possibly on a street bike because you are reaching the point where you will start dragging hardware. The bike can't lean any more, but you can move over and shift the CoG without leaning the bike past its limit.
But him? Why was he doing it? Cuz it lookz kewl? Overall, everything he was doing was just sloppy riding with a hint of "whee, look at me, I'm a hot shot racer dude!"
Guess he was worried about those "$3 Chinese tires". On my DS, those Deli-Tires have held at more severe lean angles than what he was doing.
Even the cheapest tires can hold a lean angle way past what he was showing. And if they are reaching their limit, then hanging off doesn't reduce the G forces, it just changes where the contact patch delivers them from, so again, sloppy riding.
I've never felt the need to hang off. Then again, I've never owned a sportbike, so hanging off is not something I do automatically.
Neither have I, though in a Dual Sport clinic the instructor once made the case for reverse leaning (at low speeds having to do with using the camber of the tire to turn a tighter corner than it would if it was in line with your body). We tried it as part of the exercise. It was an interesting effect, but not something I bother with in practice (though I did use the technique to help scrub some brand new tires a couple of weeks ago - ride on a part of the tire that wouldn't normally be scuffed at lower G forces than it would normally take to scuff them).
Also, the knee going out has more to do with feeling for the angle of the road than weight transfer. The weight of the leg isn't going to change the CoG angle much, but riding the puck around the apex gives a really accurate feel for just how near the limit you are getting. But, again, that only works if you are, ahem, close enough to the road for your knee to actually reach it.
I gotta say, though, that I kinda like that Piaggio scooter 
May have to talk the g/f into one 
It looks like a great ride. I was also a little annoyed with how they dramatized the scooter passing him - mainly because he wasn't riding the Zero very hard in the first place <face palm>. I have a friend with an old beater scooter that she bought off her daughter that died its last gasp. I'll have to point her in the direction of the Piaggios.
The funniest thing for me is that he intentionally drains the battery and then gets pissed that it strands him on the side of an interstate. Which only tells me that the real shocking truth about electric motorcyces is that they do not necessarily make their riders any smarter
My impression was not that he was pissed that it ran out of power, but that he was being melodramatic about the experience of "suddenly losing power" on the highway. Seriously? That happened to me on my test ride and I actually wrote on the comment form that it was a very positive experience since I was very pleased by how benign and well communicated its gradual loss of power was. It was as if a butler came along and told me "Excuse me sir, but we should gradually make our way over to an exit some time in the next few miles, if it is not too properly inconvenient, and our apologies for any inconvenience".
But, for him, "I don't want to talk right now, I'm really scared [gulps]". Really? Scared speechless? Over the gradual loss of power over the course of several miles? All I can say is "Yay!"...
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Topic: Wired Magazine Reviews the Zero DS (Read 3254 times)