It’s only been a week since Yamaha introduced the NEO’s electric scooter in the European market, but Yamaha is already thinking ten steps ahead. On March 17, 2022, Yamaha officially introduced the E01 electric scooter. As you may recall, it was first introduced as a concept a few years back—and it was also present on the stage at Yamaha’s Switch On event in Europe at the beginning of March.
During that earlier European event, Yamaha Motor Europe mentioned that the E01 would launch later in 2022 for test outings in several key urban markets. That’s why it concentrated on details about its new e-bike lineup, as well as getting everyone excited about the impending introduction of the electric NEO’s scooter in Europe.
To be clear, the Yamaha E01 won’t be a production scooter that anyone can buy just yet. Instead, Yamaha will launch the E01 in Japan, Europe, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia as a demonstration test model, beginning in July, 2022. Unlike the NEO’s, the E01 will feature a fixed vehicle battery of Yamaha’s own devising. It was not developed as part of the swappable battery consortium that Yamaha joined with Honda, KTM, and Piaggio in late 2021.
The Yamaha E01 is an 8.1kW (about 11 horsepower) electric scooter with 30 newton-meters (about 22.13 pound-feet) of torque. It also has a claimed range of about 104 kilometers (64.6 miles) on a single charge. It will be chargeable via three different charging systems: a quick charger, a normal charger, and a portable charger. The portable charger will be supplied with each E01.
According to Team Blue, the quick charger will be able to go from zero to 90 percent of full charge in about an hour. This unit can be installed in offices or at motorcycle dealerships. Meanwhile, the normal charger can go from zero to 100 percent in about five hours, and will be aimed at home users. The portable charger that comes with each E01 tucks neatly under the seat—but it takes 14 hours to go from zero to 100 percent. It could be handy if you’re stuck somewhere and need a little bit of a charge to get yourself to a faster charger, we guess.
Yamaha says that it took some of what it learned from developing sportbike frames and applied it to developing the frame for the E01. Careful arrangement of the components—including the fixed battery—helps to sing the familiar song that all riders know and love: Mass centralization and decreased unsprung weight are BFFs.
Gallery: Yamaha E01 Electric Scooter
Seat height is a nice, low 754 millimeters (or 29.7 inches), making it easy for many riders to hop on board. Wheelbase is 1,380 millimeters, or 54.3 inches. Weight, including the battery, is 158 kilograms—or just over 348 pounds. Like many electric scooters, it uses a belt drive. It rolls on 13-inch wheels, again like many modern scooters. Suspension consists of a telescopic front fork and a swingarm in the rear, and disc brakes stop you all around. All lighting is LED, which is honestly to be expected in 2022. The charging port is located right in the center of the front panel, under a little door that’s just between the headlights.
How does the Yamaha E01 Electric Scooter Demonstration Experiment Work?
So far, Yamaha has only released details about what’s involved in the Japanese market. From May 9 through May 22, 2022, Japanese applicants who are 20 years of age or older and are small motorcycle license holders in Japan, and who also have credit cards in their name, may apply for a limited-time lease program on any of 100 individual E01s. The monthly cost for an E01 on this lease program will be 20,000 yen, including tax—which works out to about $169 per month. The program will last for a fixed period of three months, and riders can be located anywhere in the country.
Once applications are approved, new E01 leaseholders will be able to pick up their scooters from Yamaha dealers nationwide between July 1 and July 31, 2022. About the only thing that Yamaha didn’t spell out in detail is where leaseholders can return their E01s once the demonstration period is over—but we’d bet they probably just need to go back to the same dealership a rider picked it up from in July.
Details about Yamaha’s E01 demonstration programs in markets outside of Japan have not yet been announced, but should become clear in the coming months. Will they all be lease programs arranged like this one, or will some other type of arrangements be involved? We’ll be sure to keep you updated as we know more.
