“Have you ever ridden a motorcycle before?” Rick Ator of GreenMotors on Soquel Avenue asks me as he prepares to hand over his shiny red ride. Before I finish describing my very limited scootering experience, he interrupts. “Good. This one’s faster,” he says, pulling a piece of shrink wrap off the left blinker.
With the slightest twist of the wrist, the 4,000-watt electric scooter lurches forward like a bull breaking out of a hamster cage. “Go slow,” he tells me as I inch out of the parking lot for my test ride in pulsing jolts of acceleration.
“Have you ever ridden a motorcycle before?” Rick Ator of GreenMotors on Soquel Avenue asks me as he prepares to hand over his shiny red ride. Before I finish describing my very limited scootering experience, he interrupts. “Good. This one’s faster,” he says, pulling a piece of shrink wrap off the left blinker.
With the slightest twist of the wrist, the 4,000-watt electric scooter lurches forward like a bull breaking out of a hamster cage. “Go slow,” he tells me as I inch out of the parking lot for my test ride in pulsing jolts of acceleration.
Once I get the feel for the Marin EV ELI 4000, asking price $3,000, I try not to double the legal speed limit on the quiet residential streets of Eastside Santa Cruz with their white picket fences and vacationing schoolchildren on beach cruisers. Pine trees flit by overhead as shrill wind whistles through the extra-small helmet hugging my ears. Ator says the scooter isn’t safe on the highway but can reach speeds of up to 55 miles per hour. “It’s got a lot of power,” he says. Not bad for something running on a battery. I lurch back into the driveway after 15 minutes of wind-racing trial and error (it took me about five minutes to figure out how to turn off the left-hand blinker).
Green Motors shares an office with Volks Café on Soquel Avenue and Trevethan, just past the Hitching Post Motel. In the office filled with cardboard boxes and car piping, Ator says Zero Motors in Scotts Valley has green bikes that can do better than 80 miles an hour, albeit in a different price range. Their website lists motorcycles that range from $7,995 to more than $10,000.
Here at Green Motors, Ator is “in charge of purchasing, buying, selling, reaping profits,” he says, half-jokingly. He is taking a loss on this model, for which he paid close to $4,000 from Marin EV. “But it’s OK,” says Ator, who also works for Volks Cafe. “I’ve made money on other ones. You win some, you lose some. In the end hopefully you win more than you lose.”
