TAKING charge

Electric two-wheelers have been the coming thing for the past decade, but love them or hate them – and there are plenty of people on both sides of that particular fence – they’re set to become an ever-increasing fact of life in coming years. Almost inevitably it’s BMW Motorrad which has recently introduced a volume production E-model, with the debut of its 2022 CE 04 midsize scooter.

It’s being built alongside the company’s internal combustion engine (ICE) models at its Spandau factory in Berlin, in a special 800m² annexe in which assembly line workers are specially trained in the skills required to assemble such a high-voltage vehicle.

It’s now on sale in 38 countries worldwide, and here in Australia at a ride-away price of $21,915, which is more than double the firm’s own conventional $10,296 C 400 X scooter.

I say inevitably because in 2021 BMW’s passenger car division sold 328,316 electric vehicles, a 70.4 per cent increase over 2020, which represents 13 per cent of its overall production, with EVs accounting for over 23 per cent of sales in Europe. Those figures do not include the C-Evolution E-scooter that BMW had been building since 2014 as a pilot project, 8000 examples of which found customers before production was terminated in 2020, and its Spandau assembly line turned over to the CE 04.

So BMW is at the leading edge of electromobility, and according to its CEO Dr. Markus Schramm, will no longer produce any new combustion engined models for its Urban Mobility segment catering