BMW CE 04 electric scooter review

Scooters are, as we all know, a lot like cocktails with little wooden umbrellas in them. It’s okay to
engage with them while on holiday in Asia, or even Greece, but you wouldn’t be seen dead near
one in your own neighbourhood.

Okay, that’s probably inherently sexist and an attitude that would have been more woke in 1990, if
I’d known what “woke” was then, but to be fair, a male friend of mine saw on Instagram that I’d
been riding the new BMW CE 04 electric step-through, messaged to say he thought it looked cool
and then excitedly followed up with “so, does this mean it’s actually okay for man to ride a scooter
now?”

To which I felt compelled to reply: “No”. And: “Never”.

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The problem is that I used to be an actual motorcyclist and as such, while I find scooters
entertaining, in the same way that I find YouTube distracting, I can’t ever take one seriously. It’s the
seating position, which, let’s face it, makes it look like you’re sitting in a church pew and reaching
out to hold your hymn sheet.

This also means that you can’t corner a bike like the CE 04 properly, or at least not engagingly,
although I will admit I did enjoy its balance, its low centre of gravity (heavy batteries tucked under your
feet help with that) and how easy it was to countersteer around obstacles, like the blocks of ice
that littered Melbourne’s roads on the typically arctic and awful day that BMW chose to launch it to
the local press.

What made the experience almost bearable, despite biblical rain and wicked winds, was the fact
that the fairing, and the silly upright seating position, actually keep your legs out of the weather
and, far more importantly, it has heated hand grips and a heated seat.

It could be argued that these are the greatest invention since anaesthetic or contraceptives
(although riding in Melbourne would make you infertile anyway, due to your testicles becoming
frozen peas), but it’s genuinely hard to express how wonderful they are. I got on the CE 04 at one
stage after it had been raining and the seat was so hot that it boiled the water away and left my
butt bone dry, and slightly cooked.

The heated grips are so warm that you can’t ride with them on their maximum setting for too long
or your gloves will catch fire. Mmm, toasty.

Being a BMW, this electric scooter also has lots of functionality I would never use, as I am old
fashioned about keeping my eyes on the road while riding. There’s a big, shiny 10.25-inch screen
through which you can connect your phone and use sat-nav, and, hilariously, there’s even a
reverse gear.

Normally only found on huge machines like the Honda Goldwing, this seems as necessary as
putting in steps so you can climb into bed at night, but I guess 231kg is quite heavy for a scooter,
and perhaps the kind of people who buy them have genetically limper wrists.

Perhaps the BMW’s biggest advantage over every other scooter in history, however, is that it is
electric, and as such it does not make horrible noises. If the world’s step-through motorcycles went
electric overnight, people from Vietnam to Italy via Thailand and India would find their nerves less
jangled and their ears happier.

While electric motorcycles are, so far, a difficult sell – because noise is so much a part of their
appeal, as is the joy of changing gears, and vibration in general – an electric scooter makes perfect
sense, indeed it makes the world a better place.

In the case of the CE 04, it’s also better to ride, because the permanent magnet liquid-cooled
synchronous electric powertrain, using batteries lifted directly from BMW’s electric Mini and the
iX3, mean it has serious punch, at least off the line and in the city-friendly 40-80km/h range.
BMW says it will hit 50km/h in 2.6 seconds, and yes, that is an interesting number to quote. It also
claimed not to know how long it would take to get to 100km/h, but admitted that acceleration does
tail away somewhat over 80km/h.

I did get to 100km/h once, but the ice falling from Melbourne’s dreary sky started to feel like bullets so I
had to slow down.

A machine that makes just 31kW and 62Nm is never going to tear your arms off, but the fact is that
off the line it will get you far enough away from other vehicles, fast enough, that you’ll feel slightly
less worried about the safety concern you might have around no one being able to hear you
coming.

The CE 04 can be plugged into the wall socket in your living room, should you so desire, and will
take 4.5 hours to get from 20 to 80 percent, or 5.5 hours from 20 to 100 percent. Or you could
install a BMW fast charger for $1300 and get the 20 to 100 percent time down to just over an hour. Unsurprisingly there’s no DC (faster) charging for the CE 04.

Either way, with a claimed range of 130km, BMW says you’ll be treating the bike the way you
would your mobile phone and recharging it every couple of days, or more often, depending on your
commute.

Our bike showed 119km of range from a 99 percent charge when we got on, and 65km of riding
later it was showing an estimated 55km to empty.

It also has different riding modes, including a Performance one that seems a bit optimistic and one
for Rain, which means you’re less likely to fly off the road under hard acceleration if you live in
Melbourne.

You can have a CE 04 for just under $22K in Australia and according to the people selling them,
many buyers think that’s a bargain, and have wept openly when discovering that it’s not even more
expensive (because EVs tend not to be the cheapest vehicles on the road…).

The good news is that the very design-led flat seat you see in the pictures is optional – and only
bought by sadists, because it’s even less comfortable than it looks – and the other versions are far
more comfortable.

Whether you can be comfortable with yourself when riding a scooter like this is a question for you,
but the BMW CE 04 is, for now at least, one of the cheapest electric vehicles your money can buy. As long as you don’t want a roof and doors.

BMW CE 04 specifications

Price: From $21,960 ride-away

Basics: EV scooter, RWD

Range: 130km (claimed), 120km (real world)

Battery capacity: 8.5kWh (usable)

Battery warranty: 3 years, unlimited km

Energy consumption: 7.7kWh/100km

Motors: 1 rear, 31kW/62Nm

AC charging: 6.9kW, Type 2 plug

DC charging: NA

0-50km/h: 2.6 seconds

Top speed: 120km/h