Highway 142 in Washington is the kind of road you see in car commercials and Instagram feeds. Dramatic basalt cliffs plunge into the roiling rapids of the Klickitat River, where fishermen in drift boats vie for Chinook salmon beneath views of Mount Hood.
Go anywhere you dare Zero isn’t the only company trying to push EVs out of Costco parking lots and into the great outdoors. Rivian will sell you an electric pickup truck with a slide-out camp kitchen, Polaris will sell you an electric side-by-side vehicle fit for the Utah desert, and Mercury will sell you an electric outboard boat motor for exploring backwaters. These aren’t commuter vehicles to get you to the office — they’re the toys you dream of playing with while you’re stuck there.
What no number can convey is the utter smoothness of the DSR-X. Motorcycles, even the big ones, are synonymous with vibration, but between the electric motor, belt drive, and spare-no-expense Showa suspension system, the DSR-X floats across the pavement with an effortlessness that almost makes it feel as if you’re in a video game.
But most adventure bikes, like BMW’s category-defining R1250GS, still primarily live on pavement. And you can tell from the smooth street tires on the DSR-X that it’s not trying to upend that dynamic. After hopping on the highway, it suddenly seemed as if my nonexistent gas tank had a hole in it. The DSR-X was losing about 1% of battery for every mile, which I didn’t need a napkin and pencil to translate to 100 miles of range. That did not bode well for a 100-mile trip to a place with no chargers for miles.
I made it to Hood River with 31% battery life and plugged into a level two charger as if I’d encountered a gushing garden hose in the Sahara. Making my appointment on time was important; making it back on time was not, so I pushed on. The lush scenery of the western Cascade mountains transformed to the arid cliffs and ponderosa pine of the east as I wondered how long it would take a AAA truck to reach me, or what they would even do with a dead EV. I made my appointment with time to spare, but it cost me. My battery now sat at 37%, and the nearest charger was about 40 miles away.