Keeway EZI Hypevolt-R review - Is it worth the Rs 2 lakh price tag? | First Ride | Autocar India

0:02 Now, this right here is called the HiP 120R. It's from Keeway, but as you can see, there's no Keeway branding around. What we have here is EZI, which is easy or Keeway's sub-brand for electric vehicles. And what they have done is brought down their first electric scooter to the Indian market. And we've got to ride this for around 5 to 6 days to bring you a detailed review. >> >> This is a sporty premium electric scooter. And as you can see in terms of design, it's very unique and quirky.

0:41 There's nothing like it in the market currently. On the side, it gets these arrow-shaped panels over here. In the front, you get a motorcycle-style handlebar, and you get these transparent brake oil reservoirs. Additionally, as you can see, this rides on 14-in alloy wheels. It gets disc brakes at both ends. And dual-channel ABS as well. Additionally, this gets a really cool-looking LED DRL setup at the front and really powerful projector headlamps as well. And then when we talk about storage, this gets 27 L of storage under the seat. The storage also slightly extends inside, so you have place to put slightly longer items as well. And in front, you get two small storage compartments over here, and the right one also gives you a type-A and a type-C USB charging port. Overall, the build quality is quite premium, and it's a nice scooter to look at. There are not many panel gaps visible all around, which is a nice thing to see. And particularly, what impressed me is the quality of switchgear. Now, the only thing I feel that does look a bit basic on such a premium scooter is the suspension. It just looks like there could have been a little more premium elements over there. And additionally, there are some cables over here on the handlebar, which are exposed. But I guess there's not much you can do about that. It didn't bother me much, but it might bother some people.

1:56 >> >> In terms of ergonomics, this has a seat height of around 770 mm, but as you can see because of its broad proportions, I am not able to flat foot on the ground. I'm in fact tip-toeing on the ground. But what I like is that the floorboard over here on both sides, you have the option of either keeping your legs like this, like a conventional scooter, or slightly in a more relaxed manner by keeping them up. But the only thing I feel is like when you try to completely relax your legs and move slightly towards the rear of the seat, I feel like then there is a slight reach to the handlebar. it's not bad at all, but I would have personally preferred it if the handlebar was slightly higher up and slightly wider as well. Apart from that, in terms of seat comfort, it's really nice. I did a entire day of riding this for around 70 km and I did not face any soreness. The ground clearance of the scooter stands at 130 mm, which is a bit on the lower side. Now, in my 6 days spent with the scooter, I didn't really have any issues with the ground clearance. There was just this one instance where there was a nasty speed breaker. It wasn't constructed well, and I landed up scraping the floorboard of the scooter over there. But apart from that, there were no real issues.

3:06 Now, this gets two removable battery packs, which have a total capacity of 5.04 kWh, and it has a centrally mounted motor, and it has a belt drive system. Now, the performance of the scooter is actually pretty quick. It has a continuous power output of 6 kW and a peak power output of 12 kW. Now, there are three riding modes on the scooter, eco, normal, and sport, and all of them alter the accelerator response as well as the top speed. So, in eco mode, it limits the top speed at 45 km/h. In normal mode, it limits the top speed to around 81 km/h, and in sport mode, you have all the power and it can go up to 115 km/h. Now, eco mode is actually usable. It's It's usable in the city.

3:51 It's not like some very slow speed electric scooter that's unusable. Eco mode is usable, but I would say for more like your narrow backroads. And I preferred being in normal mode most of my time because it is more convenient to make those zippier and quicker overtakes in that mode. And you have that slightly higher top speed, so you can even make those overtakes when you're at 45 to 50 km/h. Additionally, when you're in normal mode, the accelerator response is really nice. It's not intimidating despite the scooter being fast. So, it is gradual and smooth up until around 30 km/h, after which it has a sudden surge and starts going much faster. Now, in our performance test, we tested this scooter in sport mode and it achieved the 0 to 80 km/h sprint in 7.49 seconds and it took 13.05 seconds to get to 100 km/h. Now, that makes it quicker than its closest competitor in terms of pricing, the Ather Apex. And in fact, this is marginally even quicker than the BMW CE 02.

4:51 In terms of riding range, the company claims an IDC estimated range of 180 km. And we also put this to the test for a total of 2 days. We rode the scooter around the city and we did the test in normal mode. And we were able to achieve a total riding range of 125 km, which I would say is not bad considering the performance that this offers in normal mode. If you ride the scooter in only eco mode, you should be able to get an even higher range of maybe 140 to 150 km.

5:24 This has telescopic forks up front and twin shock absorbers at the rear. Now, the suspension setup is not the plushest. It's more of like a sporty scooter would be set up, so it's slightly on the stiffer side. And what I did notice is that it handles open and well-paved roads quite well, but when you hit sharp potholes or bumps at higher speeds, the rebound is a bit quick, so it did throw me up a couple of times, but that is only when I was trying to go slightly quicker through really bad potholes or sharp speed breakers.

5:58 The 14-in wheels are wrapped in Yosung tires, which is a Chinese tire brand, and they were pretty good in the city even it despite it being wet. There were no real slippery moments anywhere. They offered pretty good grip even when you are cornering the scooter. They are nice and they offered plenty of grip. >> >> In terms of handling, as you can see this has a very long wheelbase, so it's not the sharpest scooter to flick around in traffic or through a corner, but it does it in a more gradual way. So, it tips into a corner slightly more gradually and slowly, but once it is in the corner, it is extremely stable. And even when you are at higher speeds of 80-90 km/h, this scooter feels pretty stable and sorted.

6:41 >> The braking performance is adequate at city speeds. Although the rear ABS intervenes rather quickly when braking hard from higher speeds. Like most modern EV scooters, this one comes with an extensive list of features. You get a TFT display, multiple riding modes, a tire pressure monitoring system, and traction control. There are also optional features such as geo-fencing and live location tracking. But a standout and segment first feature is the blind spot detection system, which uses warning indicators integrated into the mirrors.

7:12 >> Now, while this is an extensive feature list, there is a bit of a catch. Now, the TFT screen, it's a color TFT screen, and it looks decent, but there is some information that is very necessary on a EV that it misses out on having on the screen. Like for example, you don't have a distance to empty meter on the screen. You just have your two battery percentages on both the sides. And all of the other features like your traction control and your regen braking, the level of regen braking has to be controlled from your phone. So, you have to connect your phone to this display, and then set your parameters accordingly. And that can be quite a tedious process. And as I mentioned earlier, I actually really do like the quality of Switch Gear, so I would have preferred it if they gave me a joystick over here that I could control the screen with and get into the menus and set the features according to my liking.

8:02 Now, there are two things that you can control from the handlebar switches and not use your phone for. And that is the switch gear on the left-hand side, which is a one-way switch that allows both the function. So, if you press it in the front, you get your cruise control function, and it's a one-touch activation. So, if you are, let's say, at 45 km/h, you press it on, it will lock at 45, and all you need to do to exit the cruise control is apply the brakes. So, that works pretty well. Next up, you have the reverse mode, which I actually don't really like on any other scooter, but on this it is very usable because you don't really have to enter a reverse menu and enter that mode and then reverse your scooter and then exit that mode and then go forward. All you need to do is continuously press the reverse button.

8:42 And this also has a camera at the rear. And that also opens out the camera onto the screen as soon as you press the reverse button to give you that assistance in case you don't really want to look behind and reverse. It has a few traction control modes as well, and I spent most of my time in the standard mode. What I felt is even in the standard mode, if you hit a really bad pothole, it cuts power, and I feel like the power could have got back on slightly earlier. It takes maybe half a second longer to get back onto the power. So, the traction control is not the most seamless. Next, you also have an option which is called brake power off. Now, what that essentially does is we've tested some earlier low-speed electric scooters that basically cut power as soon as you apply the brakes.

9:26 Now, you can also opt to get that on this scooter, and I did try it out in that mode. It's not as bad as the earlier Chinese low-speed EV scooters that I've tested because it gradually cuts off power and gradually gets back on the power. So, it's it's it's okay, but personally, I prefer to keep that off and ride the scooter as is. Now, charging is a pretty straightforward process. What you need to do is either plug in your charger from here and charge both the batteries together or open the battery compartment, disconnect your battery, and you can take this home and charge it. But, now there are two challenges with that. What I first face is that this is quite a heavy unit. Each of these batteries, there are two batteries and each of them weighs over 17 kilos.

10:21 That's quite heavy. So, if you are going to have to take it up the stairs, that's going to be an issue. And next up, what I want to talk about is that once you plug in this charger, this is the 10-amp charger that's provided as standard with the scooter. You also are going to have a 20-amp option, but we don't have the prices for that, and that's an optional extra. Now, as you can see, I'm having to put this charger onto this seat here. And in many cases, in many people's parking lots, the sockets are much higher up.

10:49 And that's when this doesn't exactly reach the ground properly. It doesn't sit on the ground. You'll have to keep it hanging if your scooter is not that close. So, that is another challenge I faced. What I would have liked to see is a slightly longer cable, and that would have just made charging much, much easier. And finally, in terms of features, this also gets a keyless fob for keyless entry. And as you can see, on one of the sides, you can remove a physical key to manually enter the scooter as well. But, what I did not like about this system so much is that it doesn't have to just be in your pocket and close to the scooter for you to come and unlock it and start riding.

11:23 What you have to do every time is remove the key, double press the middle button, and that's when you can turn the knob to get this started. Now, one more thing that I did notice over my time spent with the scooter is that we have been riding it in the rains and it's been pretty dirty outside. And what I noticed after opening the opening the battery space after coming back from a dirty and wet ride was that there is a lot of dirt and water entering the space where you install the batteries over here. So, that's something to look out for because you'll have to clean this area constantly.

11:55 >> >> The Hyvolt RV is a very capable electric scooter. Its performance is genuinely impressive. The seat is comfortable, build quality is good, and there is enough technology on board to make it feel premium. But, some of that technology feels unnecessarily complicated, while other few things such as the battery compartment sealing and keyless system could be worked on. Priced at rupees 2 lakh ex-showroom, it arrives in India as a CKD unit and it is at the premium end of the electric scooter market. It is sold through 44 Benelli and Keeway dealerships. Although that brings us to perhaps its biggest challenge. The scooter attracted plenty of attention during our time with it, but almost everyone who stopped to look had the same question. Where can they buy one? For a product this distinctive, awareness is clearly still lacking.

12:44 Better marketing and a strong retail presence could go a long way towards giving this interesting electric scooter the audience that it deserves.