First day with the Mercane MX60

So I got my MX 60 back home last night and charged it over night.Considering that I deliberated over this for some time and I put a little over AU$3000 down (got the carry rack) I really want the MX60 to come out on top.

But I'm a data and experience driven guy ... not a pictures on advertisers websites guy.

To photograph it I had to stand back further than I normally do, so its actually much bigger than it looks. Indeed looking at my wall there you can get a feel for that.

so my dual is leaving an amount of room on the mat, while the MX60 takes it up entirely.

The weights will also tell you that story too, as indeed will the price. Initially in australia it was nearly $4000 for the MX60 at a local dealer and now that its down to just under $3000 I thought I'd give it a go. Why not right?

The Adventure

What follows are  my initial thoughts and explorations of this in the first day of ownership. So first things first lets look at the video I made as I first turned it on after charging. I'd pre-read the manual but it took a few goes to get it where I wanted it ... and even then its not.

Here are some thoughts I had on it which I also put on reddit earlier today

Well out of the box it performed like a pussy, even in higher "Gears".

Its pretty much exactly what I thought it would be (but less in a few ways) but interestingly things I observed turned out to be worse in practice.

The Good

• build quality, very classy. Battery box, handle bars, solid stem all of it, first rate.
• All screws were tight and appeared to be thread locked
• suspension soaks up road abberations and its like a hover craft, so very suited to longer commutes over scruffy and irregular surfaces because the pneumatic tyres absorb small things (like pebbles and cracks) so you barely notice them
• the good suspension and tubeless tyres mean you'll need to be a maniac to get a pinch flat
• steering is stable and yet the scoot is flickable
• steering stem is very rigid feeling
• it does not feel heavy on the road and under power

The not so Good

• feels gutless out of the crate, digging through the menus I was able to tweak some settings:

1. P09: "Kick and go" was set to 0 (disabling it) 
2. P17: Curise mode was set to 1 (thank god) enabling it 
3. P18: speed setting (default = 100) was set to 150 (its max I found)

• deck width is better suited to a statue who stands feet together and pulls and pushes on the bar for their support. This is not my style (nor good style IMO). Accordingly (as I expected, perhaps more than I expected) this influenced stablity if you were not standing "on axis" between the wheels.
• steering stem comes back at a steep angle (probably good for helping dopes not crowd the stem) so when you lean into the power you've got it right in the solar plexus ... not my bag
• speedo is drastically out (GPS=23kmh while speedo shows 36), probably the P06 setting would allow me to dial that in, but its set for 11.3 and that's correct, but there must be some sort of mismatch. Like I said, I could dial it in but its going back so there's no point. If you own one then check P06 setting and dial it in based on your phone because this will make your ODO look like its done more distance and perhaps reduce your sale price 
• folding the steering stem is tedious but that's only a minor downer for me because I normally store it under the house "unfolded". It makes the stem feel very sturdy
• even though the power is higher, the larger diameter of the wheels essentially gears this scoot up, meaning it has less hit off the mark than the Widewheel does, so it feels less "nippy"
• yet despite this I can't get more speed out of it ... 
• the lack of a comfortable rear foot rest for "power take offs" at the back and the back tilt of the bars makes "agressive" riding harder

So for double the money of the Widewheel 1000W my personal call is "its not my bag baby"

However for others who have different needs maybe its ideal. I reckon that if you put the seat option on it and the carry rack (which I bought but haven't mounted yet) it would be a great pensioner scooter.

NOTE:

I have discovered (thanks MisteryWarrior) that by setting my P08 value to an obscure high  number I'm able to get speeds like this:

I just did some speed testing in my area, up to (and slightly past) my mates place. The GPS (and the Widewheel has no speedo anyway) tells the story of both:

the data below is now obsolete but I will leave it here for reference. Please consult this post for how I got it out of pussy mode and into a usable mode. Further look at this post of better operation.

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The Widewheel

The MX60

So the Widewheel has:

1. higher max recorded speed
2. higher average speed
3. higher average speed moving

meaning if it was a race it would beat the MX60

Lets do a quick look at a couple of the details on that when I zoom in on the data in the app:

I've got to keep it for the weekend, I'll see if it grows on me. But I'm not holding my breath right now as its already feeling like this thing is more aimed at this sort of rider than me.

and honestly it probably suits a pensioner pretty well ... I mean the first 3 "gear" modes sure would, with 1 being "shopping mall"