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An electric scooter that's (almost) perfect for the 21st-century mod with green sensibilitiesZepii V60

Price £1,350

Top speed 30mph

Average consumption 40 miles per four- to seven-hour recharge

CO2 emissions 0

Eco rating 10/10

Bound for The nearest plug socket

In a word Modish

Sooner or later, and usually sooner, every man of my vintage has had to pose himself the key existential question: am I a mod or a rocker? As a boy, these twin taxonomies flitted around the edge of my consciousness, looming into focus only on bank holiday weekends when the rival tribes would perform the ancient seaside ritual of beating each other with deckchairs. But there was no escaping the decision and, all things considered (the greasiness, the leather and the fact that I couldn't ride a motorbike), I came to the conclusion that I wasn't a rocker.

That said, mods could look bloody silly, what with the mohair suits, long parkas and Small Faces haircuts. The only stylish thing they had going for them were the Italian scooters on which they farted off to Brighton and back. And even then they tended to despoil them with an excess of lights. It wasn't until I visited Italy and saw that the scooter was the cool means by which urban youth, particularly heartbreaking young women, moved between assignations did I realise that the mods were a naff take on something really quite natty.

All of which is to say that I got a surprisingly big thrill out of seeing the Zepii V60 in my front yard. With its pleasing retro curves and bright modern sheen, the Zepii makes an obvious but nonetheless successful bid for what its marketing people call, with cavalier disregard for originality, the "iPod generation".

Nor is the idea of an electric scooter particularly novel. There are plenty of others out there, but it's fair to say none looks quite so attractive. The Zepii comes in nine different finishes – in an eco-version of Henry Ford's famous maxim, you can have any colour you like: they're all green.

But looks really do count here because, truth be told, they're not that much fun to drive. Top speed is 30mph and it feels as if you'd need to be going downhill with a following wind to achieve it. Despite lacking a fuel tank, it's by no means a light machine. For those whose most strenuous daily task is removing a BlackBerry from their pockets, pushing the Zepii to a parking spot may prove a challenge.

The Zepii is very much a metropolitan concept. In his vision for a green capital, Boris Johnson has promised that by 2015 no electric vehicle driver will be more than a mile from a recharging point. In the meantime, it's an easy process to plug the Zepii into a domestic mains socket.

As the distance delivered by a fully charged bike is around 40 miles, that rules out the prospect of armies of Zepii V60 drivers laying siege to innocent seaside towns. But city-dwellers be warned: behold the dawn of the i-Mod.Motoring
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On the road: Zepii V60 | Motoring | Andrew Anthony was originally published by Technology: Motoring | guardian.co.uk. Read the full story by clicking here.