Louisiana's health department has been barred from advertising or promoting vaccines for flu, COVID-19, and mpox, according to reporting by NPR, KFF Health News, and New Orleans Public Radio WWNO.

Their investigative report—based on interviews with multiple health department employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation—revealed that employees were told of the startling policy change in meetings in October and November and that the policy would be implemented quietly and not put into writing.

Ars Technica has contacted the health department for comment and will update this post with any new information.

The health department provided a statement to NPR saying that it has been "reevaluating both the state's public health priorities as well as our messaging around vaccine promotion, especially for COVID-19 and influenza." The statement described the change as a move "away from one-size-fits-all paternalistic guidance" to a stance in which "immunization for any vaccine, along with practices like mask wearing and social distancing, are an individual's personal choice."

According to employees, the new policy cancelled standard fall flu vaccination events this year and affects every other aspect of the health department's work, as NPR explained:

"Employees could not send out press releases, give interviews, hold vaccine events, give presentations or create social media posts encouraging the public to get the vaccines. They also could not put up signs at the department's clinics that COVID, flu or mpox vaccines were available on site."

“We're really talking about deaths”

The change comes amid a dangerous swell of anti-vaccine sentiment and misinformation in Louisiana and across the country. President-elect Trump has picked Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—a high-profile anti-vaccine advocate and one of the most prolific spreaders of vaccine misinformation—to head the US Department of Health and Human Services.

Louisiana's health department has not updated its web page on influenza since last year. It has also noticeably refrained from mentioning vaccines on social media posts. A post earlier this month warned of flu season, but only urged people to wash their hands, cover coughs and sneezes, avoid touching their faces, and improve indoor air quality. There was no mention of flu vaccines.

The shift has disheartened and shaken staff. "I mean, do they want to dismantle public health?" one employee at the health department told NPR.

"We're really talking about deaths," said another. "Even a reduction in flu and COVID vaccines can lead to increased deaths."

"We've never felt so unsure of our future," an employee added. "Like, why am I here? Why am I doing this anymore? Because you're just so stifled and you are not helping people."

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Recently I’ve been thinking about how everything that happens in the terminal is some combination of:

1. Your operating system’s job
2. Your shell’s job
3. Your terminal emulator’s job
4. The job of whatever program you happen to be running (like top or vim or cat)

The first three (your operating system, shell, and terminal emulator) are all kind of known quantities – if you’re using bash in GNOME Terminal on Linux, you can more or less reason about how how all of those things interact, and some of their behaviour is standardized by POSIX.

But the fourth one (“whatever program you happen to be running”) feels like it could do ANYTHING. How are you supposed to know how a program is going to behave?

This post is kind of long so here’s a quick table of contents:

• programs behave surprisingly consistently
• these are meant to be descriptive, not prescriptive
• it’s not always obvious which “rules” are the program’s responsibility to implement
• rule 1: noninteractive programs should quit when you press Ctrl-C
• rule 2: TUIs should quit when you press q
• rule 3: REPLs should quit when you press Ctrl-D on an empty line
• rule 4: don’t use more than 16 colours
• rule 5: vaguely support readline keybindings
• rule 5.1: Ctrl-W should delete the last word
• rule 6: disable colours when writing to a pipe
• rule 7: - means stdin/stdout
• these “rules” take a long time to learn

programs behave surprisingly consistently

As far as I know, there are no real standards for how programs in the terminal should behave – the closest things I know of are:

• POSIX, which mostly dictates how your terminal emulator / OS / shell should work together. I think it does specify a few things about how core utilities like cp should work but AFAIK it doesn’t have anything to say about how for example htop should behave.
• these command line interface guidelines

But even though there are no standards, in my experience programs in the terminal behave in a pretty consistent way. So I wanted to write down a list of “rules” that in my experience programs mostly follow.

these are meant to be descriptive, not prescriptive

My goal here isn’t to convince authors of terminal programs that they should follow any of these rules. There are lots of exceptions to these and often there’s a good reason for those exceptions.

But it’s very useful for me to know what behaviour to expect from a random new terminal program that I’m using. Instead of “uh, programs could do literally anything”, it’s “ok, here are the basic rules I expect, and then I can keep a short mental list of exceptions”.

So I’m just writing down what I’ve observed about how programs behave in my 20 years of using the terminal, why I think they behave that way, and some examples of cases where that rule is “broken”.

it’s not always obvious which “rules” are the program’s responsibility to implement

There are a bunch of common conventions that I think are pretty clearly the program’s responsibility to implement, like:

• config files should go in ~/.BLAHrc or ~/.config/BLAH/FILE or /etc/BLAH/ or something
• --help should print help text
• programs should print “regular” output to stdout and errors to stderr

But in this post I’m going to focus on things that it’s not 100% obvious are the program’s responsibility. For example it feels to me like a “law of nature” that pressing Ctrl-D should quit a REPL, but programs often need to explicitly implement support for it – even though cat doesn’t need to implement Ctrl-D support, ipython does. (more about that in “rule 3” below)

Understanding which things are the program’s responsibility makes it much less surprising when different programs’ implementations are slightly different.

rule 1: noninteractive programs should quit when you press Ctrl-C

The main reason for this rule is that noninteractive programs will quit by default on Ctrl-C if they don’t set up a SIGINT signal handler, so this is kind of a “you should act like the default” rule.

Something that trips a lot of people up is that this doesn’t apply to interactive programs like python3 or bc or less. This is because in an interactive program, Ctrl-C has a different job – if the program is running an operation (like for example a search in less or some Python code in python3), then Ctrl-C will interrupt that operation but not stop the program.

As an example of how this works in an interactive program: here’s the code in prompt-toolkit (the library that iPython uses for handling input) that aborts a search when you press Ctrl-C.

rule 2: TUIs should quit when you press q

TUI programs (like less or htop) will usually quit when you press q.

This rule doesn’t apply to any program where pressing q to quit wouldn’t make sense, like tmux or text editors.

rule 3: REPLs should quit when you press Ctrl-D on an empty line

REPLs (like python3 or ed) will usually quit when you press Ctrl-D on an empty line. This rule is similar to the Ctrl-C rule – the reason for this is that by default if you’re running a program (like cat) in “cooked mode”, then the operating system will return an EOF when you press Ctrl-D on an empty line.

Most of the REPLs I use (sqlite3, python3, fish, bash, etc) don’t actually use cooked mode, but they all implement this keyboard shortcut anyway to mimic the default behaviour.

For example, here’s the code in prompt-toolkit that quits when you press Ctrl-D, and here’s the same code in readline.

I actually thought that this one was a “Law of Terminal Physics” until very recently because I’ve basically never seen it broken, but you can see that it’s just something that each individual input library has to implement in the links above.

Someone pointed out that the Erlang REPL does not quit when you press Ctrl-D, so I guess not every REPL follows this “rule”.

rule 4: don’t use more than 16 colours

Terminal programs rarely use colours other than the base 16 ANSI colours. This is because if you specify colours with a hex code, it’s very likely to clash with some users’ background colour. For example if I print out some text as #EEEEEE, it would be almost invisible on a white background, though it would look fine on a dark background.

But if you stick to the default 16 base colours, you have a much better chance that the user has configured those colours in their terminal emulator so that they work reasonably well with their background color. Another reason to stick to the default base 16 colours is that it makes less assumptions about what colours the terminal emulator supports.

The only programs I usually see breaking this “rule” are text editors, for example Helix by default will use a purple background which is not a default ANSI colour. It seems fine for Helix to break this rule since Helix isn’t a “core” program and I assume any Helix user who doesn’t like that colorscheme will just change the theme.

rule 5: vaguely support readline keybindings

Almost every program I use supports readline keybindings if it would make sense to do so. For example, here are a bunch of different programs and a link to where they define Ctrl-E to go to the end of the line:

• ipython (Ctrl-E defined here)
• atuin (Ctrl-E defined here)
• fzf (Ctrl-E defined here)
• zsh (Ctrl-E defined here)
• fish (Ctrl-E defined here)
• tmux’s command prompt (Ctrl-E defined here)

None of those programs actually uses readline directly, they just sort of mimic emacs/readline keybindings. They don’t always mimic them exactly: for example atuin seems to use Ctrl-A as a prefix, so Ctrl-A doesn’t go to the beginning of the line.

Also all of these programs seem to implement their own internal cut and paste buffers so you can delete a line with Ctrl-U and then paste it with Ctrl-Y.

The exceptions to this are:

• some programs (like git, cat, and nc) don’t have any line editing support at all (except for backspace, Ctrl-W, and Ctrl-U)
• as usual text editors are an exception, every text editor has its own approach to editing text

I wrote more about this “what keybindings does a program support?” question in entering text in the terminal is complicated.

rule 5.1: Ctrl-W should delete the last word

I’ve never seen a program (other than a text editor) where Ctrl-W doesn’t delete the last word. This is similar to the Ctrl-C rule – by default if a program is in “cooked mode”, the OS will delete the last word if you press Ctrl-W, and delete the whole line if you press Ctrl-U. So usually programs will imitate that behaviour.

I can’t think of any exceptions to this other than text editors but if there are I’d love to hear about them!

rule 6: disable colours when writing to a pipe

Most programs will disable colours when writing to a pipe. For example:

• rg blah will highlight all occurrences of blah in the output, but if the output is to a pipe or a file, it’ll turn off the highlighting.
• ls --color=auto will use colour when writing to a terminal, but not when writing to a pipe

Both of those programs will also format their output differently when writing to the terminal: ls will organize files into columns, and ripgrep will group matches with headings.

If you want to force the program to use colour (for example because you want to look at the colour), you can use unbuffer to force the program’s output to be a tty like this:

unbuffer rg blah |  less -R

I’m sure that there are some programs that “break” this rule but I can’t think of any examples right now. Some programs have an --color flag that you can use to force colour to be on, in the example above you could also do rg --color=always | less -R.

rule 7: - means stdin/stdout

Usually if you pass - to a program instead of a filename, it’ll read from stdin or write to stdout (whichever is appropriate). For example, if you want to format the Python code that’s on your clipboard with black and then copy it, you could run:

pbpaste | black - | pbcopy

(pbpaste is a Mac program, you can do something similar on Linux with xclip)

My impression is that most programs implement this if it would make sense and I can’t think of any exceptions right now, but I’m sure there are many exceptions.

these “rules” take a long time to learn

These rules took me a long time for me to learn because I had to:

1. learn that the rule applied anywhere at all ("Ctrl-C will exit programs")
2. notice some exceptions (“okay, Ctrl-C will exit find but not less”)
3. subconsciously figure out what the pattern is ("Ctrl-C will generally quit noninteractive programs, but in interactive programs it might interrupt the current operation instead of quitting the program")
4. eventually maybe formulate it into an explicit rule that I know

A lot of my understanding of the terminal is honestly still in the “subconscious pattern recognition” stage. The only reason I’ve been taking the time to make things explicit at all is because I’ve been trying to explain how it works to others. Hopefully writing down these “rules” explicitly will make learning some of this stuff a little bit faster for others.

Return-to-office (RTO) mandates have caused companies to lose some of their best workers, a study tracking over 3 million workers at 54 "high-tech and financial" firms at the S&P 500 index has found. These companies also have greater challenges finding new talent, the report concluded.

The paper, Return-to-Office Mandates and Brain Drain [PDF], comes from researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, as well as Baylor University, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business. The study, which was published in November, spotted this month by human resources publication HR Dive, and cites Ars Technica reporting, was conducted by collecting information on RTO announcements and sourcing data from LinkedIn. The researchers said they only examined companies with data available for at least two quarters before and after they issued RTO mandates. The researchers explained:

To collect employee turnover data, we follow prior literature ... and obtain the employment history information of over 3 million employees of the 54 RTO firms from Revelio Labs, a leading data provider that extracts information from employee LinkedIn profiles. We manually identify employees who left a firm during each period, then calculate the firm’s turnover rate by dividing the number of departing employees by the total employee headcount at the beginning of the period. We also obtain information about employees’ gender, seniority, and the number of skills listed on their individual LinkedIn profiles, which serves as a proxy for employees’ skill level.

There are limits to the study, however. The researchers noted that the study "cannot draw causal inferences based on our setting." Further, smaller firms and firms outside of the high-tech and financial industries may show different results. Although not mentioned in the report, relying on data from a social media platform could also yield inaccuracies, and the number of skills listed on a LinkedIn profile may not accurately depict a worker's skill level.

Still, the study provides insight into how employees respond to RTO mandates and the effect it has on corporations and available talent at a time when entities like Dell, Amazon, and the US government are getting stricter about in-office work.

Higher turnover rates

The researchers concluded that the average turnover rates for firms increased by 14 percent after issuing return-to-office policies.

"We expect the effect of RTO mandates on employee turnover to be even higher for other firms" the paper says.

The researchers included testing to ensure that the results stemmed from RTO mandates “rather than time trends.” For example, the researchers found that “there were no significant increases in turnover rates during any of the five quarters prior to the RTO announcement quarter.”

Potentially alarming for employers is the study finding that senior and skilled employees were more likely to leave following RTO mandates. This aligns with a study from University of Chicago and University of Michigan researchers published in May that found that Apple and Microsoft saw senior-level employee bases decrease by 5 percentage points and SpaceX a decrease of 5 percentage points. (For its part, Microsoft told Ars that the report did not align with internal data.)

Senior employees are expected to be more likely to leave, the new report argues, because such workers have “more connections with other companies" and have easier times finding new jobs. Further, senior, skilled employees are “dissatisfied” when management blames remote work for low productivity.

Similarly, the report supports concerns from some RTO-resistant employees that back-to-office mandates have a disproportionate impact on certain groups, like women, which the researchers said show "more pronounced" attrition rates following RTO mandates:

Importantly, the effect on female employee turnover is almost three times as high as that on male employees ... One possible reason for these results is that female employees are more affected by RTO mandates due to their greater family responsibilities, which increases their demand for workplace flexibility and work-life balance.

Trouble finding talent

RTO mandates also have a negative impact on companies' ability to find new employees, the study found. After examining over 2 million job postings, the researchers concluded that companies with RTO mandates take longer to fill job vacancies than before:

On average, the time it takes for an RTO firm to fill its job vacancies increases by approximately 23 percent, and the hire rate decreases by 17 percent after RTO mandates.

The researchers also found “significantly higher hiring costs induced by RTO mandates” and concluded that the findings combined “suggest that firms lose their best talent after RTO mandates and face significant difficulties replacing them."

“The weakest form of management”

RTO mandates can obviously drive away workers who prioritize work-life balance, avoiding commutes and associated costs, and who feel more productive working in a self-controlled environment. The study, however, points to additional reasons RTO mandates make some people quit.

One reason cited is RTO rules communicating "a culture of distrust that encourages management through monitoring." The researchers noted that Brian Elliott, CEO at Work Forward and a leadership adviser, described this as the "weakest form of management—and one that drives down employee engagement" in a November column for MIT Sloan Management Review.

Indeed, RTO mandates have led to companies like Dell performing VPN tracking, and companies like Amazon, Google, JP Morgan Chase, Meta, and TikTok reportedly tracking badge swipes, resulting in employee backlash.

The new study also pointed to RTO mandates making employees question company leadership and management's decision-making abilities. We saw this with Amazon, when over 500 employees sent a letter to Amazon Web Services (AWS) CEO Matt Garman, saying that they were "appalled to hear the non-data-driven explanation you gave for Amazon imposing a five-day in-office mandate."

Employees are also put off by the drama that follows an aggressive RTO policy, the report says:

An RTO announcement can be a big and sudden event that is distasteful to most employees, especially when the decision has not been well communicated, potentially triggering an immediate response of employees searching for and switching to new jobs.

After Amazon announced it would kill remote work in early 2025, a study by online community Blind found that 73 percent of 2,285 Amazon employees surveyed were “considering looking for another job” in response to the mandate.

“A wave of voluntary terminations”

The paper points to reasons that employees may opt to stay with a company post-RTO mandates. Those reasons include competitive job markets, personal costs associated with switching jobs, loyalty, and interest in the collaborative and social aspects of working in-office.

However, with the amount of evidence that RTO mandates drive employees away, some question if return-to-office mandates are subtle ways to reduce headcount without layoffs. Comments like AWS's Garman reportedly telling workers that if they don't like working in an office, "there are other companies around" have fueled this theory, as has Dell saying remote workers can't get promoted. A BambooHR survey of 1,504 full-time US employees, including 504 HR managers or higher, in March found that 25 percent of VP and C-suite executives and 18 percent of HR pros examined "admit they hoped for some voluntary turnover during an RTO."

Yesterday, President-elect Donald Trump said he plans to do away with a deal that allowed the Social Security Administration's union to work remotely into 2029 and that those who don't come back into the office will "be dismissed." Similarly, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who Trump announced will head a new Department of Government Efficiency, wrote in a November op-ed that "requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome."

Helen D. (Heidi) Reavis, managing partner at Reavis Page Jump LLP, an employment, dispute resolution, and media law firm, previously told Ars that employees "can face an array of legal consequences for encouraging workers to quit via their RTO policies." Still, RTO mandates are set to continue being a point of debate and tension at workplaces into the new year.

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Last week, I finally said goodbye to one of the longest press loaners I’ve ever heard of. After a year, six months, and nearly 3,000 miles, my 2023 Zero DSR/X tester is finally going home back to California. As I reflect on my lengthy adventure, I think electric motorcycles like this Zero are still a great option, but only if you can live with some rather glaring issues common with most EV bikes right now. Here’s what was great and here’s what sucked during my time with the Zero.

My loan for the 2023 Zero DSR/X was originally for two months, but Zero graciously extended the loan through winter 2023 so I could continue having fun. Then, I got to hold onto it for longer. In Zero’s eyes, letting me hold onto the bike was better than having me ride it to a dealership where it would just sit idle until a truck picked it up.

In doing so, I’ve gotten to experience the electric motorcycle life deeper than any normal press loan would have allowed me to. I got to live with the Zero in a way most journalists would never get to witness for themselves. Now, I’ve written a lot about this motorcycle over the past year and a half and you can scroll through my previous coverage by clicking here first.

Through all of this time, I learned what electric motorcycles do best, but also why the companies selling electric motorcycles are having a tough time right now.

What Was Great

Back when I picked up the Zero in June 2023, I immediately entered a familiar, yet different realm. Yes, I’ve tested electric motorcycles before and I’ve tested electric motorcycles after. But, press events are well-controlled to make the best qualities of a vehicle shine bright. This was the first time I got to choose my own adventure.

The familiar part of the Zero was the motorcycle part. Electric bikes ride just like ICE motorcycles, but they’re devoid of loud noises and vibration. They also benefit from the instant snap of power electric motors are known for and in the case of the Zero, most of its 545-pound weight was down low, so it actually felt and handled way lighter than that number would suggest.

The Zero DSR/X is one of my favorite motorcycles in terms of acceleration, handling, and well, the whole package. It never got old twisting the throttle and popping a small wheelie by way of 100 HP and 166 lb-ft of torque. It never ceased being fun to carve corners leaned over enough to scrape my boots on the ground. Zero calls this an electric adventure bike, but it really feels more like a sportbike with a forgiving suspension, an upright riding stance, and tires good enough for dirt play. If I could sum up the Zero’s ride with a single word, it would be: Exhilarating.

The Zero did most things well. It had an adjustable windscreen that helped keep my helmet quiet, the heated bars kept my hands toasty even when I rode in the snow, and the cavernous integrated trunk was large enough for me to haul my swimming gear out to the beach with room to pick up some small groceries on the way home. I also liked the bike’s secret trunks up in the fairing which were perfect for hiding stuff on the bike for when I parked in a sketchy area.

The Zero’s base-level storage was good enough that one day, I was able to haul a motorcycle battery and tools in its trunk to help myself revive a different motorcycle.

The software was also top-notch. The Canyon and Sport modes did exactly as they said on the tin and tuned the motorcycle for the most aggressive rides possible. The Off-Road mode’s tuning let me kick the rear end out and have fun in the dirt while the Rain mode kept the shiny side up in slippery conditions. Eco mode also did a great job at reining in my throttle-happy hand, helping me get to the best range of 140 miles on one ride.

Speaking about that battery, the Zero forced me to take things slowly and enjoy the tranquility of a great ride. I rode on backroads rather than the highway and I was content at cruising at 65 mph rather than trying to set a speed record. If I did so, I usually was able to ride 120 miles on a charge and I’d get home with 10 to 20 miles to spare. Zero’s range estimates are accurate so long as you’re realistic about the limitations of the batteries.

Moving back to the software for a moment, I also loved how Zero’s software not only gives you a general idea of what’s wrong with your bike but also allows you to clear codes. No scanners or special tools are needed. I’ve said it before, but all vehicle diagnostic systems need to be this pro-end user.

Then there are the little bits of nice tech, like the fact that you can almost come to a stop on regeneration alone. The bright LED lights also seemingly got the attention of the vast majority of drivers. That’s right, you don’t need loud pipes to save your life. Just make yourself seen and ride defensively.

The DSR/X was such a good all-round motorcycle that it became my primary mode of transportation so long as I didn’t need to travel more than about 120 miles in a single trip. It was just that comfortable, fun, and easy to ride. I rode the Zero immediately after the roads were cleared after a snowstorm. I rode the Zero on days over 100 degrees. I rode the Zero through a severe thunderstorm. Heck, I even tried riding the Zero on a day that was below zero degrees.

On most occasions, the bike never ever let me down, even if I did something questionable or goofy with it. The speed was always there, the handling always inspired confidence, and I’m still sure the Zero helped me become a better rider. How much did I enjoy the Zero? I gave it a name, something I do only for vehicles I become attached to.

What Sucked

As much as I loved Olive — that’s what I named it — not everything was perfect. In fact, there are some limitations that may be dealbreakers.

When I picked up the Zero, the ZF17.3 kWh battery (15.2 kWh nominal) lost about a percent of charge with every mile. I basically watched the battery gradually fall in real-time. Again, that’s not a big deal in a press event where you know you’ll reach the end before you hit zero percent, but now I was in control of charging.

My charging situation isn’t an ideal one. The vast majority of EV owners can charge from their houses. However, I’m one of millions of Americans living in apartments and lots of us don’t have options for charging. Our complexes don’t have EV chargers and a lot of us have to park in an open lot or on a public street. That means we have to depend entirely on charging away from home.

In my case, the vast majority of the Zero’s charging came from the public charger at a nearby college. I charged the motorcycle roughly 27 times during my loan period. In all but a couple of instances, all of those charges happened either at the local college or the local hospital. On average, I had to keep the Zero hooked up to one of those Level 2 chargers for 2.5 to 3 hours. This meant riding out to the charger, hooking up, having my wife pick me up, and returning later. I did this almost every single time. The one exception was the charge in which I just took a nap next to the bike.

This is the unfortunate reality of charging if you live in an apartment outside of a major city. The fastest chargers in my town are Level 2 units that get up to 6 kW. The Zero can charge in as little as an hour if you buy the optional charger speed upgrade and if you can find a faster Level 2 charger. My bike didn’t have that option, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway since my local chargers were all slow.

One of my favorite rides is the Kettle Moraine Scenic Drive, which starts in southeast Wisconsin and snakes its way to a marsh just past Road America. I’ve done it in countless cars, motorcycles, and trikes. But I couldn’t do it with the Zero. Why? I would have needed at least three charges to do the whole ride, which meant at least 6 hours of charging. This is a ride that normally takes almost all day as it is, so it was impossible to do unless I desired to get back home at or past midnight. That assumed all of the chargers were even working when I rolled up to them.

To be clear, this isn’t really so much a Zero problem as it is a problem with electric motorcycles in general, regardless of make. Americans love riding all day and love riding far, but the Zero, like most electric motorcycles, just can’t do it unless you go no faster than about 20 mph.

There’s another downside of this charging situation, and it’s that public chargers are often garbage. Gas cars have it easy. You just stick the pump nozzle into the hole and squeeze the handle. EVs have to make an electrical connection with the charger. If that charger is broken and you don’t notice, the charger will also break your charge port. That’s what happened at around the third-month mark with the Zero. I tried a random public charger, not noticing that one of its prongs was bent.

Well, that bent prong then bent a pin in the Zero’s charge port. I was able to bend the pin back, but the lasting damage meant that about half of the public chargers I tried to use no longer made electrical contact with that pin.

About six months into the loan I started renting a garage at my apartment. Finally, I thought, I’d be able to charge an EV at home. Unfortunately, the garages in my neighborhood are wired so that there are three garages per circuit. So, if you have your EV slow charging on Level 1 (which takes the Zero around 12 hours) and your neighbor fires up their man cave, the breaker will trip, locking the three of you out of your garages.

Again, I want to be clear that these challenges are not specific to the Zero. This is something I would have dealt with regardless if I had a Harley-Davidson LiveWire or a Th!nk City on hand. That raggedly public charger would have broken any EV’s charge port, the Zero was just the unfortunate recipient. But these are limitations you need to know about if you live in an apartment and decide to buy an EV.

With that said, the Zero itself did bring a few of its own limitations to the table. Last January, I found myself in a bizarre situation. The motorcycle’s high-voltage battery died in the freezing cold, which is bad for battery longevity. The 12V battery soon followed suit. First, I had to revive the 12V battery with a charger before the bike would even wake up. But even when I did wake the bike up, the high-voltage battery refused to charge.

I later found out that Zero motorcycles are designed to cease charging when the temperature drops below 32 degrees Fahrenheit. However, there’s a twist as the motorcycle will continue to operate until temperatures reach -4 degrees. So, it’s possible to ride your Zero somewhere in the winter but not be able to charge it once you reach your destination.

In short, most of the downsides involved with the Zero DSR/X, and just electric motorcycles in general, revolve around range and charging. If you ride an electric motorcycle gently, you can get decent range out of them. However, if you’re unlucky and cannot find a fast enough charger, or don’t buy the faster charging options, you will spend too much time charging.

Then there’s the price of it all. Batteries are not cheap, which means that any electric motorcycle with a decent range means paying a lot to get it. A 2025 Zero DSR/X starts at $22,995, and you have to pay $3,000 more for faster charging. You can get a very fun gas bike for less than $10,000, so EV brands have an uphill battle. Sadly, that also means that I cannot afford the electric motorcycle I love so much.

Again, in all fairness to the folks of Zero, this is an industry-wide issue. I mean, the Can-Am Pulse is $13,999 and in my experience, you’re going to get just 40 to 60 miles of range on that unless you legitimately never leave the city.

What Broke

I’m happy to report that, despite nearly 3,000 miles of hard riding, off-roading, and some outdoor storage, the motorcycle survived largely problem-free. As I noted earlier, the bike suffered from that bent charge port pin. I also managed a freak accident where I was off-roading and somehow got a fallen tree branch to pole vault into the side stand, which caused the stand’s spring to eject. I had that back on in a jiffy.

Sadly, in October 2024 I encountered a new issue that I could not figure out. I hooked up to my favorite public charger and nothing happened. The motorcycle wasn’t charging and I couldn’t even get the charging screen to come up. When I checked the battery system status, the motorcycle claimed that nothing was plugged in. Yet, this was the charger I used successfully for nearly a year and a half by that point.

I took the motorcycle back home and had to go on a series of press trips immediately after, so I didn’t have time to troubleshoot. When I finally did come back to the bike in November, I went for a short ride around town and then tried to charge again. Once again I got nothing. This time it was dire because the charge level had gotten to just 10 percent, which meant I could no longer make it to and back from a public charger. I got desperate enough that I plugged the bike into the Level 1 home charger. My garage neighbor hadn’t been home for a while, so there was little risk of tripping the breaker.

But even the home charger wasn’t doing anything. The charger had a green light and showed ready to charge, but the bike itself was defiant, stating it was still unplugged. It was as if nothing was plugged in. When the motorcycle died last winter it showed plugged in, even if it was too cold to charge.

I tried a little bit of everything. I cleaned the charge port, I cleaned the charger, I checked fuses, I tried different outlets, and I even tried resetting the motorcycle. Nothing I did resulted in the motorcycle detecting the charger. What went wrong? Well, it’s possible the charge port itself finally gave up. It’s also possible that the bike’s onboard charger is dead or the home charger somehow died. Some Zero fans told me I might have needed to reset the BMS. Either way, I couldn’t get juice into the bike and eventually, the HV found itself at zero percent.

Would Do It Again

Sadly, Zero picked up Olive on Friday, ending my troubleshooting path. Hopefully, they give me some good news. Maybe I was a goof or something.

One year, six months. That’s how long I got to enjoy this thing. I learned a lot from how much I now love electric motorcycles to knowing just how far electric motorcycles have to go before they can even have a shot at replacing their ICE brethren. Sadly, there’s a long way to go.

Electric motorcycles can be stupidly fast, remarkably good-handling, and superbly quiet. There’s just so much that these bikes do that’s so awesome. That’s why the Zero DSR/X was my daily whether it was blazing hot or snowing. But, at the same time, the coolest electric bikes cost a small fortune, still have limited range, and can be a nightmare to charge if you can’t charge at home. Unfortunately, I can see why electric bikes have a smaller appeal while electric cars continue to go mainstream.

Would I do it again? Oh yeah. I’m already asking Zero to pencil me in for a 2025 model this spring. If you can afford the price and the limitations don’t bother you, I’d say do it. Silently wheelie off into the sunset.

The post I Lived With An Electric Motorcycle For A Year And A Half, Here’s Why They Haven’t Caught On appeared first on The Autopian.

If there’s any sound that induces serious cringing, it’s the nails-on-the-chalkboard of part of your car making contact with the ground. Sometimes it’s just the embarrassing result of a rust exhaust system finally having picked a date with destiny, sometimes it’s actually fine because you’re rock-crawling in an off-roader with a brace of skid plates, but most times, it’s bad news. Misjudging the terrain can make for an uncomfortable experience, as dozens of drivers have found out over one particularly gnarly dip.

Alright, maybe it’s a little bit more than just a dip. Judging by how scooped-out it is and its concrete construction, this feature at one residential intersection in Texas looks more like it’s intended to help manage stormwaters rather than simply slow down cars. However, that doesn’t mean it’s not effective at the latter task. It’s so severe, one social media user has decided to set up a camera to document the shenanigans.

Dubbed The Daily Scrape, compilations of drivers trying and failing to navigate this feature without making contact with the ground have racked up thousands of likes across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, and it’s easy to see why. This obstacle isn’t just a test of approach and departure angle, it’s a test of breakover angle too. It looks tricker than most severe driveway entrances, so it’s unsurprising to see it catch so many drivers off-guard.

 

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While daytime shots aren’t exactly spectacular with the sound off, footage captured at night occasionally shows showers of sparks shooting off of underbodies as drivers likely grit their teeth, turn down their stereos, and contemplate their choices. Granted, the lowest parts on many cars these days are exhaust system components, so it’s not like every one of these cars is mashing its oil pan, but still. Not pleasant.

 

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It’s worth noting that the dip isn’t just an obstacle that exists to punish cars for riding low to the ground. In these compilations, you’ll find plenty of examples of stock SUVs grounding out over the dip, even if some of them could’ve avoided grounding out quite as hard if they had simply reduced their speed. I mean, there’s a Chevrolet Tahoe in this particular compilation, and it drags its front spoiler. It shouldn’t be that hard to avoid scraping in one of these, considering it’s essentially a half-ton truck with an SUV body.

Perhaps the most baffling phenomenon is the number of cars that make repeat appearances. For instance, you’d think that the driver of the white Lexus LS400 would try to angle over it a little bit more, but nope, time and time again its driver grounds it out. A bit of a shame when you consider how clean it looks up top.

The thing is, it’s entirely possible to inch through the dip with a bit of angle without audibly scraping. A grey F10 BMW 5 Series on the lowered factory sports suspension that came with the M Sport package makes this incredibly obvious, and that’s not a car with an especially short wheelbase. With a little bit of care, attention, and proactive planning, lots of cars could make it through this.

 

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While it’s possible that the road could be redesigned to eliminate this dip, considering how many people appear to run the stop sign, this depression in the road appears to function as a traffic calming function. There’s no replacement for driving according to the conditions of the road you’re on, so all it should take in a whole litany of cars is being more aware of topography.

(Photo credits: Instagram/The Daily Scrape)

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The post I Can’t Stop Watching Cars Bottom Out Over This Enormous Dip In The Road appeared first on The Autopian.