Norman Reedus aka Daryl Dixon from The Walking Dead said during a motorcycle podcast that the best motorcycle to use in a Walking Dead world or Zombie Apocalypse would be an electric powered Zero motorcycle because it's quiet. He said he would strap a solar panel to the back to keep the battery charged to solve the energy problem. Will that actually work?
He can scrap the solar panel on the motorcycle idea because it will not produce enough energy to recharge the battery. They did use solar panels on Walking Dead for cooking and lights, and they were attached to lead acid batteries to store energy. I guess if you have enough solar panels and enough batteries you can store enough energy to recharge a Zero motorcycle. The problem I have with the idea is finding lead acid batteries in that world that still work. When lead acid batteries sit idle they discharge and it becomes harder and harder to recharge them as time goes on until they stop working, and nobody in that world is manufacturing new batteries. Also, the lithium batteries in Zero motorcycles have a time limit just like lead acid batteries. As time goes on lithium batteries lose capacity to store energy until they become useless. Even if you were able to overcome all these problems your still faced with the fact that electric vehicles have short range and long recharge times, and tough luck recharging a Zero motorcycle if it completely discharges away from your homemade solar panel setup. You would faced with just as many problems with gas and diesel powered vehicles.
The solution to personal transportation in Walking Dead for most situations is a bicycle. Their quiet, easy to maintain, and plenty of parts still available with a long shelf life to fix them. Their slower than a car or motorcycle, but they still can out run the Walking Dead zombies on any road. However, if I was forced to choose a motorcycle to use in a zombie apocalypse it would still be a gas powered Kawasaki KLR650.
To listen to the Norman Reedus podcost use this URL:
https://soundcloud.com/re-cyclegarage/podcast-149-norman-reedus-and-daryl-dixon
