The JournalDesign

EZ Mode

Designing a 25 km/h scooter that anyone can ride, on purpose.

Mercury Design10 July 20265 min read

Twenty-five kilometres per hour is not a limitation we worked around. It is the product.

In India, an electric two-wheeler that stays at or below 25 km/h sits in a different regulatory category — no licence, no registration for the rider. That single fact changes who the vehicle is for, and therefore everything about how it should be drawn.

Designing for the first-time rider

The EZ is the sporty one in the range to look at — angular fairing, lime-green accents against blue, a forward-leaning stance. That is deliberate. A vehicle aimed at people who have never ridden before should not look apologetic or medical. It should look like something you chose.

Underneath, every decision is about lowering the cost of a mistake. A 170 millimetre ground clearance and 90/90-10 tubeless tyres at both ends. A disc at the front and a drum at the rear — enough to stop decisively without the front-wheel drama that a nervous rider can create with too much brake.

MERCURY EZ
Motor
BLDC hub, 1 kW
Battery
Lead acid or Li-ion, 60V / 26–40AH
Top speed
25 km/h
Range
80–90 km per charge
Charge time
3.5–4 hours
Carrying capacity
150 kg, up to 2 people
A first vehicle should forgive you. Everything else it does is secondary.

The reverse switch

There is a reverse mode. On a 25 km/h scooter this sounds like a novelty until you watch someone who is not confident try to back a loaded two-wheeler out of a tight parking slot on a slope. Then it stops being a novelty.

The rest of the list is in the same spirit: a USB port for a phone, a genuinely large under-seat volume, a hanging hook, an LED DRL, and a buzzer alarm. None of it is exotic. All of it gets used every single day.