Would you buy an electric motorcycle if it fully-charged in five minutes?

How times change. Switch on the television or read the newspaper and advertisements pushing the latest must-have car (after all, when was the last time you saw an ad for a motorcycle?!) and the good old days touting BHP, MPH and 0-60 have been replaced by figures bigging up range and re-charging times.

It’s a sure sign of the times and while the electric movement has been moving somewhat more glacial on the motorcycling front, it won’t be long before - as stipulated by legislation - you’ll be seeing more EVs being pushed over their fossil-fuelled counterparts.

Parking the electric debate for a moment (we know most of you aren’t - at best - sold, at worst horrified by the notion) but without a doubt it is a corner of the market that is gaining significant traction as we delve deeper into 2022.

For now, the lion’s share of the electric sales have come on the scooter side, which makes absolute sense given their general use for commercial or urban convenience.

While it has taken some years for cars to enjoy refined electric technology to extend range and bring charging times down, it means motorcycle and scooter brands can take advantage of the best available now.

However, if range can be adjusted depending on whether you’re frugal or just can’t help ragging your motor, generally you will know from launch how long it will take to keep your vehicle sufficiently charged for action.

It’s an area that has shown impressive gains in recent years, with fast-charging capabilities getting waiting times down to well under an hour for a majority top up.

Then again, these don’t hold comparison with the latest innovation being pushed by one India’s biggest - and growing - scooter brands, Ola, which is set to use cutting-edge technology to slash those times down in figures even the most cynical of motorcyclists will be impressed by.

Ola has teamed up with tech-company StoreDot, based in Israel where much of the latest battery and charging related ideas have emerged from.

It is touting its XFC technology can charge an Ola scooter from flat to 100% in - get this - only five minutes… that certainly looks good on a poster!

As for ‘how’ is a question better left to the company, but the application - presuming it works - is quite the revolution for a burgeoning market, with StoreDot’s collaboration with Ola having the dual-benefit of allowing it space to manufacture in India too.

If you’re not sold on an Ola scooter, it turns out StoreDot is at the forefront of getting this technology to the market, so expect this to become something of a norm over the next few years, even if it’s reasonable to assume a longer wait for a larger model, like a LiveWire ONE.

Which is just as well because soon we’ll be getting to a stage where waiting for someone to finish topping up their vehicle from one of the relatively sparsely distributed stations will become more irking than waiting for the charge itself.

Nevertheless, StoreDot may have a solution for this too since it is claimed to be working on even shorter waiting times of just two minutes… I mean, you can spend longer at a petrol station filling your car or motorcycle up than wait two minutes to charge up!