Solar Hyperion Review – A Portable Hyper Scooter

The Solar Hyperion, one of the most anticipated electric scooters of 2024, promises a top speed of 65 mph. But can Solar’s first hyper scooter deliver the same fun factor as their other rides? We find out in our review.

Solar Hyperion – $3299

Solar has made fast electric scooters before, but they’ve never made a real hyper scooter – the kind of electric scooter that could compete with scooters like the Kaabo Wolf King GTR, Teewing Mars XTR, RoadRunner RX7, Inmotion RS Midnight, and other high-performance vehicles. Until now. Meet the Solar Hyperion.

How does it stack up against the competition? When it comes to max speed, range, acceleration, and other metrics, the Hyperion comes out right where it should for the money. It doesn’t quite hit that promised top speed of 65 mph, but that’s never really what I’m most excited about.

The Solar Hyperion has a huge battery with 40 amp hours, 73 Volts, and reliable Samsung cells. It’s also got two big motors with a combined peak power of 9,340 Watts. To handle all that power on the road, the Hyperion rides on 11-inch knobby or street tires, your choice, and a fully adjustable hydraulic suspension system.

It’s got all the right specs. But the problem with big scooters is that their weight and bulk can make them difficult to live with. Hyper scooters are hard to transport, and they don’t always corner as well as smaller scooters. The Hyperion, on the other hand, remains relatively nimble for its size, while accommodating riders of all kinds.

Who Is This Scooter For?

Despite being way more portable than some of the bigger scooters, the Solar Hyperion is actually super roomy. The deck is 22 and a half inches long and 10 inches wide. It’s one of the roomiest out there, and one of the longest decks we’ve seen.

This scooter’s great for sport riding and touring, with long range and supreme ride quality. The bars are very tall, at 41 and three quarters inches, and they’re also very wide. I find it comfortable, and I’m five foot 10, 165 pounds. But because of the adjustable suspension and the huge deck, the Hyperion can suit riders of almost any size and shape, up to its 330 pound weight limit, for sporty longer rides.

Solar Hyperion Specs

Our Full Video Review

Solar Hyperion: Performance

Top Speed

Solar claims a top speed of 65 miles per hour. We didn’t get that. I spent three days at our top speed run spot with two different Hyperions. During those runs, I saw single direction top speeds of up to 60 miles per hour. But we always take the average of the sustained top speed in two different directions. 

The ESG official top speed is 58.6 miles per hour, putting the Solar Hyperion right in the middle of our comparison scooters. The Hyperion is one of the fastest electric scooters we’ve ever tested at this price. I could feel that it had enough power to go even faster, but it was kind of holding back. So I reached out to Solar and told them it felt like it’s hitting traction control. They confirmed that, in fact, that was happening.

Our speed run location is pretty smooth, but it’s not perfectly smooth. The bumps were just enough to trigger traction control and make the throttle back off a little bit here and there. One of the runs I could see was heading towards about 62 miles per hour before I got interrupted by a truck. So if you’re on perfectly smooth roads, don’t be surprised if you see higher top speeds than the ESG official 58.6.

Acceleration

When we look at acceleration, the Hyperion is also right in the middle of our comparison scooters, with a zero to 30 time of 3.9 seconds. This is an outstanding result for the price, and it feels even quicker than that. But looking more closely at the data, I could see there was a slow ramp up at the beginning of the run, which I also attribute to traction control kicking in.

Coming back to the X factor – the fun factor – the thing even more important than the performance numbers is how the scooter delivers power and how it lets you ride. Here is something you can’t do on every scooter: you can leave the Solar Hyperion in the absolute highest performance mode and just casually ride around.

I love having the instant access to all this power. You don’t have to push any buttons. I literally just ride all the time in top mode.

The ease of acceleration coupled with traction control and a throttle that eases you into higher speeds all make the Solar Hyperion a performance scooter that doesn’t require a lot fancy technique to ride fast.

Hill Climb

The Hyperion climbed our ESG test hill in 6.6 seconds, putting it once again among the very best scooters we’ve tested at this price. One thing’s for sure: you’re gonna stomp any hill you come across. This is the kind of scooter that really surprises bystanders when they see it shooting up a 20% incline.

Range

The heart of any scooter is its battery. And at the heart of the Hyperion is a huge, 72 Volt, 40 amp hour battery made from Samsung 21700 cells, which are more energy dense than regular 18650s. Apart from the quality of the cells, the overall size of the battery relative to price is exceptional.

The battery charges from empty to full in about 13 hours. Using its second port, you can cut to about seven and a half by adding another charger.

The battery’s exactly the same size as the one in the big NAMI BURN-E scooters, the InMotion RS, and the Dualtron Thunder II.

Solar says the Hyperion has a maximum range in eco mode of about 70 miles. We test scooters the way people actually ride them to find out a more realistic range. In full performance mode with all settings maxed, the Solar Hyperion took me 53.3 miles on our hilly range course before it stopped.

Braking

The Solar Hyperion’s NUTT hydraulic brakes excelled in our tests, bringing the scooter to a full stop from 15 miles per hour in only 9 feet, the second shortest distance among all our comparison scooters, a group that includes some of the most expensive and best-rated scooters on the market.

Of course, we expect hydraulic brakes at this price, and these aren’t even most premium, four-piston variety, but they work really, really well, giving you precise control over slowing and stopping and performing excellently on the wet roads I rode when testing the scooter.

Ride Quality

The Hyperion is more portable than most other Hyper scooters at 112.8 pounds, but it’s also a very big, roomy scooter. The deck is massive, as I mentioned, and the rear foot rest is comfortable. And the suspension, which is adjustable, makes the scooter very flexible.

In terms of stability, I was surprised. This is a single stem scooter, so I was a little bit nervous about potentially going around 60 miles an hour with no steering damper. It turned out to be really stable. Part of that has to do with the steering bearings.

I’m glad Solar sent the tool along for the steering bearings because you can use it like a steering damper by tightening your bearings. It’s not something I would do on a motorcycle, but a lot of companies do it on scooters and it really works.

Altogether, I really like the ride quality for the Hyperion for sport riding and touring. I might still pick the Kaabo Wolf King GTR for off-road riding because of the shorter bars. If you land a jump, you’re less likely to hit your chin on the bars. But I like the Hyperion much better on the road.

What I love about the fully adjustable suspension of the Hyperion is that you can change it for the type of riding you’re going be doing. If you’re going off-road, you might loosen up the damping a little bit and maybe give it more spring. For road riding, you might soften up the spring and tighten up the damping to give it a sportier feel. You can fine tune this suspension to suit your weight and style of riding.

Solar Hyperion: Design, Build & Reliability

We’ve given the Solar Hyperion an 8.8 out of 10 for reliability. The score is pulled down by the lack of UL Certification, but pulled way up by the Samsung-made battery, split rims for easy tire changes, warranty and parts availability from Solar, and a water resistance rating of IP66.

You may be wondering where the Hyperion’s fenders are. The answer is they were on the way from Solar when we did our testing, so we did not get to test the fender coverage. I rode in the wet and the scooter suffered no ill effects. Still, I wouldn’t make a habit of riding a $3,000+ electric scooter in the rain.

The Hyperion’s reliability is also pulled up by its innovative wheel/tire design. Historically, you either got tubeless tires, which are more resistant to flats, or you would get split rims, which are easier to change, but came with tubes.

The Hyperion has special wheels that have an O-ring in the middle. That way the wheels can split, but still seal in the middle and let you run tubeless tires. When it’s time to change tires, you’re not struggling with levers, and you don’t even need to remove the motor from the scooter.

The dashboard is the typical TFT screen that you’ll see on like a NAMI, a Wolf King GTR, or a Roadrunner RX7. You can toggle through most settings on the display, but there’s also an app, which you don’t get with the GTR, XTR, RX7, or even the EMOVE Roadster.

You get a nice bright headlight with 2000 lumens and a strong cutoff so you won’t blind riders coming toward you. And you get turn signals, but they’re only visible from the rear of the scooter. There’s also a motorcycle grade horn tucked behind the front suspension.

Headlight switches also turn on the Tron lighting in the deck, and those lights come in your choice of four different colors, which you have to pick when you order the scooter. The scooter comes in either black or what they call gray but looks like more of a silver.

We don’t usually think of portability as being one of the standout features of a hyper scooter, but it really is for the Solar Hyperion. At 112.8 pounds, I don’t think anyone will want to carry this upstairs as part of their commute, but it’s possible, and you could do it if you really wanted to.

Like other hyper scooters, the handlebars don’t fold down to the stem, so the Hyperion’s still pretty wide when the stem is folded. But it’s manageable by one person in a way the InMotion RS, Wolf King GTR, Teewing Mars XTR, and other performance scooters simply aren’t.

Solar Hyperion: Is It Worth It? Our Verdict

So, what do we think overall of the Solar Hyperion? Well, I think it’s right on target when it comes to price versus performance. Our testing shows this scooter competing with the best of the bunch in every important metric, and it definitely came through on the fun factor we’ve come to expect from Solar.

I’ve never really been able to put my finger on where all that fun comes from, but I think it’s sort of a fine balance between the suspension, brakes, and the power of Solar’s scooters. Everything works together so that one part of the scooter never ends up overwhelming the other, and this makes their scooters inherently fun to ride. Learn more about the Solar Hyperion at the link below.