There are other companies targeting other areas of the market.
Ultra high end: Harley Davidson Livewire, Zero SR/F
High end: Fuell, Cake
Mid range: Zero S/DS/FX
Low end: Sur-on Light Bee, CSC City Slicker
The biggest problem for electric bikes is recharge time. Motorcycle batteries are physically small and have low range, and take hours to recharge compared to 1-2 minutes to refuel at a gas station. That makes them unusable for anything except city commuting or tossing in the back of a truck on the way to the OHV area. Meanwhile the fastest growing segment in motorcycling is adventure riding, which is for bikes that can be ridden thousands of miles at a time both on and off road (sometimes 50-100 miles away from paved roads or services of any kind).
Wow, what kind of adventure bikes can be ridden for thousands of miles at a time? I only get about 200-250 miles on dirt, and that's with an extra tank of gas strapped to the back.
Are they like 650cc+ with huge fuel tanks? I shudder to think of trying to pick one of those up on a muddy slope...
Anyways, an electric bike that could do ~200 miles seems like it could do well as a replacement for smaller engines, but I haven't seen any dual-sports that realistically claim a range of over 100 miles with normal use, and you're right that that would barely get you away from the major highways in most places.
I assume they mean with periodic stops for gasoline, which is a lot more common than a quick charge station.
That said, it’s an interesting thought exercise to go unsupported and make your own (solar) fuel via motorcycle. Of course to maximize charging / travel you’d have to ride at night, which would sort of suck.
Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman just completed a ride from South America to Alaska on electric motorcycles. They had some Rivian electric support vehicles carrying charged batteries, and also people along their route often let them top off their bikes while hosting them. They'll be making their trip into a web series called Long Way Up (the third in a series of trip blogs they've done over the past 15 years)
Thousands of miles with refueling- mine gets 200-220 miles out of a single tank. There are aftermarket DRZ tanks that can get 500 miles of range, they essentially replace both your tank and some of your body panels.
They're not that hard to pick up with the right technique/leverage. YouTube has tutorials showing tiny women pick up 800lb bikes, and MOTOTREK has a good video on how to pick up a big bike off of dirt or mud.
Electrics are still milking the premium market, is the problem.
In the West, a brand new Ninja 400 fuel injected sport bike is $US 5000, new. Through economies of scale, and their getting the bugs out and widening tolerances over its 30 years history, they're now the AK-47 of bikes: cheap and dependable. You can spend $20k on a bike, but you don't need to. Similar Honda and Suzuki models. Harley and BMW can't and won't touch this part of the market.
The Zero starts at $US 11k but you need to spend more like 18k to get something as useful as the current gas bikes.
This is correct. Also consider that almost any Japanese bike can be had used for $3k or under. Electric bikes are in low five figures and the used market is basically non-existent. We have no data on how reliable they will be long term either. Plus range and availability of charging stations is a thing.
But I think the main reason we won’t see ICE motorcycles go away soon is simply because used bikes are such a huge market. You can buy a 1970s Honda and get it to run again very cheaply and it will just plugging along. You can’t do that with cars for the most part and the safety features have improved with cars with every decade while for motorcycles they have only improved substantially in 2010s with the EU mandating ABS as a requirement. So a 2005 bike is going to be essentially the same as a 1975 one, safety-wise. I would bet in 2070 people will absolutely be riding 100 year old bikes.
> while for motorcycles they have only improved substantially in 2010s with the EU mandating ABS as a requirement.
I really wish it were possible to get advanced cornering ABS on something that isn’t a bajillion cc displacement. The smallest, most reasonably sized adventure touring bike I’ve seen with cornering ABS is the new BMW F750GS, which is still >800cc. I sat on one the other day and the weight and height seemed manageable, but what I’d love is a 650cc or smaller Japanese bike where I could get advanced safety tech. I mean, these bikes are where a lot of new riders like myself start, and attract exactly the sort of rider who is likely to do something stupid and reactionary in a corner.
I have ABS on my 500cc Honda, which is honestly as big a bike as I’d have wanted to start on, and I’d have happily parted with the extra dollars for cornering ABS and traction control had they been options. I cannot for the life of me figure out why the best life-saving tech isn’t at least an option on beginner-sized bikes.
I'd suggest taking a look at a gentpy used Triumph Street Triple (R/S Optional). Depending on the year and mileage you're looking between $6000-9000 with stock ABS and with 675cc right in that sweet spot you're looking for. I picked one up 2 years ago, 2014 with 1400km and no regrets whatsoever.
I think cornering ABS is only available on the new 1050? I think that’s also the case with the Tiger (I’m part of the adventure-touring market segment). You can get cornering ABS on the huge 1200, but not the 800, IIRC.
Like, I want a 500cc Honda twin with cornering ABS. As it is, I have ABS, but cornering ABS looks like a solid evolution.
What makes this a reality is that bikes are driven far less as daily drivers than cars are so typically the engines aren’t abused or used outside of a recreational(long trips, weekend runs, ...) setting by most riders. A ten year old bike may only have 30k miles on it, and most of its useful life left.
I have a bot that scrapes used motorcycle listings for sale in my part of the US [1], and I've never seen anything listed with more than 70k miles.
Furthermore, those 70k mile bikes were all meticulously maintained by older owners, and I could have bought any of them for under $4k and probably ridden coast to coast the next day without issue.
I mean, this is around $4000 new and the 80km range is enough for daily use, what's the problem? Electric bikes with similar range have been a thing for a very long time, there's loads of choice in the market already(in EU anyway, no idea about US)
Sure, but those require a full A-class driving licence, which is both a significant time and financial investment. This you can ride with either a very simple theory-based test or even without any qualification at all.
Wow, I didn't know about the Kawasaki Ninja 400. That's a really impressive bike at a fantastic price. That would have been like 2000 dollars in 1987. Completely unheard of. Motorcycles have come a long way.
It has never been a better time to be a rider, you can get some seriously amazing bikes for the money.
Unfortunately it is a very bad time to try to make money in the motorcycle industry right now. Older riders are aging out and interested young people can't afford bikes due to student debt and other debt.
> young people can't afford bikes due to student debt and other debt.
I find comments like these interesting because it shows a fundamentally different perspective on motorcycling.
It sounds like you view it as a hobby or pastime, and an expensive one at that, likely because you see it as something to purchase after already owning a car.
I see it as a highly efficient and cheap form of personal transportation, especially for urban areas. In my city (Montreal) motorcycles park for free and almost anywhere they wish, essentially lawlessly. I don't own a car and use a motorcycle to avoid public transportation yet not impact the environment nearly as much as a full size car. The economics of it are amazing too, I spend about $15-20 on gasoline a month while commuting daily, spend almost no time in traffic and nothing on parking. Maybe $600 a year on insurance and $300 on plates. The initial costs were higher due to getting gear but that still doesn't compare to car ownership.
Friend of mine in the Bay Area commutes on a motorcycle. says depreciation and maintenance negate any savings. He does it because it saves him an hour a day commuting.
$120/season for oil change and filter + new tires every 2 years (unsure of the costs here as I've yet to need this on my new bike). Surely this is comparable or less than the average ICE car?
Outside of very large cities where filtering is legal, the maintenance costs eat up any money you save over an economy car. Tires are especially brutal- my commute makes me have to replace both tires every winter.
My tires will have to be replaced in the spring but maintenance costs other than that are about $120 for oil change and filter once per season. What other costs are you getting?
Oil and filter change for my least expensive bike: $22, lasts 1500 miles
Oil and filter change for my lowest maintenance bike: $67, lasts 6000 miles
Valve adjustment: $200-300 for a professional to remove the head and cams and adjust the valve shims. Interval varies, usually every 10000-15000 miles on a bike. Not required at all on a car due to hydraulic lifters that are fine for a car engine but can't move fast enough for a high-revving bike engine.
Final drive: Chain and sprocket need replacement every 12000-15000 miles, costs about $150 or so. Shafts need shaft oil every 10000 miles, dunno what the price is since I've never had anything other than a chain. Most cars last 100000+ miles without any transmission service.
Spark plugs last 100000+ miles on a car but usually are changed every 10000-20000 miles on a bike. Modern bikes often use multiple plugs per cylinder. $5 per plug.
The tires are the main killer for me. A set of tires on my car lasts about 6 years, while I have to replace tires every year on my main bike. That adds up very quickly.
Other costs:
Coolant every 4 years, brake fluid every 2 years, but that is similar on the car.
I have to admit that good coverage bike insurance is cheaper than good coverage car insurance as long as you stay away from sportbikes and hoon machines.
All that makes sense except the Montreal part... riding in icy conditions sounds like pure terror to me. And I say this as someone who used to commute by bicycle year around in Montana.
They are definitely coming. I would totally love to get one. I think one issue is that they are typically a lot more expensive than traditional motorcycles. Additionally, there are not too many used electric bikes that have significantly depreciated in value. For example, I purchased my current bike at ~2k from craigslist. I just looked up the prices for some used Zeros on CL and they vary around 10-20k. In the US, for the most part, motorcycles are still typically viewed as being toys.
Looking forward to see how well the Lightning Strike does.
When I tried penciling out electric motorcycles it seemed like you run into scaling problems.
Compare Model 3 at 4000lbs with a 60kwh battery. Vs a Zero SR at 485lbs and a 14.4kwh battery. The Zero weighs 1/8th as much but the battery is 1/4. The SR has 1/2 range to boot.
Not trying to piss on electric motorcycle by any means. It's just difficult to make an electric motorcycle match a gasoline one spec for spec, especially at the same price point.
For the city you might as well just do an e-bike or something a lot like an e-bike.
So that leaves things like this for the highway. Motorcycles are not very aerodynamic so they tend to take a lot of battery when run fast. So you are probably better off with a small electric car.
Except you do not really ride bikes because they are efficient or convenient. They are way less convenient than cars almost every time. Exception: lane filtering in CA in traffic. Bikes are just the most fun you can have with your pants on.
- Electric range and recharge rate is abysmal compared to gas bikes
- The excellent used motorcycle market makes the savings on gas and maintenance noncompetitive. We never had Cash for Clunkers for motorcycles, so you can buy an amazing lightly used gas motorcycle for $2500 or so.
As far as I can tell, a huge part is that they are incredibly overpriced. No one is going to pay $14k for an electric cycle when a brand new gas cycle costs $8k. People put together their own scooters from batteries, a controller and an electric motor on YouTube all the time, but companies are trying to get people to give up the same amount that could buy them a Ducati.
Gas costs are negligible on a motorcycle, I pay at most $20 a month for premium (91 or better) gasoline... The economics of an electric bike just aren't there yet while they remain above $10k for the base models.
As much as I'd love to own an electric bike,vlike a zero, they're still in a premium early adopter phase that I can't justify yet. A good comparison would be the model s vs 3.
Speaking of, it's a shame Tesla won't make an electric motorcycle.
The specifications and renders certainly look interesting, but there’s nothing on that site that indicates there is anything more than specs and renders.
I felt that the site was a tease. The pictures way too close up, not showing you the whole thing, hidden in the dark. When I finally reached a picture of the device, I thought the very square 'battery' (?) looked chunky. "And now for something completely different" more pictures of the same (or very similar?) except with a tablet glued on. Marketing.
I hope that's not a touch screen. Anyone who has ever ridden a bike can tell you how impractical and distracting that would be. Try using it in the rain, with gloves on.
Definitely looks like a touch screen interface from the photos.
The screen itself is distracting enough even without being a touchscreen. I really disklike the tesla-esque design with it, it feels completely wrong for a bike.
I mean, electric mopeds have been a thing for decades now, when I was growing up certainly most kids had electric mopeds as petrol ones were more expensive and required more maintenance. Somehow these companies make it look as if electric bikes are something new that hasn't been done before - that's nonsense.
One thing I notice with electric motorcycle is that riding experience is much better than gasoline version ( way less vibration and better throttle control ). In Taiwan there's a local company call Gogoro selling electric scooter (Scooter/motorcycle is a very common here). Another interesting feature is that it doesn't rely on charging station rather you swap the empty battery for charged ones from any battery exchange stations ( of course you had to pay for it).
I used to scrape my toes when turning left at intersections on my old KTM if I didn't move my toes back on the peg. It's not a terribly unusual stance for a road bike.
The thing is a flat line and they didn't bother to flare the "tank" so I'm not sure what your thighs are supposed to hold on to?
It looks like braking too hard might cause you to flip right over the front.
How much of this is actually made in Nepal? India's been churning out vast quantities of increasingly decent domestic/joint venture bikes for decades now and is starting to get serious about car manufacturing, but I wasn't aware that Nepal was building much in the way of anything -- there can't possibly be much of a local supply chain.
Sorry the website is a complete disaster for me on Firefox OS X.
In any case, it looks targeted at the higher end.
I would think electric bikes/mopeds can be cheaper and more reliable than gasoline, and there would be a very big market, especially in poorer countries, competing with Honda Cubs etc as general workhorses.
I think it would be fantastic if electric motorcycles would become popular here in the US. Maybe then I wouldn't have to hear super loud and scary exhaust pipes! Who am I kidding though... the people who do that would find some other way to be annoyingly inconsiderate.
That loudness is a safety feature. It helps keep drivers alert for the presence of a motorcycle. I don’t ride, but I see our streets are becoming more and more dangerous as people ditch sedans for SUVs and trucks; extra sound proofing is added to cars; and people continue to text, eat or be under the influence while driving.
I’m by no means an advanced rider, but I am a rider, and I don’t buy the “pipes save lives” argument in the slightest. The cone of sound goes out the back of your bike when accelerating: pretty much alerting the motorists I’m least worried about to my presence.
I’m way more worried about people doing stupid stuff in front of me than behind me. And when I’m worried about people behind me, I’m mostly worried at stops that someone will rear-end me... when my hypothetical loud pipes would be idling at a purr anyway.
On my very sensible Honda CB500X, I have a quiet exhaust and have a daytime headlight modulator, which I’m positive has caught the attention of distracted motorists. I’d take a very cool and very legal headlight modulator over loud pipes 100 times out of 100.
Yeah, now let's make the cars that loud as well to keep the pedestrians more alert. Preferably loud enough to make you deaf unless you get out the way and take cover.
The title is a bit click-baity. It almost reads like it's the first electric bike, which it's not. Also interesting choice in name. Project Zero is pretty similar to the Zero bike. Zero bike has been around for quite awhile now. I am glad to see some competition in this space.
With languages that are not written phonetically with wide regional variations in pronunciation (English), I think it makes sense to not care as long as you're understood.
Might as well demand that Japan be pronounced Neep-on or Cuba Cooba and not Cyooba.
I always liked the BBC's approach -- English words and well settled loan words are allowed to have regional pronunciation, foreign words go via the pronunciation unit. So news readers pronounce (or try in the case of that Icelandic volcano) locations, names etc as they are intended to be. Names are personal, it's offensive to mispronounce them. Make the effort, even if it involves struggling a little with sounds that are not a natural part of your language.
"Not care so long as you're understood" reminds me of US TV approach, where every report pronounces that funny foreign name different, often painfully wrong; or periodic fashions in education -- during the sixties and early seventies UK fashion for "no one cares about grammar so long as the little dear is understood". It's coloured, limited and ruined my communication for the following 50 years, despite much effort to self teach as an adult. I'll probably never put all commas, semicolons and what not in the right place naturally, nor clear sentences structure -- they come with a second editing pass. A pass HN mostly doesn't get, sorry. :)
We got, in total: "verbs -- doing words, adjectives -- describing words, nouns -- naming words, tenses, and the use of the full stop". I honestly remember nothing else of grammar being taught whatsoever.
TL;DR I would start wars against "not care as long as you're understood". It's a horrible, disrespectful and limiting approach. Happy New Year. :)
I'm generally in agreement and want to anticipate an objection—that the sounds of foreign words often fall well outside of any given person's native set of sounds.
Take Iran for example. It's rendered often in English as [ɑɪ.ɹæn] (eye-ran). What it "should" be is [i.ɾɑn] (ee-rahn). Fortunately, all the sounds in [i.ɾɑn] are ones that occur in most varieties of English (with the exception of the [ɾ], but that's minor), so most speakers are able to accommodate without issue.
Now compare that to Shanghai: its English rendition is [ʃeɪŋ.hɑɪ], and its Mandarin pronunciation is [ʂâŋ.xài]. Most Englishes lack the voiceless retroflex fricative [ʂ], and the same for the voiceless velar fricative [x], and to make matters worse, Mandarin is tonal, which puts the correct pronunciation of this word squarely out of reach for almost all English speakers.
It still makes sense to insist that people try as hard as they reasonably can. Perhaps to say that speakers should get as close as possible—in the case of Shanghai, for example, maybe this would mean [ʃɑŋ.hɑɪ] instead of [ʃeɪŋ.hɑɪ].
And Deutschland isn't actually pronounced Germany or l'Allemagne. At some point you have let go and allow a language to have its own words for geographic terms outside of where it is spoken. It can be I bit difficult where borders have shifted (revisionists would insist on "true" names even if they don't know them themselves without referencing a historic map while everybody else is making a conscious effort to avoid those) or where a name was forced on a place by invading foreigners that got ousted again, but it's perfectly possible to navigate that problem-space without trying to go native pronouncement everywhere.
In fact, in a case of politically questionable names it could even be seen as a sign of antirevisionist acceptance to introduce a badly butchered (if necessary) transcription and pronouncement of the local name into a language that used to have a name that isn't acceptable anymore.
You're right that some come with not easily reached challenges, like the tonality of Chinese. BBC reports will periodically give a rendition that's like a foreign speaker dubbing in one word that feels alien to our natural tongue, with different intonation and what have you. Sometimes that sounds a little jarring or unnatural in the middle of a sentence. I picture the odd newsreader having to spend 20 minutes in a corridor trying to practice today's impossible challenge.
But I do give a lot of marks for them trying and exposing us to how the person pronounces their own name or town, and prefer it to Anglicising everything. Even if sometimes it only results in an imperfect close attempt with a layer of English speaker's difficulty, or that we don't realise it's not quite correct Finnish or Cantonese etc.
In American English there is nothing prurient about the word root, it means the part of a plant which grows into the ground, connotations derived from same (e.g. etymological root), and to cheer for your favorite team.
It's just accent drift, happens all the time. The other pronunciation is also in use, I would say "Root 66" but I call the network packet devise a "Rowter".
In Greek not in English though. In spoken English "Pee" is urine, not the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter.
Also it's worth noting that Ancient Greek and Modern Greek have different pronunciations. Some of the English pronunciations are actually more 'correct' than the Modern Greek names, e.g. the English pronunciation of Gamma.
Let's start fixing one by one. Why are you against learning to properly correct as you go along, the list is long doesn't mean we should not correct even one of them.
> May I take this opportunity to highlight to our American friends that its not pronounced as Nay-Paul. No. Its pronounced as Nay-Paal.
Er, while it's not a construct that appears much in English to start with, I'm fairly sure the natural phonetic interpretation of “Paal” to many and perhaps most American readers would be identical to “Paul”, so that's a non-helpful correction.
Also, I'm pretty sure the “Nay” part is not part of the (English) pronunciation; this source[0] gives what I would write out informally as “nih-PULL” as the UK pronunciation and “nuh-PALL” as the US pronunciation.
Despite having a cumulative 8 years of foreign language courses against three different languages, I have no clue how you’re expecting me to pronounce “paal”.
Is it “pal” - like friend / buddy? “Pail” - like something you’d carry water in? Something else?
No, they need to be allowed to use fossil fuel infrastructure to develop just like us.
The arrogance we have developed such that none of us in the first world uses or have used electric bikes predominately in our families, now, or a 100 years ago by our ancestors when they first appeared and were about technologically the same as today.
This, it's good enough for them idea is astounding. This road has been well travelled.
Don't get me wrong, I'd like the West to rip out all fossil infrastructure as soon as possible, so we're using electric cars and bikes too. I figure it's better for us and them.
Why is it any different to the developing world experience of mobile phones? They expanded directly to mobiles without any landline phase first, and because of that have been surprisingly successful. Do you claim Western arrogance here?
If we simply shrug and let all the developing countries go via the worst of Victorian era coal, then 20th century oil, RCP 8.5 starts to look like an optimistic pipe dream. Everyone will suffer.
Ultra high end: Harley Davidson Livewire, Zero SR/F
High end: Fuell, Cake
Mid range: Zero S/DS/FX
Low end: Sur-on Light Bee, CSC City Slicker
The biggest problem for electric bikes is recharge time. Motorcycle batteries are physically small and have low range, and take hours to recharge compared to 1-2 minutes to refuel at a gas station. That makes them unusable for anything except city commuting or tossing in the back of a truck on the way to the OHV area. Meanwhile the fastest growing segment in motorcycling is adventure riding, which is for bikes that can be ridden thousands of miles at a time both on and off road (sometimes 50-100 miles away from paved roads or services of any kind).