Is Electric Motorcycles the future?

2wzilla

2wzilla

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Well now, been lurking around YouTube and came across some nifty Electric Motorcycles. I know some will say "You god darn green energy junky", and all. But I find the concept or Electrical Motorcycles rather interesting, given that electrical motors provide "instant" power delivery (*** kind off, but not really fully instant ***) without the lag of injecting the fuel into the engine, because there isn't any fuel :D. But, as with anything Electrical there is always the downside of battery and charging, given that here in North America we ain't big on Electrical vehicles and as such don't have charging station as rapidly available as say in Europe, plus having to wait 30 min to 3 hours for your car or Motorcycle to fuel up is pretty darn long, considering gas takes 2-4 minutes to fuel up and you're good to go for another 250-400 km trip.

Plus being a bit of a geeky person that I am I keep tabs on Electrical Motorcycles and other general techy gear. Funny to me not many companies stay afloat in the world of Electric Motorcycles. For example I came across Mission RS on YouTube today by a blind luck, the bike looks like any other 600-1000cc bikes with exception it's electrical, but Mission Motorcycles seemed to have died and no longer makes Mission RS, which is bit annoying given that if you bought one you're stuck without any support or parts for that thing, unless they still make parts for it.

The other Electrical Motorcycle company that's been around for few years and is still around is Zero Motorcycles, unlike Mission Motorcycles their prices aren't as ridiculous granted you're not getting a fully electric SS like you were with Mission, but hey I can't complain about a more or less reasonable price for a Supermoto like fully Electric Bike. Well who knows maybe one day Motorcycles will be fully Electric like in many different Japanese Anime titles, or like in good old iRobot or Judge Dredd. But for now neither are Electric Cars or Motorcycles the future, they are still a very long way to go in delivering the technology to general public without the crazy price tag. But the idea behind Electric Bikes and there 2.0 functionality with the Web/Cloud was amazing, sure some may scream privacy, others may scream no clutch or gear box, but oh well :D.
 
2wzilla said:
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If this or something very much like it is the future of electric motorcycling, I'm okay with that. It's certainly better than:

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Perhaps, if and when range anxiety, recharge time and recharge infrastructure/availability issues are all resolved to the levels we see with gasoline now, I'll get on board. But, I'm an old(er) fart and will likely always prefer internal combustion.
 
Blackfin said:
Perhaps, if and when range anxiety, recharge time and recharge infrastructure/availability issues are all resolved to the levels we see with gasoline now, I'll get on board. But, I'm an old(er) fart and will likely always prefer internal combustion.
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Ah yes that's still the major problem with Electrical Motorcycles. For starters most of them are dirt ugly. Mission Motorcycles made a neat looking bike, but went bankrupt and messed up production, so I don't think there is actually any bikes ever sold by them outside of the Demo/Prototypes they showcased to media and such. Zero Motorcycles look like your run down the mill Supermoto with Ducati price tag. Sure the argument with Electrical bikes is that there is no maintenance involved, you know outside of changing the tires and brake pads + brake fluid and maybe the chain. But till this day gas engines are still cheaper to replace vs. motorcycle engine. Not only that but I'm darn sure most of the Electrical bikes have Proprietary engines vs your run down the mill Honda or Suzuki engines which you can easily get.

Who knows really. Maybe in the future when we figure a way to have batteries capable of providing either infinite or year worth supply of energy, Electric cars/motorcycles/ect will be more popular. Would be interesting riding one of this Akira motorcycles lol

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Personally I can never see any of the tattoo'd Jesus wannabes an electric Harley. So no.
 
Drennan57 said:
Personally I can never see any of the tattoo'd Jesus wannabes an electric Harley. So no.
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Harley Davidson - Project LiveWire, check it out :D

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Maybe the LiveWire won't attract the harley hardcore members, but there will always be someone willing to jump onto the train or bike in this case :D
 
MacDoc said:
I think the entry point will be light off road machines and urban transport both with swappable batteries.
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Ah, it's a nice bike but I think they made it for track/race use only, and hey why not. But yes. The batteries must be cheap and easy to swap/install and as well we have to have many charging stations that charge bike in 5-10 min to a decent charge. I recall Tesla charges 30 min for like 50-70 km travel distance.
 
2wzilla said:
Harley Davidson - Project LiveWire, check it out :D

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Maybe the LiveWire won't attract the harley hardcore members, but there will always be someone willing to jump onto the train or bike in this case :D
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Who knows. I just have a hard time picturing a McJesus riding something without a real engine. An that's not a bad thing.
 
Drennan57 said:
Who knows. I just have a hard time picturing a McJesus riding something without a real engine. An that's not a bad thing.
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Haha, almost died from laughing from your last post. But problem is, idiots here won't be able to hear you coming. Loud pipes save lifes, after all. It would be cool if in future the cars were equipped with sensors and gps with all of this being processed in the cloud. GM played with something like this, so does Google and Tesla is pretty close to the idea. A car that reads other car speed/deceleration and acts accordingly.

But thankfully we don't have many McJesus here in Brampton. Got more M1 1000cc wannabes here who will run from cops. I always put my hand on my face in disbelief, it's not like the cops have your plate and will come to your house knocking with even more nifty charges and some possible jail time, and they will learn fast about them jail soap rules lol
 
2wzilla said:
Haha, almost died from laughing from your last post. But problem is, idiots here won't be able to hear you coming. Loud pipes save lifes, after all. It would be cool if in future the cars were equipped with sensors and gps with all of this being processed in the cloud. GM played with something like this, so does Google and Tesla is pretty close to the idea. A car that reads other car speed/deceleration and acts accordingly.

But thankfully we don't have many McJesus here in Brampton. Got more M1 1000cc wannabes here who will run from cops. I always put my hand on my face in disbelief, it's not like the cops have your plate and will come to your house knocking with even more nifty charges and some possible jail time, and they will learn fast about them jail soap rules lol
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Indeed. I wonder if we will ever see the "fake sound" technology make its way onto 2 wheels. Some car manufacturers are exploring it already.
 
2wzilla said:
Haha, almost died from laughing from your last post. But problem is, idiots here won't be able to hear you coming. Loud pipes save lifes, after all. It would be cool if in future the cars were equipped with sensors and gps with all of this being processed in the cloud. GM played with something like this, so does Google and Tesla is pretty close to the idea. A car that reads other car speed/deceleration and acts accordingly.

But thankfully we don't have many McJesus here in Brampton. Got more M1 1000cc wannabes here who will run from cops. I always put my hand on my face in disbelief, it's not like the cops have your plate and will come to your house knocking with even more nifty charges and some possible jail time, and they will learn fast about them jail soap rules lol
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my thoughts exactly .
 
No! Driverless cars are the future.
 
Drennan57 said:
Indeed. I wonder if we will ever see the "fake sound" technology make its way onto 2 wheels. Some car manufacturers are exploring it already.
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That would be government-mandated low-level "noise" to be emitted when the vehicle is travelling in urban areas at speeds up to about 30 to 40 kmph, so as to give audible warning to pedestrians of approaching traffic. At speeds over 40 kmph the requirement for emitted noise would cease as tire noise will have risen to audible levels.

It won't be anything at all like the stupid loud pipes save stupid lives argument that you hear so often.
 
Drennan57 said:
Indeed. I wonder if we will ever see the "fake sound" technology make its way onto 2 wheels. Some car manufacturers are exploring it already.
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Isn't Ford and other big name US manufactures guilty of this? If i'm not mistaken Ford Edge Sport interior engine sound is actually being amplified, or so I heard on few reviews of that car and few other cars like Buick.
 
Baggsy said:
No! Driverless cars are the future.
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If they cost as cheap as a used *** Honda as well as reliable as a old school Honda and well are cheap ones more :D. 3 years wait and $150,000+ for Tesla is not in the reach of average people. There is always the Volt and what not. But I think Hybrid Technology would be the closest and most reasonable thing to do. Have car use petrol + a lithium cell.
 
griff2 said:
That would be government-mandated low-level "noise" to be emitted when the vehicle is travelling in urban areas at speeds up to about 30 to 40 kmph, so as to give audible warning to pedestrians of approaching traffic. At speeds over 40 kmph the requirement for emitted noise would cease as tire noise will have risen to audible levels.

It won't be anything at all like the stupid loud pipes save stupid lives argument that you hear so often.
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It would be pretty neat if most cars had a GPS and were interconnected knowing the position of the cars/vehicles in your proximity and there speed and such, this way the cars could act accordingly. There is somewhat low end tech like this called BLIS, if I'm not mistaken common in new Ford vehicles, the car will jerk the wheel not allowing you to merge when it's detecting an object in the blind spot. Same for auto-brakes, this way we would have less idiots rear ending people. But most accidents happen because people really have no clue how "Yield" or "Right-of-Way" works, I was a victim of this when I had a female driver ram into my bike because she failed to Yield and processed truth the intersection on her Red light.

But past 100 the noise of the wind pretty much kills everything else, and most modern cars have fair noise isolation, add loud music and even them Yoshimura pipes and the roar of i4 won't help. But in most cases stuff like this doesn't help when you have ill educated driver. But loud pipes do piss me off having people race down Dixie Rd at 2-4am.

I support technology that can save lives or reduce risk of lifelong crippling injury. What made me sad is the fact the driver said she "Was not guilty". In my mind I was like "Come on, underneath that helmet is another human being, someone's son, someone's father, someones daughter, someones child, and yet people can't admit to there mistakes?"
 
2wzilla said:
If they cost as cheap as a used *** Honda as well as reliable as a old school Honda and well are cheap ones more :D. 3 years wait and $150,000+ for Tesla is not in the reach of average people. There is always the Volt and what not. But I think Hybrid Technology would be the closest and most reasonable thing to do. Have car use petrol + a lithium cell.
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The all-battery Nissan Leaf is already proven to be reliable and at $33K less $12K in government rebates is in reach of many people.
 
griff2 said:
The all-battery Nissan Leaf is already proven to be reliable and at $33K less $12K in government rebates is in reach of many people.
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Fair enough. I forgot about the Leaf. Seems to get better mileage than Volt (Leaf 172km vs. Volt 85km) plus costs $6k cheaper. But I heard them saying they plan to cancel the gov. rebate since the gov. f upped and ended up giving rebates to the rich part of the population who were buying the fancy electric Porches
 
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