[BIG BUZZ] The Electric motorycle and its place in the market

LePhillou

LePhillou

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Anyone not living under a rock has heard of the advancements of electric vehicles in the past few years. Is it new tech? No. But it's been improved greatly to make it a more viable solution for the masses.

I'm wondering, for you guys, what kind of improvements would you need to get you to switch to Electric Vehicles?

With manufacturers like Harley Davidson coming out with their own Livewire, they clearly can see a threat...ahem...market that needs to be addressed
Brammo-Polaris is going to be a bigger player in the coming years i can imagine. I've heard so great reviews about their Empulse

But then we have Zero motorcycle with a motorcycle claiming 300km city range which matches the gas consumption of a lot of current modern day bikes.
Their performance is up to par if not better (ie. Pikes Peak climb)
Their production is increasing.

I can definitely see pricing as being a big showstopper for a lot of people along with range anxiety.... but... what else? Lack of incentives (as per http://www.gtamotorcycle.com/vbforu...lectric-vehicle-incentives&highlight=electric)

I definitely want to test ride one of these bad boys this summer.

But for myself, it's definitely the price tag at this point.
 
I think the most obvious improvement for me would be up-front price. EVs are practical short-hop commuters for many right now, even if they aren't coast-to-coasters yet. Performance in that role is fine. Charging at work is no problem. Unfortunately, 16K for a seasonal commuter in Canada would be an idealogical purchase, not a practical one. Same goes for electric cars. This is the true genius of Tesla. Brute force engineering is expensive, so market to the well-heeled first.
 
I'm thinking of this scenario like gas/nitro vs electric remote control vehicles. Burning dinosaurs was king until technology advanced enough to make going all-electric worth it (runtime/range, speed, efficiency, etc). That all happened within like 10 years. It was combustion vs NiMH. LiPo became king and now they are getting even better with Graphene tech.

I see the exact same thing happening to cars/motorcycles eventually. Electric power WILL trump combustion eventually, and the only people burning dinosaurs will be doing so for nostalgia's sake. It's inevitable!
 
We're already approaching a choke-point in terms of lithium supply and demand especially as Elon Musk's "Gigafactory" and factories in China come online. Look for lithium-chemistry battery prices to go up in the short term as demand continues to skyrocket. More than 70% of the world's supply of lithium can be found in just three countries (Chile, Bolivia and Argentina) that aren't exactly the most stable of places politically or economically.

At best the world moves from being held ransom by OPEC to being held ransom by the inevitable "LiPEC" cartel.

As demand for oil drops presumably its price will too. A market will remain open for people interested in "burning dinosaurs". Only government interference in the form of outright bans on petro-powered cars or bikes from entering city limits (for example) will force me out of petro-powered vehicles an into elec or I'll find a way to exist outside of green utopian zones and their domed cities...

dome2.jpg
 
LePhillou said:
I'm wondering, for you guys, what kind of improvements would you need to get you to switch to Electric Vehicles?
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Range is the biggest one. I need to do at least 1000 kms on a charge. I also want the battery to be small enough that I can take it into a motel room to charge over night. Since we are nowhere near this level of tech I don't plan on getting an electric bike.
 
For me there has to be rapid charging. I want to be able to plug this thing into any wall outlet as well. If there has to be some fancy docking station then we won't be able to explore and get lost or whatever. Always worrying where we would be able to plug the thing in, then for how long. A day trip could turn multi just waiting for a charge. VS. getting to a gas station (or pushing the bike to one..) Price will always be a consideration. For inside of a city, it could work out. But those kind of bikes aren't why I ride a bike. I would probably get some kind of scooter if I lived in the core.
 
-JERICHO- said:
For me there has to be rapid charging. I want to be able to plug this thing into any wall outlet as well. If there has to be some fancy docking station then we won't be able to explore and get lost or whatever.
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Problem is a standard 110v receptacle can only supply 15 amps maximum, and 15 amps doesn't go very far for charging a large battery bank - that's the reason electric cars *can* be charged via a regular 15A circuit but will take very, very long to do so, whereas if you plug them into a 220v 30+ amp circuit on their "fancy docking station", things go much faster.
 
I looked into the Zero. They are very expensive for the model I would need to ride to work ($30,000 no less). The Ontario government is not including it in their green incentives subsidies. While I would love to have one, just to piss off the oil companies, I have to agree with the peanut gallery that at current prices they are an ideological purchase. At $10,000, 120km top speed or more, and 300km range plus easy charging I would be there. We are not there yet, that's why HD has temporarily shelved its LiveWire project.
 
Roadghost said:
I looked into the Zero. They are very expensive for the model I would need to ride to work ($30,000 no less). The Ontario government is not including it in their green incentives subsidies. While I would love to have one, just to piss off the oil companies, I have to agree with the peanut gallery that at current prices they are an ideological purchase. At $10,000, 120km top speed or more, and 300km range plus easy charging I would be there. We are not there yet, that's why HD has temporarily shelved its LiveWire project.
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ha!
just looked a lil closer
so for the S model (starts at $CAD15k rounded up + fees) you can choose whether your battery charges fast at fast charge stations, or whether your battery just has more capacity bringing it to 300km

http://www.zeromotorcycles.com/ca/zero-s-order

this almost feels like an rpg lol
cause you can't have both

Yeah i guess we won't have many early adopters. For my commute it would actually work great but if i was looking for a 15k bike id be looking at my "dream" bike, the hypermotard lol oh well
 
The "Loud Pipes Save Lives" moniker stops me - I mean, I haven't been killed yet while commuting, so it must the the exhaust sound, right? :p

I would LOVE to have an electric bike for commuting, and would make the switch IF and only if;
1) performance is equal to or better than a comparable gas-powered bike, and
2) price point is also very similar to gas-powered.

I think we're still about 5 years away from electric motorcycles being as useful and affordable as gas-powered bikes
 
I have 1 bike that I use for commuting, fun runs on the weekends up to 600 kms in a day, and some touring (mostly no more than a long weekend). Any bike I replace it with will need to have the range, be able to be refueled/recharged quickly and conveniently wherever I may be, and must be price competitive. I'm not prepared to buy a second bike that will be limited just to commuting. I also enjoy shifting as an integral part of being actively engaged in the art of riding. I think that will rule out electric for the foreseeable future.
 
Blackfin said:
We're already approaching a choke-point in terms of lithium supply and demand especially as Elon Musk's "Gigafactory" and factories in China come online. Look for lithium-chemistry battery prices to go up in the short term as demand continues to skyrocket. More than 70% of the world's supply of lithium can be found in just three countries (Chile, Bolivia and Argentina) that aren't exactly the most stable of places politically or economically.

At best the world moves from being held ransom by OPEC to being held ransom by the inevitable "LiPEC" cartel.
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Plenty of sources out there who disagree with your theory (or someone else's theory you paint here ...) ... one of them here.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timwors...hium-to-feed-teslas-gigafactory/#186dcdeb3982

I am not saying the price will not creep up, but as with oil and any other resource/element it will be because of market speculation (the oil or gold doesn't go up and down because there's shortage of either one ....). Also, there's so many things which will come down in price as far as electrical vehicles once mass adoption will take off that you will not notice a price of lithium going up ....
 
mxs said:
Plenty of sources out there who disagree with your theory (or someone else's theory you paint here ...) ... one of them here.
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It's speculative both ways. I'm just saying that lithium, like oil, it a finite resource. The USGS predicts that we have a 365 year supply at current levels of consumption. However, if a hundred "Giga" factories open up worldwide to electrify not just phones and bikes but cars for markets like India and China and Africa as well as local power generation (see Tesla's "Powerwall" for an example) demand could skyrocket and world supplies could drop to just 17 years.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/artic...ntain-the-Growth-of-the-Lithium-Ion-Battery-M

Also, there's so many things which will come down in price as far as electrical vehicles once mass adoption will take off that you will not notice a price of lithium going up ....
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It's the "mass adoption" that concerns me. Like I said, I agree it's all speculative but being a finite resource with well-defined geology and billions of people to power and move and lift out of the Bronze Age, I just expect the arc of lithium to follow that of oil. Cartels will form, supply lines will choke at times etc and as adoption skyrockets there will be trouble for prices, supply and the environment.
 
Then new thinking and technology steps in. Easy to access light crude in deserts gave way to offshore drilling, then to tar sands and fracking (and that tech is now being applied to "exhausted" light crude wells). Mining follows similar historical trends. Asteroid mining is currently theoretical but not impossible. Sufficient demand will skyrocket prices enough to eventually make it viable, if not affordable. You have to remember that a group of very rich people want to stay rich and they've invested heavily in future energy to insure that. "Oil" companies hold enormous amounts of intellectual property related to "green" energy and battery technology. The cartels will be the same cartels but at least we'll have cleaner air and stable climate.
 
Blackfin said:
It's the "mass adoption" that concerns me. Like I said, I agree it's all speculative but being a finite resource with well-defined geology and billions of people to power and move and lift out of the Bronze Age, I just expect the arc of lithium to follow that of oil. Cartels will form, supply lines will choke at times etc and as adoption skyrockets there will be trouble for prices, supply and the environment.
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I wouldn't worry too much about it ... it's as finite as anything on earth or in space. By the time we have used it all, it will be replaced with something else and if not, Elon will get you a nice rare stone metorite

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CI_chondrite

It's all good, enjoy your life .....
 
inreb said:
I regularly cycle thru densely pedestriated university property and can declare without a hint of reluctance that my whirly bird peddling sounds illicit not one iota of attention. The burden seems to be on me to swerve before I hit people.
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I am also a frequenter of self-propelled two-wheeled transport, and I'd like to say that avoiding obstacles and death defying is all part of the game, braaaaah! Bicycles would be no fun if everyone magically got out of our way LOL. You are not a pedestrian,a nd you are not a vehicle. You perfectly tote that line of distiction, and therefore no rules apply to you! (except don't ride on urban sidewalks, that's just a d!ck move)


Blackfin said:
Interesting twist though.

http://www.motorcycledaily.com/2013/01/its-official-loud-bikes-save-lives/
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Well, that joke backfired. It's almost Darwinian though: are people crossing streets without looking ONLY cuz they don't hear anything? c'moooooon ppl! Let's make common-sense common again
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