Affordable 70 MPH electric motorcycle is already here and no one noticed | Hacker News Reader

Affordable 70 MPH electric motorcycle is already here and no one noticed

electrek.co

63 pointsdanboarder91 comments

The problems with electric motorcycles are well-summarised here: "Why electric motorcycles are failing" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2zlYpy6QCM . It's just kind of a bad product/market fit. I am not willing to pay 6 grand for a bike with a 37 mile highway range, sorry. My equivalently-priced ICE bike gets two times that _per gallon_.

The key, i think, is to realize that what good electric motors give us is a moped that doesn't suck. It's a different market entirely, it's The Right Answer, and they are predictably selling like hotcakes. 3 grand, no license or insurance paperwork, you can use 'em on bike paths, and 50 mph range and if your battery shits out, well, you have a _bicycle_, you'll get home -- that's a city commuter worth considering!

Like you are going to have a choice. There is going to be a day you can't register a combustion engine vehicle, but frankly given motorcycle manufacturers are doing everything in their power to make their bikes as loud and obnoxious as possible, it's going to be much much sooner.

Don't conflate the manufacturers with the aftermarket pipes crowd. All my bikes have been quite polite, and have all had OEM pipes.

I don't see a day when ICE becomes impossible to use. I do see a day where ICE engines are what horses became: basically weird niche toys that weirdoes and rich people play with because they like them, but no longer even close to the dominant transportation method.

you just dont like harleys

The only people who like Harleys are the people driving them because the noise goes out the back and they don't realize it's a lot louder for everyone else.

Every loud bike you hear on the street in the US that was made after 1979 is illegally modified.

Loud pipes save lives.

I wanted to put quiet factory pipes on my used Harley but my wife wouldn't let me. She wanted to make sure cars and trucks would hear me even if they didn't see me.

I've never noticed a difference in distracted drivers pulling out in front of me when I'm on a quiet bike vs a loud bike. Most of the sound is going the wrong way anyway.

I'll grant you drivers pulling in front of you...

If you grant me that you're must less likely to have a vehicle beside you push you out of your lane if your bike is loud.

You’re much better off getting a headlight modulator. Pipes point the wrong way. Also wear high viz.

That theory has been debunked.

the only reason i wouldnt buy an electric motorcycle for that price is because a car driver will eventually run me over

Super agree. I would own and use a menagerie of personal electric vehicles if I weren't worried about death by [someone else's] car.

(I mean, my main transportation these days is a mechanical bike, and I still worry about death by car)

stay safe, friend! remember that the first roads with motorized vehicles on them were private, and exclusively used by their tycoon financiers :)

The idea that louder motorcycles are less likely to be in accidents has been debunked.

Well, I'm saying that people run over motorcyclists regardless of any controlling factor.

Eventually batteries will hopefully come down further in price to make these things more competitive with traditional bikes. Personally I love the idea of an electric bike for the commute, and I think that one of these would be amazing to take out into the bush for camping (or in particular, hunting - going through a track completely silently would be great). The range is the big issue in that regard of course.

As with all of this tech, it's just early days I suppose. If you wound the clock back 150 years a fuel burning bike would likely have comparable problems

People complained about the original leaf with its limited range too. And plenty of people used them to get around town.

Many people buy by judging what they "might need", without really knowing or accepting what they "do need"

I've only bookmarked the above video for later but isn't short range more easily filled by e-bikes? You can bypass traffic in the bike lane and lock up at any random street post. If a cheap e-moto is worse than an deluxe e-bike, why bother?

(That said, I'm not a fan of e-bikes roughing up regular bikes in bike lanes. People need to start behaving themselves before we get into "this is why we can't have nice things" territory and e-bikes are banned from bike lanes.)

Motorcycles are different than e-bikes.

Maybe e-bikes work in some heavily congested urban environments, but motorcycles are a different use case:

- they can go on the freeway

- they can park in places e-bikes might not have a place

- they don't need to be pedaled (if you can't be sweaty when you get there)

- ground clearance

- fenders if the ground is wet

- take a passenger

etc...

Does somebody on the west coast “need” an earthquake survival kit or is that just something they “might need”?

Weight is roughly 10x as important on bikes. My bike is 400lb and its not a heavy bike. The ratio of gas weight to total weight. 5 gal tank, what 8lb a gallon? So a very small part of the total weight of the bike. They're physically harder to handle at larger sizes.

The original leaf had underspecced batteries and could be easily upgraded. Motorcycles have severe volumetric limitations for storing chemical energy in any form.

Ive been riding a zero around a central coast city for a while now and I can say youre spot on. I could have spent less than a quarter the price and got a motor assisted cargo bike. Its going to be years before electric motorcycles catch up but I look forward to when it does.

Hail to the moto blog king. Ryan Fortnine.

6 grand new for something street-legal, 70mph capable, with enough range for me to get to town and back, that's magically always full of energy whenever I'm ready to leave home, does not seem like a bad deal at all.

I used to ride sportbikes quite a lot in decades past, even rode cross-country a number of times. Putting gas in a motorcycle alone is nuisance enough for me to be willing to pay good money to never have to do again if I wanted to commute to/from town on two wheels. But I'd probably wait to pick one up on the used market, since I never buy any vehicles new.

However, sharing roads with today's drivers on two wheels is a completely different problem that will likely prevent me from getting one of these. Though the Enduro model might make a good fit for my off-road play at the desert cabin, and I could put up some solar panels to keep it charged.

not to mention that not all countries get fuel for the silly cheap prices the Americans do.

True but the 70MPG you could get on a more capable ICE bike isn't terribly expensive even at EU prices for gas, and Americans don't ride motorcycles for primary transportation anyway.

Depends what you mean by primary transportation, but lots of Americans commute by motorcycle. Especially in california lane splitting is a huge time savings in traffic (and legal here).

This is huge for places like LA. 2 hr commute or a 40 minute one where you lane split. I have never personally experienced this but my dad described getting his first bike a cb750 in LA as orgasmic. Being able to ride through traffic and not wait the hours he had to before was like nothing else he says.

Yes, I've done it for years myself. By "primary transportation" I mean that very few Americans own motorcycles and do not have an alternative means of transportation, often a car. Motorcycles are pleasure vehicles in the US -- you won't see a family making a Home Depot trip on the back of a Super Cub in the rain.

California looks outside and sees $5/gal. This is cheap?

Well, looks like it's around ~$7 in Europe based on www.globalpetrolprices.com, so yeah that would be cheap.

Yeah in a lot of Europe it’s more like $6-7. Used to be a bigger price difference, but california is not far behind. Texas though is still a lot less.

yes. add 40% on top of that for the UK price.

yeah its closer to US$7-8 a gal in Australia.

Europeans tax themselves significantly higher on gasoline than Americans are willing to go for.

I looked up the specs, and was surprised that this bike has no ABS, which is a requirement for all bikes sold in the EU. So, this is German bike that isn’t even legal in Europe? Odd.

Abs is required from a certain power/engine displacement. I suppose this bike is smaller than that.

Yikes, I think I would want ABS well ahead of 70 mph. I’ve done some traction training on a motorcycle and it has made me 100% a believer in ABS if the statistics hadn’t already.

> The problems with electric motorcycles are well-summarised here...

They're also not obnoxiously loud at 2am, either. Apparently, being very obnoxious is a huge selling point for some people. It's an attention seeking machine.

I think whatever the vehicle, be it motorcycle, moped or car, people generally are looking for good value and what that "value" represents to people. Some people will pay $xx.xx for high performance, or maybe acceleration or maybe range; customer preference is going to differ somewhat, especially since this industry is still defining standards and best practices. There are some companies out there already which are focused on best value vs range, and Evoke Motorcycles is offering pretty good range in that department. $8k USD gets you as much as 160 miles on a charge and a 90 min top up at a charging station.

For the last few months I've been watching Wheelsboy[1], this youtube channel that basically keeps tabs on and reviews the emerging Chinese EV market. It's interesting to me that the EV industry in China is just getting better and better and better, cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, and they're not paying very much attention to any market other than China itself. I don't know that it's nobody noticed more that China doesn't care about selling the rest of the world as much? (And in some instances it would be advantages not to share?)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/user/Cyxzone

China has about a quarter of the world, and a rapidly growing middle class. For a Chinese manufacturer, selling to China means targeting 1 language and 1 regulatory landscape, and yet still covering a huge number of people.

Exporting just explodes the complexity dramatically, so its no wonder they have the focus they have.

Although I'm more willing to look at positive advancements in China than most westerners that I know, it has been interesting to me to see similar youtubers eventually leave china after years of positive videos and just go on a rant about everything that's not good culturally there. Like in a mic-drop kind of way as if they've made a resolve to never go back.

Off topic a bit. I don't watch serpentza regularly but I did see that happen with him, although I must say the manner of the switch and the stories he tells on "the other side" make me uneasy that there isn't something more going on there, but who knows. Have there been others that are as dramatic as him?

Not really sure, I also personally some people that became disillusioned after being very tolerant. (I also know people that integrate very well in that society and like what's going on more than their experience in western societies.)

When I clicked the above youtube link, I saw the similarities to reviewing electronics and advancements with smiling faces that serpentza used to have, before doing a total 180.

Yeah I've also seen that a few times with people I know on a smaller scale. For now I just use the lens of:

We know when people are in china to be successful publishing about china they need to apply a rose coloured filter.

And.

It's difficult/probably not a good idea to apply non-china-thinking to china.

The scale, culture and mindset is just so different, taking a Western view of almost any aspect of china is always going to be super hard and potentially a fools errand. I think that's why it often ends up feeling so extreme, because the content creator has to navigate these two things and I don't see it being anything other than very jarring to the content consumer. (I try to keep china in perspective for myself. Building a startup to over 200 was super super hard. Emerging a billion people.. hmf. I don't always agree with China, but I do believe emerging a billion people is hard)

That's pretty much my conclusion as well.

I think I understand China pretty well, I don't think I could even explain it to help westerners without losing my standing in China. So there is always going to be this disconnect, and of course even that would embolden westerners to stick with their current conclusion about the place. There is just a lot of unsaid things that are still important to understand, and I think all societies have various topics that you will never get a satisfactorily honest opinion about from their people. So China just isn't different enough for me to only focus on things I don't like about China, thats my real conclusion: its just not different enough to treat them differently.

I would say skimming major events in the last 200 years of Chinese history, as well as their current constitution will help make China make a lot of sense.

I think what you said is very interesting. I read between some of the lines and understand you have a genuine perspective (that we could probably spend hours and hours over drinks discussing) but yeah, in all my "china thought swirling" I do about the whole emerging thing, I come to the same place, I go back and forth on your conclusion. Right now I'm on the other side, but last year I wasn't, and I tend to oscillate every year or so. The problem is by the time the history book is written about the lessons learned, translated to english, and makes it's way to a doc someone in Canada could watch... I'll be long gone, so I doubt I'll ever really know.

They can't be critical while living there due to fear of disappearing forever on account of criticizing China or CCP

also important to understand that many people are not living in fear there and are comfortable. this seems to be a point that other people in the west seem not willing to believe. a loose analogy would be that its not dissimilar from living in a theme park and understanding that you can't watch porn there or criticize the owners, and a whole host of other arbitrary prohibitions that we are only used to seeing in private sector. most of the other inhabitants in said theme park wouldn't have cared or thought of doing the things that are forbidden and also simply don't expect for a different kind of governing structure to exist. that doesn't mean that people disappearing (under a form of due process we just happen to not respect) is being condoned, no different than people disappearing in a theme park and being beat up by security would be condoned. its all important to understand.

Question was that why do people turn critical once they leave, answer to which is they can't be critical if it has potential to upend your life permanently. The fact people are living there happily has no relation to the points being discussed. Cattles can live a long happy life too, doesn't mean they are free, just happy. As long as you follow the rules set by authoritative govt you do have an ability to live an uneventful life.

okay, yes, that was the question. Right, we know they also can't be critical as almost any questioning would be seen as criticism and violate that part of the constitution. But to do a complete 180 is different than merely being annoyed that the society doesn't support the slightest criticism.

Them being foreigners they are on very thin ice to do any meaningful criticism. You can pretend otherwise, but as a foreigner you already being monitored 24/7. And just few words away from your life being turned upside down. So yea it makes sense all "influencers" only speak up once they have taken care of their affairs so that China govt is no longer easily hurt them.

My neighbor has one of these and it is pretty awesome. I asked about it when it went by me on one of my walks and I realized it had to be electric given its lack of engine noise. He really likes it and uses it to commute around the Bay Area.

I'm seriously considering getting one. I used to have a Honda Scooter which had a top end of about 50 which was okay for streets and stuff but if you wanted to use an expressway briefly you were definitely at a disadvantage.

The phrase "removable batteries" worries me a little. I would hope that they're reasonably secured so that I don't need to be worried if I have it chained up outside while I'm at work. Something like this does seem kind of appealing.

Why does it worry you? Cars have removable batteries.

ICE starting batteries are a tiny fraction of the price of this battery, and even those are stored under hoods that are locked from the inside of the vehicle.

Oh ok I think I understand what the problem is now. Sorry, I was genuinely confused for a second there, not sure why. Maybe I’m just getting old lol

An automobile battery is around $100-200 and not easily accessed. This battery is around $1000 and there's little detail on how it's secured. That would be a serious consideration for me if I were to consider buying one of these.

Not easily accessed? Really?

Pop the hood, see battery. Remove cables and plastic holder thingy.

Toss it, but new one, install in reverse order.

Ten years ago, I rode the Harley Livewire when they toured it around the country. I was sold on electric bikes immediately, just not that one; that one had all the trappings that make me dislike Harley, but I was totally sold on electric, my next bike would definitely be electric.

Fast forward to 2019, its time for me to replace my ICE bike. I go shopping and... Literally nothing with any other modern features, and prices are still bonkers. I wanted safety features: traction control, abs, wheelie control, etc. And 20kUSD was the way upper limit.

I also wanted to be able to actually go to a place and buy one. And be confident that if I have problems (admittedly less likely with electric, but still possible), I have somewhere to take it to that someone will deal with it under warranty.

I was really gung-ho to get electric this time around. Maybe next time, in ten years, when my 200hp supercharged all-singing all-dancing sub-20k bike gets long in the tooth, there'll actually be something in the market.

Also, for reference, Zero's SRS is pretty badass: https://www.zeromotorcycles.com/model/zero-srs - if they just licensed Bosch's electronic safety brains, I'd be all over it.

But, even not considering the safety electronics, it's still a few grand more and generally just-a-little-bit-less-nice-along-all-other-dimensions-except-exhaust than what I ended up with: https://www.kawasaki.com/en-us/motorcycle/z/z-hypernaked/z-h...

My buddy has a Zero electric motorcycle and it is fun to ride but has limitations I am not ready to give up a gas motorcycle for. But first the price. He paid something like $16-17k CAD for his bike. I bought my Honda for less then $2k and I can leave him in the dust all day long. The limitations I didn’t like were one range. It could not go long enough and are rides were short lived. We have beautiful open roads so it is easy to go 40km in one direction. You may not make it back if you went much farther. Second was it’s top speed. It could reach 140km/hr but it could not sustain that speed for more then a little bit then the battery management system would slow you down so then battery didn’t over heat. I know some will argue that the speed I mentioned is faster then any speed limit around but that is besides the point I can go to a track and race legally and that bike just doesn’t have it. Lastly the charge time. They sell the bike with the basic charger and it takes 10 hours to charge for about 85km range. They offer a fast charger but it was over $1000. I personally think they should have given all owners a fast charger I think the 10hr charge really takes away from the bike and after spending so much my buddy was hesitant to spend even more. The pros of this bike were it was silent. Also very zippy off the line. But still my gas bike from 1983 can kick it’s ass all day long. After owning it a few years he is now wanting to sell it and buy a Honda dual sport gas bike.

I don’t understand why the states just won’t adopt electric scooters.

In mainland China, electric scooters are a dime a dozen. For the cheapest, you have basic lead-acid batteries to power them. Slightly more expensive gets you better batteries and longer range.

They’re all chargeable via a basic electrical plugin.

They’re cheaper than those “cheap” American models.

Range is shit, maybe 100km at the most, but almost everyone uses them to go to work, run errands, etc.

americans don't get to have cheap stuff...that is reserved for citizens of real democracies

Well, I’m pretty sure that’s not the reason.

I feel like the real reason are the laws involved. I’m pretty sure a lot of people would jump at the chance to own a 2or 3k electric scooter that is self repairable with a universal battery type that can be used in any other electric scooter on the market.

The corps won’t make that though.

The regulations for 2 wheeled vehicles in the US are not stringent. Electric scooters are already widely available. e.g.: https://www.niu.com/en/niu-store-finder/find-store

There are electric rental scooters littering the streets of most major US cities. They have their uses, but Americans aren't about to use them for primary transportation.

It is very common for Americans to work outside of their neighborhood and have commutes that require the use of roadways with higher traffic speeds than neighborhood streets.

Electric scooters in China look more like a Vespa scooter, not a skateboard with handlebars.

Yes, I understand, these exist in the US too.

https://www.li.me/en-us/modes/electric-moped

https://gorevel.com/mopeds/moped

https://www.scoobi.co/

sweet, dot complaint, reasonably priced. 2.3kwh battery isnt that big for a 12kw 70 mph bike though, range is probably isnt good, especially on highway, not that i'd want to drive it on one.

my favorite mini moto is the sur-ron. $4200, 50 mph, 110 lbs, 5kw motor, 2kwh, ~30 mile range (60 with aftermarket battery), well built, tons of aftermarket mods. some people slap pedals on it to make it an "ebike" but its 80% dirt bike 20% downhill mountain bike. the best part is its quiet so you can get away with riding it places where you shouldn't ride a dirt bike, though not saying you should. so fun.

https://lunacycle.com/sur-ron-x-bike-black-edition/

Another Sur-ron rider here!

In Germany, a Road Legal is available. It's an amazing machine due to the fact you can go almost anywhere with it - I can go completely off-road in the mountains and go from A to B on the streets without issue.

When I was actively riding, I would often do 400-500 mile days for pleasure. A bike with even a 200 mile range would just not work. A tenth that range is just terrible.

(I retired from motorcycling over a year ago -- getting old and COVID-19's impact on hospitals were the main reasons).

Honestly curious, how can riding 500 miles in a day be pleasurable? The only time I've done that is in a road trip in a car and it wasn't nice even with friends, climate control, no wind in my face, cruise control, and music/podcasts.

Were you just riding 500 miles around for fun or to get somewhere? Was it the scenery or just the ride?

I have a nice bike, a 1200cc sport-touring model basically designed to go all day at 80 MPH, with a faring and good windscreen. Stock seat was terrible, so I had one custom made at shop near Seattle. Bicycle shorts, a really good one-piece suit, good boots and gloves. Earplugs (even though you're probably not supposed to use them) reduce wind noise and seem to reduce fatigue, too.

I took plenty of rest stops; every hour or two. Hydration and light snacking kept me alert. And a mid-day nap. :-)

I rode for the ride and the scenery. California roads were nice pretty much year-round. Washington State has some great mountain roads (the Cascade Loop in particular; Hwy 20 is one of the best roads I've ridden and the scenery is fantastic) but they're impassable (on a bike) in winter.

I'll admit to using a bit of ibuprofen / tylenol around mile 400, even a gel-packed seat gets hard on a long day. One of my regrets is that I never qualified for an Ironbutt 1000.

Here's how I got started: https://dadhacker-125488.ingress-alpha.easywp.com/munch/

This is significant because a traditional ICE powered bike in the same class like the Yamaha TW200 costs about $4,500 brand new. This electric bike seems to have very similar performance characteristics for only about $1,000 more. That truly is competitive with ICE in just about every category.

Still, a bike like the TW200 has 30 years of parts and knowledge on the market that the electric bike doesn't. But this is exactly what needs to happen for those parts and knowledge to get built.

Just about every category except for distance. The ICE motor can go closer to 120 highway miles before a refuel, as opposed to 37. That's enough to actually get you to the next gas station, and then once your there you just have to fill up and be on your way. With the electric bike if you can even make it between chargers, you'll have to sit and wait for it to recharge every 40 miles...

You can also attach fuel cans to a bike, and the extra weight is more than justified by the additional range. The same would not be true of battery packs.

I agree with you. But so far, most companies seem to prioritize competitive range instead of competitive pricing. I own a TW200 and most of the trails I ride on in MA and NH are under 10 miles long anyway. They claim the ES1 can go 37 miles at highway speed. Anyone with a TW200 will tell you... Small bikes aren't comfy for the highway. It's not fun to hold the throttle wide open and still get passed by cars going 20mph faster than you. It's scary. So people buying the ES1 aren't going to be using it for that.

The important part, to me, is the weight. Both the TW200 and the ES1 are 276 lbs. That means it's still small and light enough to reasonably lift into the bed of a pickup truck or support on a receiver mounted rack.

The performance figures posted are for the extended battery model which is $6,980 ... and there are some really good performing bikes in that price range. And for not much more you could get a used Zero FX.

I'd love to find a reasonably priced electric scooter. Here scooters can park on the sidewalk and in bike racks. Motorcycles get ticketed.

Are you referring to those electric skateboards with handlebars or something more like a Vespa?

Motorcycles are barely used in the US compared to many of the SE Asian nations. We’ll know electric motorcycles have made it big when we see them used preferentially in Vietnam. Also, that might make an actual “green” difference: billions of riders replacing older, more polluting bikes than typically being ridden by a few million ppl in the US.

When I've looked at specs for electric motorcycles, charging was limited to 1.5-3 kW on AC.

It would be nice to have car-like >7 kW charging on an efficient bike, because then all those random J1772 plugs could be used for point-to-point travel.

(That said, I've never ridden a motorcycle because I'd rather not die.)

So right now in California, there is a huge gap between what ebikes are capable of, and what is considered a motorized scooter/motorcycle. It's starting to cause issues on roads and trails and will need to be addressed ASAP.

Links below, but basically, it's trivial to build or buy an electric bike that will hit 40mph, 50mph, or more, and thousands of these bikes in all shapes and forms are already out there. Yet the law assume pedaled ebikes will top out at 28mph and then it addresses motorbikes and mopeds. With nothing in between.

So all these kids (and many adults) are out there riding Surrons going 40mph+ down main roads and dirt trails, pretending they're just class 3 ebikes that need neither a driver's license nor a motorcycle license. Kids end up getting mad at cops telling them they can't ride where they're riding, but the fact is there needs to be clearer guidelines for what is and isn't an ebike.

All that said, this a transformative area, mark my words. Imagine if Apple were to suddenly develop a range of smart ebikes that go up to 50mph and were linked into your health monitoring, etc. eTrikes for the huge number of retired Boomers and eBikes with knobby tires for the kiddos, and a mid range for the millennial commuter. All powered by the Apple eMotor™...

https://i1.wp.com/bikinginla.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/...

https://www.chp.ca.gov/programs-services/programs/california...

Not sure I believe the speed claims. It's a 12kw peak motor, which is equivalent to 16hp. That's really not a motor for highway speeds for anyone weighing over 98lbs. Still, it will go pretty damn fast.

EU has a class of 125cc, 11 hp scooters and bikes that must be able to hit 100 kph/62 mph. I own a bike from this class in India, and it can do it in level road with no headwind but it doesnt feel good. In France, I once saw a scooter rider with jaw to handlebar to keep his speed.

If I didn’t have to get an extra license for it (Europe) I’d be tempted to get one of these things (Specifically a SuperSOCO TC Max). They’re even quite close to being usable for longer ranges.

Here is why it is so cheap: "range drops down to just 37 miles at highway speeds"

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