An Electric Harley?

[airboss]

Text from a friend.

"Sat on an electric Harley yesterday, Good looking, but sounds like an electric drill. The potato potato crowd will never go for it."

 

[RichDoyle]

I test-drove one of the Zeros a few years ago. The one I drove was torquey, light, maneuverable, quiet. No shifting or clutching. It needed a chassis upgrade, but I believe they've done that.

If they were a lot cheaper to buy, this type of bike would be a good commuter. And i'm not disparaging this use. Get the price down and this very legitimate use profile could make it worthwhile. And the drive line is far simpler maintenance-wise.

But unless they find a way to stuff like 1,000 miles of range into them, they won't be good as travelers. Here's why:

It doesn't matter what the characteristics of the vehicle are, recharging while traveling is going to be a real downer. It's an infrastructure issue. Because even if they come up with a way to recharge a battery pack of some kind in minute or two, each recharging point (the equivalent of a single gas pump) would have to be able to deliver something like a Megawatt or more. So the analog of a busy gas station today (which will often have 4-6 vehicles simultaneously "recharging") would have to have upwards of a 6 MW service. For comparison, if your home today has 200 amp service (which is typical) at 240 volts, that's less that 5% of 1 Megawatt. So home charging overnight or a couple of hours is fine. But on the go? A typical fueling facility (i.e. "gas station"), at 240 volts would need around a 5,000 amp service. And the feed into the vehicle would have to be able to supply about 700 amps. Any idea how large a conductor that would need? Not likely in my lifetime.

 

[Top_Speed1]

For all that say HD is stuck with tractor technology..then HD ventures into electric motorbikes and the bashing still continues?

https://www.fjrforum.com/forum//public/style_emoticons/default/****.gif

I say nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Zero motobikes are pretty damn coolio.

..and if HD can improve the electric motorbike, more Kudos to them.

Thumbsup~!

I'm for advancements as well, and HD can be one of the R&Ders... why not?. Heck they surprised me by now integrating (built-in) GPS screens on a couple of their models. No biggie u say? well that's probably one of the most popular farkles on a bike today. They're getting there slow but sure.

 

[BigOgre]

For all that say HD is stuck with tractor technology..

then HD ventures into electric motorbikes and the bashing still continues?

https://www.fjrforum.com/forum//public/style_emoticons/default/****.gif

I say nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Zero motobikes are pretty damn coolio.

..and if HD can improve the electric motorbike, more Kudos to them.

Thumbsup~!

I'm for advancements as well, and HD can be one of the R&Ders... why not?. Heck they surprised me by now integrating (built-in) GPS screens on a couple of their models. No biggie u say? well that's probably one of the most popular farkles on a bike today. They're getting there slow but sure.

Damned if you do . . .

 

[eatpasta]

I like the looks of it too, but IMO electric vehicles of any kind are useful for commuting, and that's about all.

oh you couldn't be more wrong. The Lightning won Pikes Peak last year - the 2nd faster motorcycle? TWENTY SECONDS behind. It wasn't just faster, it was in a totally different league. On top of which they charged it from the solar panels on their van, in an hour.



their production bike is now the fastest production motorcycle available at 220 mph

remember all of this technology is in its infancy. This is like 1910 for internal combustion motorcycles and back they nobody ever thought they would make it to the next town and now we're doing 100k on stock bikes, no worries.

In ten years there will probably be no point in having a gas powered bike for anything else besides very long distance touring

 

[RichDoyle]

This didn't surprise me at all, but it's only 13 miles. An electric bike has a huge advantage here, by the way, and is an inherently good thing: No loss of power with altitude. This run starts at about 9,500 ft and ends up just over 14,000. Because the air starts thin and gets thinner, the bike can actually go faster as it climbs.

 

[TomInPA]

But it's air-cooled. This is the future of the air cooled engine.

 

[Warpdrv]

From a business standpoint, harley is making a great move, look at whats coming in the future and get the younger hipsters onboard with the new tech and eat up your brand...... Its smart...

Doesn't matter the range - look at what Tesla is doing to the market - their distance pretty much sucks but the tech is there and at a price few can afford but they are rollin out the doors in droves....

For those that commute less then 100 miles it'll be a big seller.... wait..... I can be a coolaid drinking harley yuppy with a fast cool looking bike with LED's that gets me in into the overpriced cult and my lefty friends won't frown at me for burning fossil fuels..... I can't wait to over pay for all the douchie harley club gear and get on my black and decker Lithium Ion..... AWESOME !!!!

 

[ionbeam]

This new electric bike is a hole in Harley's marketing, hopefully an opportunity for them to penetrate.

If only they could find a way for the new bike to emit bolts of lightning and claps of thunder.

Of course,

and

 

[bluesdog]

This new electric bike is a hole in Harley's marketing, hopefully an opportunity for them to penetrate.
If only they could find a way for the new bike to emit bolts of lightning and claps of thunder.

Of course,

and

Maybe the HD marketing division will get Thor riding one..

With that seat, I know I would

I'm here all week

 

[SacramentoMike]

I like the looks of it too, but IMO electric vehicles of any kind are useful for commuting, and that's about all.

oh you couldn't be more wrong. The Lightning won Pikes Peak last year - the 2nd faster motorcycle? TWENTY SECONDS behind.

And how long's the road up Pike's Peak, top to bottom? If you're in a big hurry to get to work, I guess. . .

I stand by what I said.

 

[HotRodZilla]

This new electric bike is a hole in Harley's marketing, hopefully an opportunity for them to penetrate.
If only they could find a way for the new bike to emit bolts of lightning and claps of thunder.

Of course, and

Maybe the HD marketing division will get Thor riding one..

With that seat, I know I would

I'm here all week

-1. Booooooooooooooooooo

Lol!!!

 

[eatpasta]

I like the looks of it too, but IMO electric vehicles of any kind are useful for commuting, and that's about all.

oh you couldn't be more wrong. The Lightning won Pikes Peak last year - the 2nd faster motorcycle? TWENTY SECONDS behind.

And how long's the road up Pike's Peak, top to bottom? If you're in a big hurry to get to work, I guess. . .

I stand by what I said.

again - this is all in its infancy.

The first Isle of Man race only a few of the electric bikes finished. The second year most of them finished. The third year the Moto Czyzyzyzzzz bike nearly broke the 100 mph average and last year the legendary John McGuinness averaged 117 mph on the Honda/Mugen bike.

As we all know, racing pushes innovation and we are not that far off from having a bike that can go several hundred miles when ridden normally and will only take an hour or so to charge.

I certainly agree that it's impractical now for normal use but soon it will be silly to not own one

 

[eatpasta]

also, if Honda is employing Mugen (Honda's tuning company) to provide a bike for McGuinness, you can bet that corporate Honda is prepared to flex their muscles using their existing Honda technology with electric bikes and they are using Isle of Man for testing.

I cant wait to see what the big 4 come up with.....

 

[Spud]

Who wants to start a business? We need to buy a bunch of these, paint them black and orange and start installing them in front of scummy bars.

 

[airboss]

Who wants to start a business? We need to buy a bunch of these, paint them black and orange and start installing them in front of scummy bars.

Then Hide and take video of the drunken pirates that piss on them?

 

[HotRodZilla]

Anyone ever read how impractical internal combustion cars were at the beginning. No roads, no gas stations, no AC, but now here we are. We have come a long way.

I'm not a big fan of electric cars because of the d-bags driving the "clean" misconception. If the bikes/cars are charging from power generated by a coal burning plant, they're just as dirty as gas. If we go all nuclear, solar, wind, ARC Reactor, or Tesseract, we'll be good to go. Other than that, electric motors are awesome.

A car/motorcycle that could go 200-300 miles on a single charge at freeway speeds while towing a load and fully recharge in 5 minutes is not too far off. When that happens, it'll be cool.

 

[bwv]

Maybe HD could make a trailer to match...and put a Really Really loud generator on it for those LD rides... They could call it a hybrid!

 

[Warpdrv]

Just found out one of my buddies got a placemarker / appt to take this thing for a test drive tomorrow.....

Not sure how he got that, and I'm also not sure how funny he's going to look on that thing seeing as he's a 6'2" large German....

I'm going to head down to the Harley Davidson Museum on the FJR and take some pics / weather permitting....

 

[marcusorelius]

The E bike tour was here this afternoon.