Have any of you heard of this before:
Our plan is to retrace the route of the automotive CEOs who went to Washington DC asking for government loans. But instead of looking for aid, we’d like to present President Obama with a homegrown solution to the transportation crisis. And instead of flying in a corporate jet, we’re riding Brammo Enertia powercycles. We’re just a couple of guys who work for Brammo, but we want to show that there’s a better way to get from Point A to Point B. And we want to have a little fun while we’re doing it. So join us as we surf from plug to plug in a quest to meet Obama, fueled by nothing more than electricity and the kindness of everyday Americans.
I honestly don’t think I have ever heard of an electric motorcycle before. At any rate, looks like they are having fun, although I would think it would be a touch chilly to be on a bike in Michigan. Apparently the bike can travel 15,000 miles on 100 bucks worth of electricity.
bartkid
>it would be a touch chilly to be on a bike in Michigan.
Not necessarily, maybe on the Mackinaw bridge on a windy night, sure, but in January 2000, when I drove through Flint it was 70 degrees at noon.
PurpleGirl
A story on NY1 this morning says that the car companies can produce lots of electric cars now but that there is not enough infrastructure in place to make the cars practical, i.e., things like battery stations at parking facilities for recharging. So those bike riders might be surprised.
Zifnab
It would be chillier without our good friend Global Warming.
gbear
Lots of people are still motorbiking in MN. I’m a little bit wussy about facing the cold for my morning ride to work, but I’ve taken the bike out for errands and fall color rides in the afternoon.
Here’s a link to a review of an all-electric scooter that a local scooter shop was really excited about. Unfortunately, it looks like the manufacturer is having financial troubles. Nice bike but it doesn’t have much of a range at high speeds.
Kryptik
Much as the idea sounds awesome…..you’ll never catch me on one of those things. I like to have more than an engine and wheels beneath me to assure my travel safety.
Wuss, yes, I know.
beltane
Definitely too cold by me. We’re waiting for the new VW Golf diesel that’s supposed to come out in the US next year.
kay
Thanks for this. The site is really interesting.
superluminar
@Zifnab
But it’s not happening! All the not-quite-scientists on the wingnut sites are saying so! It’s actually cooling if you
look atmake up the data…/denial
PeakVT
There’s actually a number of electric two-wheelers out there. With current technology, I don’t think electric motorcycles will make much impact, but electric scooters could.
Brick Oven Bill
The Chairman of General Motors, Whitacre, used to be in charge of I think AT&T. His company was bought out in some deal brokered by Emmanuel and his hedge fund. God knows how much Whitacre cleared or how the ins and outs of the deal went. Emmanuel cleared:
Sixteen Million Dollars.
Now, Whitacre, who cannot help himself, is on GM TV commercials, after being appointed to GM by Emmanuel.
Bloomberg: Whitacre vows to ‘Learn about cars’.
Whitacre is Artificial Law. Emmanuel is a ballerina and also is Artificial Law.
My ex brother-in-law never went to college. He no-shit built an internal combustion engine in his garage starting with a block of metal.
Skepticat
Ingenious. Excessive motorcycle noise is one of my pet peeves, especially as I live fairly close to route 95, and this would be a super solution. I wish them well, but fear that it’s almost too good an idea. Why does it seem that those are the kinds of concepts that wither and die (or are killed by corporate)?
Alan
I’d love to see more people riding scooters.
@Kryptik: If you want safety, check out the latest BMW Electric Scooter.
OriGuy
Twenty years ago, I worked with a guy who commuted from Palo Alto to Sunnyvale, CA on an electric scooter. That was about 15-20 miles. It wouldn’t get to freeway speed, but he could get there on the frontage roads and expressways.
Nemoudeis
Yep, gbear, I’m usually two-wheeling it around St. Paul from mid-April to early November, weather permitting. As long as the temperatures are reliably in the 40’s, layering-up goes a long way towards compensating for the wind chill. And anyone who hops on a motorcycle without being properly layered up in the first place is just an idiot anyway.
As for Brammo, I know that Best Buy is a huge supporter of their efforts. Last time I checked, they have been selling Brammo motorcycles in their West Coast stores since at least last summer, with plans to offer them nationwide within a year or two.
At the moment, I’d say that developments in mainstreaming two-wheeled electric transportation are far ahead of the EV car front. The excellent Autoblog Green website is an excellent agglomerator of alternate-fuel/EV vehicle developments. I’ve been reading them for years, and they never disappoint.
twiffer
unfortunately you can’t stick a car seat on one of those things.
jrg
Motorcyclists do that to protect themselves. Since they are smaller and less visible than cars, they make their bikes noisy so they are easier to notice.
slag
We have electric scooters around here. When I started reading this, I was hoping they’d be on electric bicycles, which are kind of the best of both worlds. Pedal when you can, use electricity to help you up the hills.
Still, I dig this kind of civic-minded publicity stunt. It’s a bit inspiring.
asiangrrlMN
@gbear: If I had a bike, I’d be riding it until I couldn’t feel my fingers and my toes.
Kryptik
@Alan:
Mmmmmeeehhhh….
I don’t mind scooters, but that’s mostly because Scooters aren’t expected to be on highways and traffic-heavy thoroughfares. And I’m not totally sure a Scooter is something truly in need of rollbars.
Punchy
But you still need coal to fire up the electric plants to produce the electricity, and oil to make the gas to run the trains that carry the coal, and butane and propane to run the burners that heat the forges that tool & die the traincars that carry the coal that makes the electricity that runs the bikes.
Jerome McDonough
Electric bikes also benefit from the same factor that electric cars benefit from. Electric motors deliver pretty much 100% of their torque across the entire RPM range, from 0 on up. So, they accelerate like God’s own slingshot. Most of the current generation don’t have much speed, but if Mission Motors out in the Bay Area has their way, that won’t be true for much longer.
Evinfuilt
@Punchy:
And yet, due to the efficiency of a single generator instead of tens of thousands small ones your carbon footprint is minuscule compared to an automobile.
Honestly, 80s style complaints of electric transportation? How quaint, but also how pathetic to be so uninformed for so long, has to be on purpose.
PeakVT
Motorcyclists do that to protect themselves.
Oh, please. That’s just what they tell themselves. In reality, like the dweebs who drive tuner cars, its about getting people to look at them, with a small bonus of giving the middle finger to mainstream society.
Demo Woman
What a fun site. They are already in Paw Paw, WV.
Little Bitsy needs 208 votes to reach 4000 votes. Wahoo!
Creamy Goodness
@jrg:
If motorcyclists have to fry everybody else’s eardrums to stay safe, fuck ’em — they are impractical vehicles and don’t belong on the road.
If motorcyclists are willing to join the rest of us on the road without blasting their noise pollution into my home, no problem.
Punchy
@Evinfuilt: Wow, you snark detector really suxxors.
tom
There is a company near Ann Arbor, MI producing an electric scooter which they claim can hit 60mph.
Violet
@jrg:
No. They do it because their pen1ses are small. They are compensating.
twiffer
@jrg: i call bullshit. i used to live above a bar that was frequented by a small group of bikers. it was also directly across the street from the train station. the bikes were louder than the fucking train. particularly when they just sat on them an rev’d the hell out of ’em. what, pray tell, were they protecting themselves from? the possibility of me sleeping on a wednesday night?
safety my ass. particularly as the guys with the loudest bikes tend to be the same ones that don’t wear helmets.
John Voorheis
Actually, its been relatively warm lately. It was a whole sixty degrees yesterday.
wilfred
I love reading things like this but doubt you’d get many people on bikes these days – why, insurance companies wouldn’t stand for it! Time to invest in Kevlar overalls.
Problem is where is all the electricity going to come from? Grids are maxed out – electric transportation means going nuclear to charge all those batteries.
A battery that can store enough energy for 15,000 miles?? I’d like to see the specs for that – that’s pretty phenomenal at any price.
gbear
@jrg:
Bikers who’s bikes set off car alarms are not into it for the safety issue. I used to live on a busy street and I’d lie in bed after getting woken up at 2am and listen to the bikes as they roared off from each stoplight two miles in either direction from my apartment.
If you’re counting on noise to keep you safe, you’re doing it wrong.
@asiangrrlMN:
You can get some nice thinsulate bikers gloves. You also need to have a fleece jacket with a zip-up collar and some nylon ski pants. Last year I rode until the weekend after Thanksgiving. Rode Summit Avenue and all along the river on my way to Scooterville for winterizing. The hardest thing to keep warm is your nose, even if you wear a full helmet.
wilfred
A bike with an electric motor won’t be that much louder than a golf cart or a washing machine on spin cycle.
Nice to dream of reductions in noise and light pollution.
Sarcastro
You kids get off my lawn!
I used to have a strait-piped, j-ported, ITBed RX-7 with cherry bombs on it. It wouldn’t wake the neighbors, it would wake the freakin dead! Went like stink though. Rotaries are the best for making power simply by allowing them to breathe more.
Getting people, notably policemen, to look at it was a very unfortunate side-effect.
dobrojutro
Creamy Goodness – Cars are little sound cells – hard to get noise in or out. The noise helps.
Admittedly, much of the noise is for show. Ever notice how every guy who has a loud bike also has an open-face helmet? If they are so safety conscious, a visor would be a good start.
DanF
Range is only 42 miles on a charge … Good for about town and local commuters I guess.
Brick Oven Bill
Batteries store chemical energy, to be converted to electricity. The name ‘battery’, comes to us from Benjamin Franklin, a son of the Enlightenment, and a Founding Father of America.
The Enlightenment was the product of the seven Liberal Arts.
Batteries form part of our environment, and our evolution, as they can be used to deny logistics to groups of people. This was most evident by the use of submarines in the two World Wars of the 20th Century. In the absence of Oxygen, batteries can be used to turn propellers.
Due to the strategic importance of batteries, and their 200+ years of use and development, batteries are a Mature Technology, and further technical advances are unlikely.
Therefore, we should construct nuclear power plants, and electrify the railroads. These guys, God love them, are in it for a buck, even though they may mean well.
Violet
I bet Little Bitsy would enjoy riding in a side car with these guys. Don’t forget to vote.
RareSanity
Jeebus…$12k price tag?!?!
It’s a great “boutique” idea, but, in the words of Chris Rock…”Good Lawd that’s alotta money!”
Devon
They stopped by my friend’s agency in Pittsburgh (www.garrettcmg.com)- they let them an outlet. I think it is a neat idea.
mcc
Electric motorcycle makes a lot of sense, the motorcycle’s lesser weight would allow you to bypass some of the problems with electric vehicles (speed/range?).
There’s also something called an “electric bicycle” which is basically, um, a motorcycle with an electric motor. I’m seriously looking into this sort of thing. If I could find something which is relatively cheap, can move at at least 30-40 mph over short distances, stows in a Caltrain bike locker and allows me to look not-ridiculous while riding it this would be actually useful to me.
Miriam
OT – John, How is Bitsy doing relative to the other dogs? Can you tell?
catclub
RareSanity@38
Yep, my new car was $15k, so this appalls me.
I wonder which part is so bloody expensive, or if the
price will come down A LOT under mass production.
Violet
@Miriam:
Bitsy is currently running second to Rufus, her main competition as far as we know. There are over 60,000 dogs entered in the competition and they don’t have an option to search by top vote-getters. The best we can guess is to go to the previous week’s top dogs and check to see how they are doing. There is always the possibility that someone could enter a new dog this week that comes out of nowhere. But compared to last week’s top dogs, she’s currently second.
You can help her pull ahead by voting. And encouraging friends and family to vote. She could help so many other animals if she won. All funds she wins will go to help animal rescue.
ellaesther
Around here (Greater Chicagoland Metropolitan Area) I have seen a good handful of people riding these actual bike-bikes that are motorized — they sound like a big electric shaver, and appear in involve the grafting of some kind of motor onto an existing bike. And it is absolutely odd looking. But I can only imagine that it’s a useful thing to get around on!
slag
@Punchy: If it makes you feel better, I laughed. Ahhh…the good old days.
Thadeus Horne
@wilfred: He didn’t say the battery charge would last for 15,000 miles. He said it would cost $100.00 to ride for 15,000 miles. Different.
Brick Oven Bill
Obama states:
”Let me be clear: I will let no one question my love of this country”.
Obama does not realize sometimes that he is the President of the United States, and not some warlord in Kenya.
Observe me question. Here it goes.
I question Obama’s patriotism, and believe that it is limited to the appreciation that a black family in America making $200,000 a year will produce a 1000 SAT student, while a similar white family is only compensated $40,000 a year. Patriotism goes beyond compensation, in my opinion.
A Patriot would provide energy for his Citizens. This is done most Logically through the burning of coal. If one is to believe the carbon emissions bull-shit, then build nuclear power plants. People killed:
From Civilian Nuclear Power = 0.
By Ted Kennedy driving = 1 at least.
By females operating public transportation systems this year alone = 50 plus.
Thus we should electrify the railroads and build preferably coal, and less preferably nuclear power plants. We should also build more dams. We should not prostrate ourselves to some international climate treaty. This would be unpatriotic.
LoveMonkey
@Brick Oven Bill:
Your material is stale and becoming incoherent. Families are compensated? No Bill, work is compensated. Work, not families. Your entire rant is nonsensical.
And we have electrified the railroads. The model railroads, that is. Pay attention.
Poopyman
Test ride an electric cycle.
Nothing but wind and chain noise.
Comrade Darkness
@LoveMonkey: I think someone is spoofing our old well-loved Bill. He’s been more trite, less knowledgeable, and off the wall in a newly mundane way.
I try to skip over him. (But that means I still see the responses to him… alas)
Laura W
@Brick Oven Bill: Where is the other logical conclusion about prohibiting women from operating public transportation systems, Bill? I’m disappointed. You left me hanging there.
Little Mysoginitsy?
slag
@Brick Oven Bill: You’re quickly becoming Color of Change’s BFF.
BDeevDad
I’ve actually been considering an electric stand up scooter like this for my commute. But I live in San Diego and don’t take the highway to work.
Also, a company just broke 150 mph on an electric motorcycle at Bonneville this year.
Comrade Darkness
@ellaesther: I can not see the appeal of one of these electric bikes. I always tell myself I should just get into better shape. Now, a motorbike that lets me upgrade the road I’m on with my little crappy mountain bike . . . that would have some value. Not sure if it has 12k of value, however.
r€nato
off-topic:
the current poll at CNN.com:
LOLZ
Crashman06
@r€nato: I don’t know. Five bucks is pretty cheap for a night of high comedy.
Brick Oven Bill
If work was compensated, there would be no race-based wage disparities. Work is color-blind. Work is a force operating through a distance.
Consider the link posted above. In August, 2008, I sensed Barack was about to crack a little and display a NCM (Nicholas Cage Moment). This is more minor than the eventual JNM (Jack Nicholson Moment), which is pre-ordained.
Someone in the financial community also must have sensed this, as within a month of that post, someone, who has yet to be named, withdrew $500 billion from the money markets, contributing to a crash of the market, John McCain losing his new lead, the election of Barack, and the appointment of a Goldman Sachs lobbyist to the Treasury Department.
I’ll give you a ride LauraW.
Jason Skelton
Jay Leno reviewed a zero electric motorcycle. And apparently he is buying a Bremmo.
http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/video/clips/zero-motorcycles/1062741/
Omnes Omnibus
Bitsy is at 4002.
Brick Oven Bill
Someone asked the question if it is possible to have Virtue without Talent. I hypothesized that it was not possible, as it took Talent to appreciate and develop Virtue.
Upon reflection, one possible exception to this hypothesis is John McCain, unless you count nailing a hot blonde with a beer distributorship as being Talent, which it very well may be. I believe that John McCain, although deeply confused, has some moral foundation based in Virtue.
McCain pulled ahead of Obama in September, 2008.
Review the list of the financial institutions having their pay regulated by Obama. Goldman Sachs is not on this list. Goldman Sachs runs Obama’s Treasury Department.
Who withdrew that $500 billion in September, 2008?
The Grand Panjandrum
@Omnes Omnibus:
She doesn’t look a day over 4000.
I weigh 16 stone. Wonder how that effects the “mileage” on this baby.
bartkid
>Would you pay $4.95 to attend a motivational speech by President George W. Bush?
Bring extra shoes, y’know, for throwing.
bago
General to Cheney: Eat it, Dick.
Alan
@Kryptik:
Yeah, I can’t see myself putting a seatbelt on to ride a scooter. But that roll bar windshield setup would probably be pretty nice and quiet.
Comrade Darkness
@Jason Skelton: Leno also owns a garage-full of steam powered cars, so not sure what that says, necessarily. He’s the only person to have gotten a speeding ticket on a Cali expressway in a steam powered car.
RareSanity
@Brick Oven Bill:
Goldman-Sachs already paid back their TARP loan. These actions apply to companies that have not paid the money back yet.
Come on Bill, your not even trying.
Brick Oven Bill
Goldman’s money was laundered through AIG RareSanity. This is all engineered Greed, and Envy.
DanF
BOB – It was the American Indian cartel in that old John Ritter movie Americathon: “God knows I am a patriot. I loaned the country 400 Billion. And I want my 400 Billion back. Does that make me a bad guy? I’ve got to eat too, you know!”
Now, why don’t you open up Google Maps and see if you can spot earth.
Brick Oven Bill
Truth and Virtue cannot be found in a John Ritter movie DanF. John Ritter was an idiot. Watch instead High Noon.
asiangrrlMN
@gbear: So, theoretically, I could ride all-year round on my imaginary bike. Neat!
kommrade reproductive vigor
WANT!
That is all.
Ruckus
@jrg:
It’s done to attract attention. It works but it does not help you to be seen, it just annoys most everyone. So the wrong kind of attention. And my bike has stock exhaust, because it works and is not loud. If you depend on noise to keep you alive, you don’t stay that way long.
OK on to better stuff.
Lived in the east for 11 years and have ridden every month of the year. Never rode when the roads weren’t dry and no chance of snow (not really crazy) but cold can be dealt with by using proper clothing. Have ridden at 19F and this doesn’t work because your breath freezes on the inside of your face shield. At 25F this is not a problem.
gbear
@asiangrrlMN:
You can even ride it inside!
Last winter I watched an old guy trying to ride a scooter on East 7th Street thru 6″ of fresh snow while towing a bicycle child carrier filled with what was probably all of his belongings. It wasn’t going well at all. I felt so sorry for the guy.
Hiram Taine
The best site by far to learn about and discuss electric vehicles is Endless Sphere, there are a lot of very knowledgeable people there, any and all aspects of EVs are being discussed in excruciatingly minute detail.
The tradeoff with EVs is range/speed, the faster you go, the shorter the range. Battery technology is advancing steadily but has not yet gotten anywhere near the energy density of liquid hydrocarbon fuels such as gasoline so range is limited. The major reason speed cuts range is aerodynamic drag which becomes the primary energy sink at speeds above approximately twenty miles per hour and increases with the square of the velocity. The other aspects of energy usage in an EV such as rolling friction scale more or less linearly with speed. Motorcycles and bicycles are aerodynamically quite “dirty” and have a great deal of drag for their size so the range is not as good as it should be given their relatively small size and light weight. Aerodynamic improvements to bikes make a great deal of difference in their range at moderate to high speeds but are difficult to implement without interfering with the ease of operation of the vehicle.
I’ve built and sold a couple of electric assisted bicycles and am working now on an electric pusher trailer for my semi recumbent bike in order to use it for short range commuting in the twenty to thirty mile round trip range. Mostly I use electric assist for climbing hills in my rather mountainous location, I can maintain a pretty decent speed on the flat with just human power and can go faster than I really want on a bicycle on the steeper downhills just by coasting.
Notorious P.A.T.
Sometimes, but right now we’re at about 80% humidity so you could go outside in shorts if you want to.
Linkmeister
I have a 1997 Geo Metro with 55K on it. The kind of driving I do (Island living!) would make me an obvious candidate to buy an electric vehicle. Recently I’ve been seeing a GEM e2 in my neighborhood. Priced at just under $8K, it might be practical for suburbanites whose jobs are in other suburbs. Freeway driving would worry me a little.
Joey Maloney
60 mph top speed is enough to get you killed quickly on the highways around here. My Honda Reflex scooter topped out at about 70-75 mph and that wasn’t enough. I replaced it with a Yamaha Majesty (400 cc) with a top end of just shy of 100. True, I had to sacrifice some mileage – I only get about 53 mpg instead of the 65 the Honda did.
The Majesty is my daily driver but before I can go electric I need something with a top end of at least 80 mph and a range of at least 120 miles. And it would be nice if they could bring it in under $8K to be competitive.
Yutsano
@bago: That whole piece is one giant “FUCK YOU!” to the Bush Administration. Beautimous.
DPirate
How much of an appalachian mountain is 100 bucks worth of electricity?