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The Electric Motorcycle Thread

At the IMS Sunday I rode Livewire and FXE. Chalk and cheese. The Lw is a premium bike, seamless experience like a good appliance. Although a little porky, I really liked it. :thumbup

The FXE was really a fun ride. :ride Also hi qual. Power to weight ratio v high. Very maneuverable urban bike.

Zero's guided rides were limited to a couple of miles. :thumbdown

We have a MY Tesla and I regularly ride my Specialized eMtn bike. We love 'em but an electric motorcycle needs better battery technology on the horizon. And maybe some gears. I'm waiting...
 
dittoalex said:
How many miles on your Eva and how has the battery been holding up? My 2017 Zero with 13,800 miles has lost probably 15-30% of capacity. I have to use no rear brake, down-and-back instead of slabbing home, and drafting on the minimum freeway in the slow lane.
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Makes sense. Our Tesla was purchased in 2017 and it's down about 15% of range too. It's what I'd expect. Eventually, the degradation should slow down though. Most of this happened during the first 3 years and barely anything in the last year.

It seems like with the Energica they recommend you charge it to 100% fairly often, which is the opposite of what Tesla wants because that is what leads to battery degradation. Not sure how that works.
 
You should rent it, that's the Eva 107 and man it was so fun to ride. It's basically an Eva with the 107kw motor from the Ego. It feels like it's really fast and the speedometer tells you so but I found the speedometer was really off. Seemed the faster you go the more it's off it's optimistic on the speed you are going by like 10mph. I like the operating system on the Energica also it's simply and pretty. You can do everything with a couple pushes of a button. The Livewire you have to go into the touchscreen and fiddle around with stuff. Like it had like no regen. They did show me how to set it after riding it though.

I will admit I didn't like the Eva suspension so much, it just felt kind of clunkety and yeah it's heavy, my Empulse corners better than an Eva. But maybe it just needs the suspension setup for me.

Now the Livewire it was fun to ride I've ridden it like 3 times now the HD twice and the One once. And it's like riding a the SR/F/S its very similar. I think if that's the one you like then you should get it, at least now it's priced close to the Energica and Zero SR/F/S and it has DC fastcharging capability something the Zero doesn't have.

Me I still think I'm going to get a SS9+ especially since they have the new motors. Now the question is does it have the more power motor than the Ribelle and Ego has? But honestly I feel I don't really want that extra power anyway it's already fast enough to get me into trouble =P.


Haha about the FXE demo rides. I hella got roped into riding one, I didn't want to ride it because I could just go to SJBMW and ride one. It was the last ride of the day and I saw them taking people down the backroad in Sonoma Raceway and I was like hell yeah. Hmm private road and the leader was just rippin along haha so I made sure and follow him, pin it to win it. I'm surprised they didn't let us ride on the race track and just follow the leader. haha But yeah they were like yeah c'mon let's go for a ride it'll be like 5 minutes, ok SIGN ME UP.

I rode some pretty fast bikes that day and the faster the bike the more boring it was riding on that tame route. It's like yeah man I get bored riding superbike on this little cruise. So yeah when they let me rip on the FXE it was a lotta fun.
 
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dittoalex said:
How many miles on your Eva and how has the battery been holding up? My 2017 Zero with 13,800 miles has lost probably 15-30% of capacity. I have to use no rear brake, down-and-back instead of slabbing home, and drafting on the minimum freeway in the slow lane.
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About the same miles as you. I haven't noticed any significant degradation, I usually try to keep the battery between 20-80% if I'm not gonna ride it soon. I haven't really been testing the thing for degradation though so I can't definitively tell you that there isn't any because I'm sure there has to be some due to entropy and what not. I just ride the damn thing. I usually have to charge once a week for my normal commuting, more if I'm doing other crap. same as how it was when I got her. I don't use much rear brake normally, sometimes for control for a corner, or low speed stuff or if I feel like getting sideways.
 
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wheel_muse said:
The FXE was really a fun ride. :ride Also hi qual. Power to weight ratio v high. Very maneuverable urban bike.

Zero's guided rides were limited to a couple of miles. :thumbdown
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Did you lose traction? Worst thing about my Zero's generation is no traction control means you have to ride it 100% grip.

Or was R3DSIX sliding his FXS everywhere?
 
Backing in the FXS was challenging since you had to Really put so much emphasis on the front to nearly loft the tire since the regen wasn't as aggressive as bopping down two gears on an ice bike. I wasn't backing in the bike all the time and it was hard to get good results consistently. but yeah i got sideways a few times on the FXS, no TC.
 
I meant they either try to kill you with a highside as the rear instantly speeds up to whatever 70mph/107mph top speed, or the belt breaks and goes flying off. Props for being so comfortable with it. I try to ride it smooth with no flicking and gladly pay top dollar for the microfiber Xline tank pads to hold on.
 
dittoalex said:
I meant they either try to kill you with a highside as the rear instantly speeds up to whatever 70mph/107mph top speed, or the belt breaks and goes flying off. Props for being so comfortable with it. I try to ride it smooth with no flicking and gladly pay top dollar for the microfiber Xline tank pads to hold on.
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Ah I see. Well I remember it spinning up quickly when the rear would step out when I was giving it too many beans, it was something to keep aware of for sure. The Energica Also spins up quickly but maybe not as quick as the FXS but I think that is partially due to the larger contact patch of the tire, maybe I had the tires more warmed up than the FXS? Not certain. I just wanna go fast!
 
Oh yeah saw that today looks pretty nice like a flat tracker not very powerful competition for the Metacycle.
 
Saw this on Facebook, Congrats to Zero. But then again there were literally all Zero bikes in the Formula Lightning Class and 2 Energica in the Extreme Class. Their times are close I don't see why they don't just put the two together, I wanna see Zero vs Energica haha. Had I known they were going to race electrics that weekend I might have went. The schedule was so not organized so I couldn't tell. I was so tired after the IMS though so don't think I could ridden south the next day.

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Here's the results of that race it was so hard to find these turns out the Light Fighter was there, Troy's name is there, he actually won his class too. Must be crazy racing with 40 bikes on the track. Something must have happened to him on Sunday didn't do so well.
https://speedhive.mylaps.com/Sessions/6188446#byClass
https://speedhive.mylaps.com/Sessions/6190102#byClass
 
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2020 was pandemic
 
Yes, but motorcycle and bicycle sales were solid during the pandemic. Quite solid.
 
mrzuzzo said:
They sold like 400 motorcycles globally in 2020.
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I wonder if my 2020 SS9 is one of them, but it was purchased in August of 2019.

Now they are selling faster than they can build them, with the new larger battery. To buy one now, you need to get on a waiting list.

I wish they would start a dealer here, but first, they need to make more bikes. By contract, that have to supply their old dealers first and they now cannot even keep up with that.

-Don- Reno, NV
 
Yeah they have to expand production to meet with current demand before they can expand their dealer network.
 
DonTom said:
I wonder if my 2020 SS9 is one of them, but it was purchased in August of 2019.

Now they are selling faster than they can build them, with the new larger battery. To buy one now, you need to get on a waiting list.

I wish they would start a dealer here, but first, they need to make more bikes. By contract, that have to supply their old dealers first and they now cannot even keep up with that.

-Don- Reno, NV
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Energica is a public company so it's pretty easy to find those numbers.

FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

2019 sales they did half of 2020. I'm not sure how exactly motorcycle dealer financing works, but I assume the dealer floors the bike through the manufacturer, so the revenue is recognized once it is sold. I'm not 100% on what the margin is on these bikes but I guesstimated that Energica gets $15K for each bike sold. They made $6M from bike sales in 2020 which puts the number sold at around 400 total. It could be a bit more or less because they also do accessory sales and so on but I think that should be pretty close. They must have sold around 200 bikes in 2019.


The number of employees was 58 and they paid $3M :wow to suppliers for 2020. Tough business to be in. These things cost a lot to produce! I wonder what a battery replacement would cost...
 
mrzuzzo said:
Energica is a public company so it's pretty easy to find those numbers.

FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

2019 sales they did half of 2020. I'm not sure how exactly motorcycle dealer financing works, but I assume the dealer floors the bike through the manufacturer, so the revenue is recognized once it is sold. I'm not 100% on what the margin is on these bikes but I guesstimated that Energica gets $15K for each bike sold. They made $6M from bike sales in 2020 which puts the number sold at around 400 total. It could be a bit more or less because they also do accessory sales and so on but I think that should be pretty close. They must have sold around 200 bikes in 2019.


The number of employees was 58 and they paid $3M :wow to suppliers for 2020. Tough business to be in. These things cost a lot to produce! I wonder what a battery replacement would cost...
Click to expand...

Good analysis.
 
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