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Harley-Davidson Electric Motorcycle

As of now electric motorcycles are primarily urban and suburban putt-around bikes. They certainly are not touring bikes in any sensible meaning of the word. The series Long Way Up is tantalizing when they can get 160 miles on a charge part of the time and 70 miles on a charge under other conditions. Even then they had to precede the ride with the installation of 150 charging stations and supplement that with some good old fashioned extension cords. :)

Some day they will get the combinations of battery mass, weight, electric motor power, and battery composition to make reasonable travel on an electric motorcycle feasible. But as of now nobody is selling an electric motorcycle that I can reliably ride to town and back. They will, some day, probably sooner than I think.

IF I wanted to spend 20-30K The prospect of a 50-100 mile joyride a la electric is appealing. Also- I live in town, so its a short ride as far as that goes. When I worked, it was a 27 mile commute- totally doable- I know we BMWers are oriented, generally, to distance and touring- but put on your Sunday go for a short spin while wifey is at church hat or your 30 mile commute hat and your objections melt away-LOL As a multi-bike owner, I'd add electric to the stable-even now-for the thrill-not the carbon...ditto Tesla. I agree 100 % that it's not a good choice for ones only ride.
 
Everybody is focused on going coast to coast as if that is the only important thing in a car or motorcycle yet the majority of Americans have never done such a trip and never will. Yet almost all do drive or ride local for less than 50 miles on a day to day basis. With regard to the coast to coast infrastructure for electrics, it is being developed as we speak without a lot of fanfare and there are people doing coast to coast on a Tesla today.

To me the key is a win win win...type of move forward and not a well a Prius has crap performance but good gas mileage. There is a battery being developed and tested for cars that will give you a 500 mile range, and that is farther than any gas car on the market. You will say yeah but after 300 miles I just fill up. Well there are charging stations that can give you back a 90% charge in about 30 to 40 minutes. Now who can't stop for that long after let's say 400 miles? I know when we make a long trip to Florida and you start with a GPS it gives you the arrival time yet when you get there its 2 to 3 hours later with the necessary human breaks required by real people not Cannon Ballers. Its just a matter of time before that infrastructure is here and again the engine to bring that around is the market with a win win win type of vehicles not just crappy performance with marginal gas mileage improvement. Hybrids are transition vehicles that are best leased as they will be obsolete or undesirable as the Palm Pilots was compared to our modern cell phones.

Watch U-tube videos of what is going on behind the scene and you will see. Take a test drive and you will be enlightened.

Win win win win... with almost no loses
-super fun to drive
-comfortable
-no maintenance like tune-ups, oil changes etc Even the brakes last longer since the regenerative braking does a lot of the work
-simpler so eventually cheaper to produce
-lower cost of ownership by a wide margin
-superior performance- period
-quiet
-modern
-autonomous
-safer
-more than just a car but an information hub and entertainment center just like our phone is not just a phone
-low to no pollution
-favored by all governments. And as things are going fossil fuel will be highly penalized in the future

Again I rode the HD electric and it is Freaking Awesome and if the range improves and it takes a half hour to charge its a winner.
 
FWIW - If you have AppleTV, you can watch McGregor/Boorman as they ride two Harley LiveWires (modified some to give more ground clearance), from the tip of South America to Los Angeles. See: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/long-way-up/umc.cmc.1nv0tluok21c2f8549mdjqdnh

The have a very large supporting group, and in the first few episodes they seem to have range issues with the Livewires. Somehow they get that figured out starting in about episode 5 or 6. They're accompanied by two Rivian electric trucks which seem to have their own range issues. A petroleum-fueled support van has to pull one of the Rivians for a few miles to put enough regenerated juice into the batteries for it to continue.

The scenery is stunning with a lot of it shot clearly from drones. If you're not an AppleTV user, but recently bought an iPhone, you can get it free for a year.
 
https://www.borgwarner.com/technologies/electric

A big part of the E-drive benefit is eliminating transmissions and braking systems. Think locomotives. The motor technology is evolved from what we used to call stepper motors, providing a high torque at zero RPM's. We may well see an electric transmission coupled to an IC engine or an IC engine driven generator feeding separate hub mounted motors. The "battery" doesn't have to be something charged from an electric utility.
 
https://www.borgwarner.com/technologies/electric

A big part of the E-drive benefit is eliminating transmissions and braking systems. Think locomotives. The motor technology is evolved from what we used to call stepper motors, providing a high torque at zero RPM's. We may well see an electric transmission coupled to an IC engine or an IC engine driven generator feeding separate hub mounted motors. The "battery" doesn't have to be something charged from an electric utility.

That would be especially appealing if the IC engine ran on CNG.

DeVern
 
That would be especially appealing if the IC engine ran on CNG.

DeVern

That's a piece of cake. There's fuel cells, chemical reactions, etc.

Many things are possible if you split the problem into electrical power generation (feeding the battery) and E-drive.
 
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