Electric Harley.

Showed pics and the link to the video to several people that were Harley riders and only one did not like it and I had shown this forum and the links to others and they all loved it great response even the one who did not like the sound said that is still a beaut of a bike.

Survey of about 20 bikers when they came into work
 
Laserman said:
Showed pics and the link to the video to several people that were Harley riders and only one did not like it and I had shown this forum and the links to others and they all loved it great response even the one who did not like the sound said that is still a beaut of a bike.

Survey of about 20 bikers when they came into work
Click to expand...

Interesting. I showed it to some Harley people I know and they hated it. Said it looked too much like a crotch rocket. Strangely enough they didn't seem to give a crap either way about it being electric.

I think it's a moot point anyway. Harley like every other company is trying to look green right now. I would be shocked if this ever made it to production.
 
The pictures show tooled castings and forgings.

If the pictures showed all machined parts, I would call it a publicity stunt. Someone has already dumped a few million $ into tooling to have that design enter volume production.

My only beef (and it's a nerdy beef) is why they want to waste a substantial amount of power in all that obnoxiously loud gearing. The motor is 90deg off from the axis the wheel spins, so they have at minimum a bevel gear stage somewhere. That's just like taking 6-10% of your motors power and pack capacity and pissing it away into heating gearbox oil and making noises.

Aside from that minor complaint, I think it's an awesomely huge and welcome step in the right direction. Harley never seemed to figure out ICE, but perhaps they will learn how to do electric well. :)
 
BRD did the same thing. They are using straight cut gears instead of helical as a conscious decision to increase gear noise. At least in that case it increases efficiency of their gearbox. A 90 degree drive is just dumb though. Sadly you need a sound signature. Now you will be able to tell a Harley is coming down the road. May also be asthetics. The world is not designed to be optimal like nature or man made things wouldnt be so _
 
liveforphysics said:
The pictures show tooled castings and forgings.
Click to expand...

Maybe and maybe not. Kind of hard to tell by pictures alone. There are so many ways to make things these days. Hell, some of that stuff could be vacuum formed plastic painted to look like metal. Hard to say.
 
Now this I like better than a harley.


Don't you just love the looks?
11 kilowatt kW continuous output with 35 kW at peak. Top speed of 75 mph with the acceleration similar to a 600cc scooter -
http://gotecotech.com/bmw-electric-scooter-c-evolution/
 
liveforphysics said:
The pictures show tooled castings and forgings.

If the pictures showed all machined parts, I would call it a publicity stunt. Someone has already dumped a few million $ into tooling to have that design enter volume production.

My only beef (and it's a nerdy beef) is why they want to waste a substantial amount of power in all that obnoxiously loud gearing. The motor is 90deg off from the axis the wheel spins, so they have at minimum a bevel gear stage somewhere. That's just like taking 6-10% of your motors power and pack capacity and pissing it away into heating gearbox oil and making noises.

Aside from that minor complaint, I think it's an awesomely huge and welcome step in the right direction. Harley never seemed to figure out ICE, but perhaps they will learn how to do electric well. :)
Click to expand...
The future is direct hub drive. None of these geary and chain driven stuff is as quiet as my XPn :p
 
Direct drive hub is the optimization for EV drive efficiency.

For practical suspension performance, it can sometimes be a wise trade-off to put it inboard just to reduce polar moment of the motion arm assembly. Carbon belt drives are the next closest thing to hub-motor in terms of minimizing inefficiency.
 
Once you get to cruiser size, like a Harley, I see no reason at all not to go with dual hubbies. By the time you account for all the weight in wheels, rims, brakes, swingarm, etc., I can't imagine that my 45lb motor wheel with braking can be much heavier than their gasser wheel assembly with no motor. With a cruiser raw performance isn't an issue, so the front should have plenty of traction for useful motive force, so if anything 2wd should be a safety feature instead of the risk when you're plowing the front through gravel or whatever with an unpowered front wheel.

I foresee the competitive selling point with cruisers being whose is the most silent. The "zing" of a high rpm electric with a belt or chain drive, or even a shaft drive, just isn't going to cut it.
 
ElectronMan said:
Now this I like better than a harley.


Don't you just love the looks?
Click to expand...

No. If I liked the look of kids' robot toys, I'd buy those and save the price difference. A machine might as well look like what it is, and that includes motorcycles. A motorcycle doesn't require a set of overlapping plastic pretend-armor plates to function. The Harley electric bike may be overstyled, but is not nearly as cheesy and tawdry-looking as BMW's plastic wrapped toy bike.

The scooters I like the looks of best are the Honda Ruckus and Sachs MadAss. They are not pretty, but they look like what they are. And an electric scooter has even less reason to shroud its innards than a hot, stinking gas scooter does.
 
liveforphysics said:
Harley never seemed to figure out ICE, but perhaps they will learn how to do electric well. :)
Click to expand...
I fix their junk all the time. I think they know what they are doing. They are making money selling bikes and having their "factory trained" techs fix them!

IM looking forward to this. But unfortunately its just vaporware until we can actually purchase one!
 
Chalo said:
ElectronMan said:
Now this I like better than a harley.


Don't you just love the looks?
Click to expand...

No. If I liked the look of kids' robot toys, I'd buy those and save the price difference. A machine might as well look like what it is, and that includes motorcycles. A motorcycle doesn't require a set of overlapping plastic pretend-armor plates to function. The Harley electric bike may be overstyled, but is not nearly as cheesy and tawdry-looking as BMW's plastic wrapped toy bike.

The scooters I like the looks of best are the Honda Ruckus and Sachs MadAss. They are not pretty, but they look like what they are. And an electric scooter has even less reason to shroud its innards than a hot, stinking gas scooter does.
Click to expand...

Matter of opinion I suppose. I personally love that BMW design. Looks fantastic to me.

Do you think cars should be nondescript boxes too? Styling sells products. You must dislike almost every commercial product you see.
 
I'm going to be riding this on Saturday when it comes to Boston. I'll be putting a detailed post together on the blog, hopefully pretty quickly, but if you have any questions you'd like me to check out, let me know... I'm dying to see how much I can find out about the pack and that motor. Hopefully the Harley reps will be a little more than just another pretty face. :D
 
EVTodd said:
Matter of opinion I suppose. I personally love that BMW design. Looks fantastic to me.

Do you think cars should be nondescript boxes too? Styling sells products. You must dislike almost every commercial product you see.
Click to expand...
I don't like the 'busy' look of the BMW scooter either. It reminds me of buying footwear these days, its really difficult to find any without arbitrary and garish non-functional embellishment.
 
teddillard said:
I'm going to be riding this on Saturday when it comes to Boston. I'll be putting a detailed post together on the blog, hopefully pretty quickly, but if you have any questions you'd like me to check out, let me know... I'm dying to see how much I can find out about the pack and that motor. Hopefully the Harley reps will be a little more than just another pretty face. :D
Click to expand...

'Tink' all those surfaces and use a flexible magnet to see of what they're made. My Harley acquaintance thought he saw carbon fiber. See what you think of the under-bar mirrors, I was not able to make myself aware of them on the Harldy I test drove.
 
John in CR said:
Once you get to cruiser size, like a Harley, I see no reason at all not to go with dual hubbies. By the time you account for all the weight in wheels, rims, brakes, swingarm, etc., I can't imagine that my 45lb motor wheel with braking can be much heavier than their gasser wheel assembly with no motor. With a cruiser raw performance isn't an issue, so the front should have plenty of traction for useful motive force, so if anything 2wd should be a safety feature instead of the risk when you're plowing the front through gravel or whatever with an unpowered front wheel.

I foresee the competitive selling point with cruisers being whose is the most silent. The "zing" of a high rpm electric with a belt or chain drive, or even a shaft drive, just isn't going to cut it.
Click to expand...


I agree. It's not like they would be giving up any handling to have hubmotors. It oddly also seems that much of the demographic that buys them, takes what is already the worst handling of motorcycles, and find creative ways to modify them to be even worse.
 
It's a huge step for the hardcore Harley fans...most bikers I've talked to...'liked' it, but wouldn't want one. The biggest backlash will be about how the exposed motor made the Harley's aesthetic appeal. Most bikers already aren't going to know wtf is doing what for a while.
At least it keeps that sort of demolition man future-bike look from 90's sci-fi movies that their market can relate to.
It's a step forward, which gets me excited.
 
From where I stand, the "Harley" of e-bikes would have a huge exposed pancake motor (think CNC machined, finned, polished, oversized Etek) with a belt reduction to the wheel. Fat bundle of cylindrical batteries in shiny metal tubes. A controller that hums "ooohhh" like a sound effect from an '80s sci-fi movie. Big soft tires to make sounds that emphasize power, mass, and traction.

Absolute performance is not really the issue, nor is noise for its own sake. They just want to have their masculinity affirmed.
 
Any development in this direction is good, but personally I think the Juicer was a better "Harley"

Anyway, we Brits cant criticise it, did you see the Lotus ebike with its plastic imitation V twin engine, what a joke! I would have sacked the design team!
 
Whoopdeedoo! Another toy for the rich to play with. Yeah I'm a bit jaded with these prototypes. I've shown interest in EVs for the last 4 or 5 years, I've been using a tiny EV for more than three years. I'm still not convinced that electric is the future. (waiting for someone to throw a brick at me)

Here's what I think, if you need a vehicle for everyday use, you go to a dealer, get a vehicle you can afford (in my case, a very small and cheap one) and drive off with it. You use it for up to ten years daily without any kind of problems other than regular maintenance, put over 200k on it. That's what we have now and it works pretty well BUT... it burns fossil fuel, it's noisy, smelly and pollutes too much :(

When I can finally go to a dealer to get a new vehicle (an EV this time) that is dependable like the smelly polluting kind, at a comparable price with the smelly polluting kind, not double or ten grand more or whatever! Then I'll be convinced and I'll be very happy. But all I see right now is a bunch of toys for the rich to play with.


P.S.: Yes I am having a bad day.
 
mistercrash said:
Whoopdeedoo! Another toy for the rich to play with. Yeah I'm a bit jaded with these prototypes. I've shown interest in EVs for the last 4 or 5 years, I've been using a tiny EV for more than three years. I'm still not convinced that electric is the future. (waiting for someone to throw a brick at me)

Here's what I think, if you need a vehicle for everyday use, you go to a dealer, get a vehicle you can afford (in my case, a very small and cheap one) and drive off with it. You use it for up to ten years daily without any kind of problems other than regular maintenance, put over 200k on it. That's what we have now and it works pretty well BUT... it burns fossil fuel, it's noisy, smelly and pollutes too much :(

When I can finally go to a dealer to get a new vehicle (an EV this time) that is dependable like the smelly polluting kind, at a comparable price with the smelly polluting kind, not double or ten grand more or whatever! Then I'll be convinced and I'll be very happy. But all I see right now is a bunch of toys for the rich to play with.


P.S.: Yes I am having a bad day.
Click to expand...
Its true. Electrics owned ICE in the beginning, and then ICE got better. Now electric is playing catch-up and its not quite there yet for the mass market. It will overtake, though.
 
mistercrash said:
Whoopdeedoo! Another toy for the rich to play with.
Click to expand...

Yup and it can't even carry a bag of groceries.
 
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