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[caza]

I'm doing a home conversion build as well and have found the same, pouch cells may be the best but sourcing high quality pouches and materials to build a good pack with them is far more difficult than with cylindrical cells. There's not an equivalent to say, IMRbatteries.com that sells  Farasis 32ah cells.

There's also the fact that cylindrical cells are just smaller, so you can arrange them to fit odd shapes and sizes. In my build, I can fit 4.3kwh of cylindrical cells where I can barely fit 2kwh of pouch cells. If we're looking at volume alone the pouches are significantly denser and pack more efficiently, but if you don't have a perfect squared off shape the benefit of that density could be completely negated.

Which is what we have here with the curtiss. The bike was made from a drawing, it's a piece of art over anything else. And using pouch cells in that cylinder shaped battery pack would be an incredibly inefficient use of space that would have far less density than going with cylindrical cells. It doesn't make sense to equate them using 21700's with not being able to afford pouch cells, when it's obviously a function of fitting as much battery as possible into the design and not a question of cost.

If they wanted the most efficient battery choice they would have put pouches in a big rectangular box, but obviously that is not the point of this bike.

[Crissa]

Cylindrical cells are also cheaper to manufacture per kW than pouch cells.  Their heat expansion is easier to manage, too.

But yeah, cylinders are not as dense and they are harder to cool.  At least, the classic single tab kind.

Lots of reasons to use different cells.

-Crissa

[NEW2elec]

As for the Curtiss I agree it's motorcycle art/fashion and not trying to be the least bit practical. It does look like a hell of a lot of work was put into it but how well it sells is anyone's guess.

[caza]

Well from the article it says they're only making 15 of them. So how well it sells is almost irrelevant, it's not going to be more than 15.

[dalek]

Production is 15 First Editions, then 100 per year.

[caza]

I guess we'll see if it has enough interest to ever make more than those original 15.

[wavelet]

Production is 15 First Editions, then 100 per year.

Confederate/Curtiss has managed to make ~1300 motorcycles in 28 years. I doubt they'll suddenly sell twice what they used to on a much more expensive product... They claim to have "gone electric" 10 years ago; I've yet to hear of a single sale of a BEV bike of theirs, although they've already "unveiled" 3 or 4 models, and the press articles about them tout a "company exclusively focused on electric motorcycles".
So what happened to the Zeus, or Hera (supposed to be their first electric), or Psyche (supposed to cost $30K and take on H-D)?
Instead, they're crowdfunding, meaning, 99 out of 100, they can't find real investors.

They clearly will contribute nothing positive to the EV bike landscape.

[JaimeC]

I WISH I could afford a Curtiss, or even the old ICE bikes they sold under the Confederate name.

I'd use the money to by an Energica SS9 AND a Zero SR/S Premium with Charge Tank, and invest the remainder.

But that's just me... 

[MVetter]

Oh good, cylindrical cells. The battery cell of choice for motorcycles who can't afford to put quality pouch cells in their bikes.


For a mere .... $78,000.

edit- let's have a some funsies with the information they DID release. They are claiming a 399 volt system. Doesn't say max or nominal, but in order to give them the benefit of the doubt I'm going to use that as a max voltage figure. Cylinder cells are pictured. Could be 18650s but I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say 21700s. To further give them the best possible fighting chance I'm going to use Samsung 50G cells as my model which are 5Ah cells.

They would need 95 cells in series to get 399vdc (399 / 4.2 = 95)

This would mean nominal voltage of 346.75, and with a 5Ah cell that means each pack in series is 1.7kWh



This image is from their page, showing a battery rendering. It looks conceivably like each segment there could be 95 cells, and everything beyond that is a parallel pack. The 3 shown would be ~5.2kWh. How many fit into the giant phallic housing? No idea. But I'm gonna say maybe twice that, giving it a 10.4kWh pack or thereabouts. Speculating is fun with concept bikes.

hahahahha

HAAHAHHAHAHAHAAHAHHAHAAHAHAHHAAHAH


hhahahahahahahahhahahaaaaha


https://curtissmotorcycles.com/innovation-and-technology/    "Range – 120 miles (city) / 70 miles (highway)
Battery Capacity – 8.8 kWh"

I called it. I fucking called it. Goddamn.

[NEW2elec]

As for the Curtiss I agree it's motorcycle art/fashion and not trying to be the least bit practical. It does look like a hell of a lot of work was put into it but how well it sells is anyone's guess.

But I'll take credit for for being right when it comes to the big picture.

It has all the power needed to roll down Rodeo Drive or the Vegas strip or most likely from the trailer to the spot at the bike show where you are paid to attend.


While I'm at it, I was right about this too.

Alta went out of business because of HD's bad faith.  There are two Altas for sale on CT at the moment.  For over original retail.