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[Motoproponent]

The Super 73 C1X and the Damon Hypersport both have a pretty established digital footprints. There is a good amount of promised "starting production by [insert ever-slipping-date here]"

both are taking fully refundable deposits.....

My money is on Super 73. I think they'll get into customer garages first.

(if either ever materialize)

[MVetter]

The guy behind the Super73 is a friend, and I chatted with him about the project as recently as April. While I can't go into details about the project right now, the company has a lot on their plate. What I can say is that he has very specific goals for the bike itself. Non-negotiables if you will.

- The bike must be able to fast charge to 80% in ~15-20 minutes

- The bike must be able to sustain LA freeway speeds

If he cannot make a bike that meets those criteria the project will be scrapped. I trust what he tells me because as long as I've known him he's always been good to his word.

[Specter]

The first goal is normally the killer.
Oh it CAN be done, the batteries are out there and out there now,  BUT longevity on them... that's a different story.
Any company who cares about quality is not going to sacrifice brand name and quality by putting a battery in that will charge in 10 minutes, but wants to cook in 300 to 400 cycles.

Would love to see more bikes out there,  bikes in the Energica range of power / quality, not toy scooters.   Honestly can't see that happening though anytime soon, and lasting.   The market just is not in the right place anymore really for that until something major changes.  Well, actually a number of things really need to change.

Storage Tech
Grid Implementation / Generation
Charging Tech / availability

just to name a few.

supercaps may be a game changer, they ARE there, I am beta testing one now for a company, it IS sweet, but, of course, there are different issues, and they are not really that much lighter.  and currently tend to be more on the lower end volt wise.

Hopefully in a few years we have a new dream bike.

Aaron

[princec]

All the pieces of technology to make this bike exist right now. It is likely that at least one development team has assembled them and looking to move it into production in 3-4 years. A 400V system is easily possible. DCFC at 50kW is easily possible at 400V. Within the weight and packaging constraints of a motorcycle a liquid cooled 24kWh pack is possible, and with 24kWh, 200 miles of range is possible. And price-wise, there is no direct reason for BEVs to cost any more than ICE any more, as batteries, as we have all noticed, are suddenly rather cheap compared to just a year ago. They have arrived.

What gets in the way is noise. "I won't buy a bike till it does 300 miles and refills in 2 minutes!" ... when 99% of riders have never ridden 300 miles in one go in their entire biking careers and are usually so crippled after attempting to do so they have to sit and nurse their arses for an hour before they can even get back on the thing again. This is noise made by loud, whinging bikers who are unable to be honest with themselves. I'm absolutely sure that 1% of riders do regular 300 mile days, but dammit 1% is not a segment that any mainstream manufacturer should give a shit about. So far the only manufacturer honestly hitting enough of the bases is Zero (fd: I own one) but I based my choice on how I ride not on how I pretend to ride on forums. Energica were a close second but of course took themselves out of the running with lame AC charging, crazy price, and chain drive. I'd buy an SS9 any day over an SR/F if they were the same price though.

Cas

[Specter]

Energica was built more as a race bike, hence the chain.  The AC could be better, but show a car that has decent AC charging?   yah, they don't because everything mainstream is geared for the DC fast charge like the bike already is, and the rest are not.

300 miles, shit.. im bitching after 80 to 100 miles.  That's a long ride, your hands are sore, arms sore, ass sore, im ready for a stretch and or a beer.  In all honesty, that is what I tell people, ok so it takes you 40 minutes to recharge?  Have you ever ridden with a pack of Harley Tards?  40 minutes is about par just to get gas on a good day!  By the time everyone gets their drinks, smokes a cigarette, fills the bikes, sure enough you are getting ready to pull out and.  waah,  so and so's cow has to pee now,  another 10 minutes shot.  If you are doing a poker run, now make that more like an hour to hour and a half.  Your bike is NOT going to be at 9 percent either, it's probably going to be like maybe 68 percent on a longer run, so you don't even need a full charge  /full charge time.  I think one of the reasons they limit it to 15 amps, besides obviously that's the rating of the charger, but, it can take 115 volt too, and 15 A is your standard circuit, without having to do special wire and bigger breakers now.  That way they can claim it's 115 volt compatible too, w/o having to hear complaints because someone keeps popping the breaker because they have it set too high.

Even racing, 15 minutes is about an average run.  If you are pushing longer than that, you are getting tired, getting sore, probably starting to make mistakes.  Granted you travelled 25 to 30 miles in that 15 but still, it's not hours and hours of driving.

Aaron

[flynnstig82r]

Only one of these two companies has successfully brought electric two-wheelers to market, and multiple generations and models that were well-received in Super 73's case. Until Damon actually delivers a finished product at scale, they shouldn't be discussed in the same breath as a company like Super 73.

[jotjotde]

Totally agree, after 100 km riding over twisty roads which takes you about 1.5 to 2 hours everyone should better make a stop and not only 5 minutes to fill the tank (ICE). Riding a motorcycle challenges you in many more ways than driving a car, so you better stay focused.
During DC charging 30 min I get some rest, a trip to the loo and a refill. After that I am good to go another stretch fully focused again.

Nevertheless, I am dreaming of solid state batteries coming to (motorcycles) market soon. Double range and double charge power would be nice. Surely I would still do my rest stops, but not necessarily at a charging station.
Until then I am happy with my Ribelle 

[Specter]

so if range is not an issue then why do you need double it?   just asking 

Another thing one must remember, the faster YOU want to recharge, the much more expensive the equipment will be for THEM to sell you the juice.  Not to mention the wiring to and from it, and the power capacity.   When one charger wants the equivalent of 2 Haji's stop and robs worth of electric, that can be an issue.   Now lets throw this charger into a hood like sanfranpoopcicle where the crack heads are going to be cutting and stealing the cables if you turn your head for 30 seconds, the replacement costs for that...the owner may decide, it's not worth having electric charging after a few thefts.

If Tesla could be convinced to open his chargers up to bikes capable of using  them, that'd actually be HUGE for the 2 wheel industry and electric, because right now, his chargers by far  have surpassed any program the worthless government has promised by thousands of miles worth of charging stops.

AC charging on the road, is really NEVER going to be real good, if they can put in a plug that heavy for AC, then why not just go DC and grab the much higher audience that is there already?  In theory, Im going to say 12 KW of charging capacity AC is about the max you will see in the US, as anything bigger is going to need to be hard wired, much heavier gauge, etc.  A nema 14-50 will give you 50 amp at 240 vac to charge with.

so far I have not seen any bikes that accept 480 vac inputs to charge with, and even then it's the output amps that are the limiting factor here.



Until the charging catches up, I sadly can't see ANY bike company doing really well.

Aaron

[princec]

The charging infrastructure is already here. At least, in the UK. We have 22kW AC charging everywhere. Every shitbag carpark in every little village has 2 or 4 of them, because they only cost a couple of grand to install. They are all over the place.

And you're thinking huh, AC charging sucks, etc, etc but wait! That's 22 kW charging!! That's like twice what the best Zeros can take, and more than the DC"F"C charging on the Energica and LiveWire. I'd be so happy to get 22kW charging capability. Combined with what I think the sweet spot in battery capacity would be - about 21kWH, enough to get you about 150 miles at motorway speeds - that means charging at about 150mph, and now, we are cooking on induction, to painfully paraphrase a metaphor

Cas

[TheRan]

Is it really that common? Looking on plugshare most of the stations near me that list the power are around 7kW, but there are a bunch that have no details so I guess those could be more. I don't public charge so never check any out in person.

The thing is, how big, heavy, and expensive would 20 odd kW of chargers be? With DC there's not really anything to add. Also you're reliant on those stations being 22kW ones which is the high end for AC, where as anywhere DC would support it. If Energica and Livewire can't manage 1C then that's a limitation of the bike, not the station.

[princec]

Google has this to say:

"The cost to install a DC commercial EV charging station in the UK can range from £30,000 and up, depending on the charging rate. DC chargers are more expensive than 22kW AC chargers, which can cost over £1,500"

Last I heard any news about ACDC converters, the ones in the Zeros are about twice the size of the currently available state of the art, so I guess there's room for 22kW charging in the next generation, which is a viable option for Zero as it means they don't have to redesign their entire monolith, BMS, controller, and motor to cope with the  300VDC battery that'll be needed to take DC charging. If I were in charge of Zero, I'd probably develop this option for the next gen bikes (which will be good enough for another 10 years), and then start on the work to begin transition to a high voltage powertrain.


Cas

[TheRan]

Yeah but there's already a bunch of DC stations out there (cost doesn't really matter, they're still being installed and the gov is putting money into them because they're good for cars too), and the AC stations I'm seeing with details are mostly around 7kW. I'm just asking if there are actually loads of 22kW ones out there. The fact that plugshare doesn't show details for a lot of them and can't filter by power output means I wouldn't want to rely on it, I would rather just be able to go to any DC station.

As for Zero, they need to switch to AC or get left behind. They've been at low voltage for well over a decade meanwhile all the newcomers are going high voltage. I've heard plenty about people having issues not getting the full wattage from their current chargers so increasing them isn't going to help, and as mentioned above it's not going to be universal or reliable.

[flynnstig82r]

In the US, the charging network seems to be on a rapid decline. A lot of chargers were built with poorly designed government incentives that did not properly incentivize maintenance and uptime, so the supply of working chargers is decreasing as the fleet of EV’s increases. Tesla is seen as having the only reliable network, so they have every incentive to charge a high price for vehicles from other manufacturers as they open their network, and Elon is well known for disliking motorcycles, so I wouldn’t hold out hope for Livewires and Energicas to charge at a Tesla supercharger anytime soon. It’s a fairly bleak situation, not helped by the technological hurdles that Specter mentioned.

I continue to see plug-in hybrids as the solution for the next 5-10 years, but I thought the same thing about the car market and they never really seemed to take off. Either way, I’m not expecting to see a lot of movement from traditional OEM’s or a lot of EM sales until about 2030, although I’d love to be wrong, of course.

[princec]

The current major problem with DC, as flynnstig82r says, is that they are so unreliable. The AC chargers are so simple and generally maintenance free that they almost always work properly.

PHEVs haven't taken off because you pay for two completely unique drivetrains, both at purchase time, and with continued maintenance. And at the end of the day you're still spewing crap out of the back and for me the whole point was to not do that.

Cas

[Stonewolf]

Tesla Superchargers are open to all vehicles at select sites across the UK and Europe though the process of getting there was not without its problems ... including a friends Honda E getting bricked and Energica UK giving me a couple of spare fuses and an allen key in a baggie when I took the bike in for a pre-tour service because you guessed it a supercharger had popped one somewhere in the electroguts that sit on top of the battery when someone else had tried it.

I describe the Ribelle's range as "adequate", it does the job, more would be nice but as a lot of people have said by the time you've gotten down to 20% it's stretch/cigarette/coffee time anyway. If you put enough miles on one you'll end up spending longer charging but given that a brand new one can do 25 minutes and Energica quote 40 you're still getting your moneys worth. Ultimately I think the "right" amount for a Ribelle is gonna be 120 to 130 miles from 100 to 20 since that's on par with petrol hypernakeds, and I think that can be just ex-urban rather than motorway since I don't buy my toy bikes based on the most boring use case. I'm one of those masochistic "the best touring bike is the one you want to ride when you get there" types though.