By comparison ICE bikes have varying degrees of friendliness ...
The Zero does exactly what you tell it to. And you're used to a bike that doesn't do what you tell it... So you're okay with hitting that power band in the middle of a corner and sliding out? Or stalling out with a slight misapplication of the clutch... But not okay with your misapplication of throttle doing exactly what the throttle should do?
This is exactly it! The throttle does exactly to tell it to do, if you gave it a bad input, that is nobodies fault but your own.
No, this is a useless fallacy of an argument. The problem is not what the throttle does, it is what the tyres do in reaction to the throttle. The throttle appears to do the same thing on the 70bhp Zero DSR and the 70bhp Duke 690 but the wheels are doing something very, very different.
I imagine most of the time when people are opening the throttle they are expecting the tyres to do what they did last time, that is, grip the road, and accelerate. They do not always do this. There are a huge number of variables, some of which will be in your perception, some of which won't, some of which may be in your perception but "just this one time you under/overestimated it".
Different engine torque characteristics will give different results over different grip situations and different margins for error. The very best configuration is a single cylinder ICE engine, which has a margin of error and controllability so wide that almost anyone can act like a tit and enjoy themselves, as it loses traction for only some small percentage of the rolling distance of the tyre on each bang (despite making hugely more instantaneous torque than the EV - something like 800lb-ft), and with as such has such a degree of controllability you can entertain yourself for hours experimenting with how much you want it to slide.
The very worst configuration is the electric motor, which loses traction totally, completely, and instantly, on a knife edge, and can lose it at any point with equal probability on the circumference of the tyre as it rolls, and then will spin up instantly so as to not regain it until the rider is on their ear or possibly worse, snaps it shut causing it to similarly instantly regain traction and introduce the hapless rider to the high side. You can actually apply considerably greater acceleration on the 690 round a corner than the DSR because it maintains grip despite accelerating harder, and because you just don't have to worry about suddenly losing it. It really isn't fun trying to guess where the limit is when it's 0.1 degree of throttle and you're off.
Rather than glossing over this minor detail I am a bit surprised you're not strongly advocating for TC to be mandatory on EV bikes, in the same way that ABS is.
Cas
The throttle does the same thing every time. It puts torque to the rear wheel exactly how you tell it to.
Your wheel does not, and that is true no matter what the drivetrain is. Like you said there are a number of variables that effect your grip, from the tread on your tire to the road surface, condensation, temperature, weight on the bike, etc.
But you as a rider need to understand these variables and ride accordingly. The fact that your throttle is always going to give the same power to the rear wheel is actually empowering in that it takes several of those variables away that are present in the ICE drivetrain.
If you as the rider do not understand these variables and the risks involved when opening the throttle, you only have yourself to blame.
All you need is the self control to not tug on the throttle! You keep talking about being at the edge of traction where 0.1 degrees of the throttle will cause a crash, if that is the case then you as the rider are riding way too close to the threshold. We're talking about public roads here, not the race track. If you're close enough to where 0.1 degrees is going to lose you traction, that is your own fault for riding way too aggressively for current conditions. You know the electric motor has torque across the rpm range, you know the throttle is sensitive and directly controls that torque. You shouldn't be "guessing" how much you can tug on it like you're playing a video game.
I'm in the states, ABS isn't mandated at all. But it's a good feature and I do think it's good that it's more and more common. TC is a good feature too and I do think the more bikes that have it the better. Do not mistake me advocating for riders understanding their own machine and riding within the machine and the riders limits as a dismissal of good safety tech.
But safety is a relative thing, we all take different risks. We can argue about what the right safety choices are until we are blue in the face, but the bottom line is that you are taking more of a risk getting on 2 wheels than someone who rides in a car, who is taking more risk than someone who takes public transit. People ride with no gear, sometimes even no helmets. Others are ATGATT, others go even further and wear the new airbag vests on their motorcycles.
We all choose our own level of safety and risk. All I'm saying is that if you ride an electric motorcycle without TC, and then blame the lack of TC on your full-throttle crash, you are doing yourself and your bike a disservice. Know what you ride, know the risks, and own your decisions.