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[Richard230]

My 2022 Yamaha FZ1 is now 20 years old. My daughter's 1981 BMW R65LS is just over 40 years old. Both bikes are still running strong. Which got me to thinking.    Between Zero, the LiveWire and Energica, I would say that Energica's chassis is the most likely to last a long time in service. And probably much longer than the batteries will keep going. So what happens when the batteries die, but the chassis is still going strong?

Do you think any of the current electric motorcycle batteries could be replaced 10 or 20 years from now? Between the improvement in battery technology and the current fad of apparently making the battery pack something very difficult to be replaced in the future by anyone but the factory - who would be unlikely to be interested in doing so when they are manufacturing the latest EV models (assuming that the business even remains in operation and has not been bought out by one of the major Japanese brands as an easy way to jump into the market), I believe that it is time for manufacturers to start thinking about making battery replacement relatively easy by using a design that would allow replacement of the pack in the future without having to completely tear the vehicle apart to do so. This would allow the chassis to keep going for many years in the future, instead of needing to be junked for spare parts and ending up its life in a breaker's yard because of a depleted battery.   

[Stonewolf]

I expect battery replacement to be more of a "remanufacturing" job than a spare parts job tbh.

[T.S. Zarathustra]

My 2022 Yamaha FZ1 is now 20 years old. My daughter's 1981 BMW R65LS is just over 40 years old. Both bikes are still running strong. Which got me to thinking.    Between Zero, the LiveWire and Energica, I would say that Energica's chassis is the most likely to last a long time in service. And probably much longer than the batteries will keep going. So what happens when the batteries die, but the chassis is still going strong?

Do you think any of the current electric motorcycle batteries could be replaced 10 or 20 years from now? Between the improvement in battery technology and the current fad of apparently making the battery pack something very difficult to be replaced in the future by anyone but the factory - who would be unlikely to be interested in doing so when they are manufacturing the latest EV models (assuming that the business even remains in operation and has not been bought out by one of the major Japanese brands as an easy way to jump into the market), I believe that it is time for manufacturers to start thinking about making battery replacement relatively easy by using a design that would allow replacement of the pack in the future without having to completely tear the vehicle apart to do so. This would allow the chassis to keep going for many years in the future, instead of needing to be junked for spare parts and ending up its life in a breaker's yard because of a depleted battery.   

Replacing the cells in a battery is akin to replacing the internals and engine block in ICE motorcycle. Will it be worth it to replace the internals and engine block in your FZ1, or R65LS? With all the work to tear it apart, source new parts, and reassemble? Will all the parts even be available? If available, will they be affordable?
Once your battery fails you can relatively easily replace the cells. Maybe some entrepreneur will start to make batterypacks to order for older electric bikes. Components are simple enough to obtain. Brand new batterypack will cost more than an old electric bike is worth though.

[DonTom]

Brand new batterypack will cost more than an old electric bike is worth though.

Hard to say. The price of lith batteries are going down about as fast as we can buy them.


-Don-  Auburn, CA

[princec]

Very, very few bikes ever live to see over 40,000 miles, and many that do, are wretched hounds. Obvs your two bikes have lived long and happy lives but they are probably the exception rather than the rule, or the planet would literally be so full of old motorcycles we wouldn't know where to put them all. I think once the battery gives up the ghost it'll find a new life as off grid backup storage at home, and any unbent/unrusted/unworn/uncrashed chassis parts will get parted out to breakers and keep the dwindling supply of still-running bikes on the road a bit longer.

Cas

[Richard230]

Very, very few bikes ever live to see over 40,000 miles, and many that do, are wretched hounds. Obvs your two bikes have lived long and happy lives but they are probably the exception rather than the rule, or the planet would literally be so full of old motorcycles we wouldn't know where to put them all. I think once the battery gives up the ghost it'll find a new life as off grid backup storage at home, and any unbent/unrusted/unworn/uncrashed chassis parts will get parted out to breakers and keep the dwindling supply of still-running bikes on the road a bit longer.

Cas

The 1986 Honda VFR that I used to own and gave my son-in-law now has 125K miles on the clock and the engine has never been worked on. My daughter's BMW has had its clutch replaced and some top-end work. It has over 100K miles on it and parts are readily available from a number of sources, both in the U.S. and in the EU. I have a friend with a 1986 BMW R100RS and his bike now has 150K miles on it, with no need to overhaul the engine yet, he just had the clutch replaced and some work done on the transmission.   

[DonTom]

Very, very few bikes ever live to see over 40,000 miles, and many that do, are wretched hounds. Obvs your two bikes have lived long and happy lives but they are probably the exception rather than the rule, or the planet would literally be so full of old motorcycles we wouldn't know where to put them all. I think once the battery gives up the ghost it'll find a new life as off grid backup storage at home, and any unbent/unrusted/unworn/uncrashed chassis parts will get parted out to breakers and keep the dwindling supply of still-running bikes on the road a bit longer.

Cas

My 1971 BMW R75/5 has close to 300,000 miles on it. My 1984 Venture has 130,000 miles. Both still run like new or better. The BMW a lot better than new because of modern modifications.


I have heard of many bikes breaking 300,000 miles. And those break no records.


AFAIK, the record on a motorcycle is for it to last more than one million miles.




-Don-   Auburn, CA

[princec]

Yes yes we know about everyone's anecdotes and we've been here before, the actual global statistics basically say otherwise. It's great that your old bikes are still working and cared for but they are the 1%.

Cas

[DonTom]

Yes yes we know about everyone's anecdotes and we've been here before, the actual global statistics basically say otherwise. It's great that your old bikes are still working and cared for but they are the 1%.

Cas

Here are the "actual statistics."


-Don-  Auburn, CA

[T.S. Zarathustra]

The comparison is apples and oranges. It's easy to kill a batterypack with bad treatment and carelessness. At the same time, if you take really good care of the battery in your electric bike (like OP (Richard230) claims to do with his bikes) there is no reason it shouldn't last hundreds of thousand miles, or couple of decades.

I would like batteries to be easier to swap. Easier to support by aftermarket. Will that happen? The Japanese big four are trying to standardise them. I hope they come with a good solution.

Price of lithium cells might be steadily dropping but the cells are not always the most expensive part of the batterypack. Labour and design are always there and the fewer packs you make the bigger effect those will have on the end price.

[Skidz]

I can only speak for myself ofcourse, but here I go.

Bought my Zero DSR in 2016, app showed 11.700Wh of net capacity. Now, 50.000 km's and 6 years later, the app shows 11.400Wh so it lost 300Wh in the 5 and a bit years I own and ride it.
I do pamper the battery as some call it by charging to around 80% and only topping it off if needed, right before departure, with the OBC. In case of longer trips I have a 3.6kW Elcan charger that together with the OBC and gen 1 chargetank adds up to 7.6kW charging, which is well below 1c charging and thus does not hurt the pack.

Extrapolating in time, a loss of 300Wh over 5 years is 60Wh lost per year, so to get to 80% capacity it will take about 39 years (20% of 11700Wh/60Wh)
Extrapolating in km's, a loss of 300Wh over 50.000km is .006Wh/km so to get to 80% capacity will take around 390.000km (20% of 11700Wh/0.006Wh/km)

I think in 39 years somebody will either pamper the bike for the old-timer it is by then and give it a new battery pack. Given that battery tech has a rather high development rate, batteries become more energy-dense as well as cheaper per unit (Usually kWh) so the $5k a battery costs now will be greatly reduced over time.

From 2015 to 2020, battery capacity grew 2.7 times and the price again plunged by two-thirds, to an average of $137/kWh. That overshot the 18% rule, by which the price should have dropped only to about $213/kWh. But if you had strictly tracked the 18% rule from 2010 to 2020, the price ended up right around where it should have been.

I hope the 18% rule is faster than the battery degradation of my soon-to-be Energica

[princec]

The battery pack will very likely outlive the MBB and other associated electronics by some way - the capacitors will dry out and eventually fail or explode in spectacular fashion, solder joints will gradually crack through thermal stress, contacts will slowly oxidise.

Cas

[Stonewolf]

Most motorbikes will happily get you to 100k but here's a little statistic for you, the average annual mileage for a motorbike in the UK is 3000. I bought a 14 year old VFR with 25k on the clock, barely run in.

Motorbikes can and do last plenty of miles but they generally don't get ridden that much before they find a "kind and gentle" owner who runs them right into the ground.

[Richard230]

What started my thinking of this thread subject is that the Energica bikes seemed to me to have the best chassis and build quality of the three current most popular freeway-legal electric motorcycle models on the market in the U.S. Although I honestly don't know much about the quality of the LiveWire, but i am pretty sure that the Energica seems to have better build quality and engineering when compared with the Zero. To me it would be a shame should you have to retire your Energica if its batteries didn't last as long as the chassis components and couldn't be replaced at a reasonable cost.

[Stonewolf]

I think if the market were there remanufactured battery units would become a thing but given the sales numbers that's unlikely and I expect it'd be more of a custom job. Ultimately if you want it you can get it, the question is how much are you willing to pay for it.