To have a 200mi range and a 1hr recharge time we would need a 20kWh battery (probably a bit more)
I'd say that you'd need closer to a 28kWh nominal battery to achieve 200mi.
My own experience from my three bikes is that holding 50mph (with ocassional 30mph through towns) seems to averages at 7 miles per kWh.
(So far I have recorded averages of 6.8 miles per kWh on the 2012 ZF9, 7 miles per kWh on my 2013 S, and 6.9 miles per kWh on my SR)
Hopefully aerodynamics will improve soon which will significantly increase that. or what i'm hoping is a commercially available bolt on sporty looking fairing will be available to double range at 75-80 mph. I know in Texas the speed limit is85 mph in some places. You would more than double range at those speeds and your motor would never get hot because it only has to put out half the power. And your rear tire would last 25,000 miles. Mine did.
In may last year I went over 300 miles on a single charge with 27 kWh onboard riding the interstate in the fast lane at speeds often over 70-75 mph. This was on the Vetter streamlined 2012 Zero.
So that is about 100 miles at 70-75 mph per 9 kwh of battery given good streamlining
Without streamlining it's between a third and half that range.
Adding double the battery just means a lot more cost, a lot more weight, a lot more space (where do you put it all?) and a lot more onboard charging capacity, and you need to source that amount of power at each charging stop.
Isn't it just easier to have an aerodynamic fairing? it fixes all those 5 issues all at once!
A stock 5 brick Zero with a Vetter fairing and a Hollywood Electrics Elcon kit could cross the country in less than 3 days.
That's 150 miles per charge at highway speeds, and 2 hours of charging.
2 hours riding at 75 mph, 2 hours charging from a standard J plug.
2500 miles to cross the US at 150 miles every 4 hours and that's about 67 hours. Throw in some sleep and easily in less than 4 days.
Without aerodynamics to do it in 67 hours
You would need 30 kWh of battery on the bike, bringing the weight to over 600 pounds for the bike alone.
This is just to get through west texas, Arizona and New Mexico where locations with high power electricity can be 150 miles apart. Otherwise you could do it with less battery, but would spend a lot of time charging at 110v which would make some stops 8 hours or more. To charge 30 kWh in 2 hours, you will need 15 kW of charging. That would be 6 Elcons. Your bike already weighs over 600 pounds and now you need another 100 pounds in chargers. And then where do you source 15 kW? I know how because I've done it, but it's a pain and requires another 100 pounds of thick AWG 14-50 extension cords that can weigh 50 pounds themselves to stretch 100 feet at RV parks that stagger 50 amp sites with 30 amp sites. And some places you wont be able to do that at all. You will only be able to get 6 kW from a public Jplug because the RV park is full or only has 30 amp outlets left. In that case to charge 30 kWh at 6 kW it will take you 5 hours. About the best you can hope for is 5-6 days I think.
Even with all the battery and charging you will still be twice as slow as a bike that has half the coefficient of drag. Plus you will weigh twice as much and the bike and chargers and cables will probably also double the cost.
I can't repeat it enough. More battery is good. Charging fast is better, but aerodynamics make logical sense in every way first.
Yet I can't deny that marketing shows people are scared to look different. Everyone wants to look the same as everyone else because they are afraid their friends will make fun of them. When you are riding the bike down the road all you see is the road, so it doesn't matter if the bike looked like spongebob with his squarepants.
Changing perception takes time. When the Ford Taurus came out in 1986 everyone hated how it looked. (it was so strange looking then they used it as the police cars in the movie Robocop) Now almost every car made is more aerodynamic than the Taurus was.
http://www.ford-taurus.org/taurusinfo/Specials/RoboCopMovie/RoboCop2.jpgPoint is you can't say I will never like the way that looks. All you can say is I've been programmed not to like the way that looks now, but that could easily change.
I'm not saying a full Vetter streamliner is for everyone, but i'd like to see something halfway between that and the looks of sportbikes like the Hayabusa.
I love Zero but I always laugh at their motto. "Zero Motorcycles is unencumbered by conventional thinking about how we design, manufacture and sell high performance electric motorcycles" There is a typo there.
What they meant to say is "Zero Motorcycles is VERY encumbered by conventional thinking about how we design our motorcycles to look like everyone else's motorcycles on the market"
And rightfully so, because otherwise no one would buy them. The problem isn't that the science isn't there to do anything we want today easily.
The problem is for most of us, science is much less important than our fear of looking different. That our ego might be hurt by someone making fun of how our bike looks. Maybe one day that will change and people won't fear being different if it makes scientific sense to do so. One day a low cost aerodynamic motorcycle can come out of the closet without fear of ridicule by haters.
One day we can only hope. Until then, we must "charge on" as fast as we can (pun intended)
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