ElectricMotorcycleForum.com
General Category => Electric Motorcycle News => Topic started by: Richard230 on January 22, 2021, 08:35:57 PM
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Got money to burn? ::) https://electricmotorcycles.news/curtiss-one-reservations-open/
Kind of reminds me a little of the mid-1970's Sachs Wankel rotary-powered motorcycle.
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Got money to burn? ::) https://electricmotorcycles.news/curtiss-one-reservations-open/
Kind of reminds me a little of the mid-1970's Sachs Wankel rotary-powered motorcycle.
Where can I find the specs on that bike?
-Don- Auburn, CA
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[Where can I find the specs on that bike?
-Don- Auburn, CA
https://www.curtissmotorcycles.com/curtiss-1-technical
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Too tacky for my tastes.
I was curious when they said it's the first bike Curtiss had made for 115 years so decided to look it up but couldn't find any info about the previous bike. Their Wiki page says the company was started in 1991 as Confederate Motorcycles, built their first gas bike in 1994, and changed their name in 2017 and switched to making electric bikes in a supposed partnership with Zero. Apparently Zero made one for them called Hercules but I couldn't even find a picture of it nevermind any mention of it actually being for sale. The name change is in reference to Glenn Curtiss who founded the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company in 1916, 104 years ago. No mention of them making anything other than planes, engines, and a helicopter. Regardless it's nothing more than a name and from what I can see they have no official link to anything Curtiss did all those years ago, they've just taken the name in hopes of profiting from it (because the Confederate name didn't work too well for them).
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https://www.curtissmotorcycles.com/curtiss-1-technical
No specs on the KWH of the battery nor the range?
-Don- Auburn, CA
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I noticed that too. Where even is the battery? In the "tank" section? Looks tiny, like Zero's 3.6 module small. I assume that's the motor under the seat and the round thing with what looks like a fan at the front of it is part of the liquid cooling system.
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The battery is in that huge, finned phallus underneath.
As for 115 years, that would be going back to the ORIGINAL Curtiss Motorcycle Company founded by Glenn Curtiss in Hammondsport, NY. If you're ever in the Finger Lakes region of New York State you owe it to yourself to visit the Glenn Curtiss museum.
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Just the round part? They also need room for the controller so I suppose that would be in the tank area instead. That could be decently sized then, not massive but enough for how far most people would ride a bike like this.
The original Curtiss company doesn't have it's own Wiki page for some reason which is why I couldn't find it, however it is mentioned on Glenn Curtiss' own page (which I would have seen if I actually bothered to scroll down a tiny bit). Would love to see the V8 bike that did 136mph back in 1907, that one's in the Smithsonian. Do you know if the Glenn Curtiss Museum has his tomato soup can carburettor?
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An expensive piece of art, I don't have the money nor the taste for it.
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An expensive piece of art, I don't have the money nor the taste for it.
Nailed it! I can appreciate viewing a vehicle like that in a museum, but I can't honestly see why anyone would want to own one.
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Too tacky for my tastes.
I was curious when they said it's the first bike Curtiss had made for 115 years so decided to look it up but couldn't find any info about the previous bike. Their Wiki page says the company was started in 1991 as Confederate Motorcycles, built their first gas bike in 1994, and changed their name in 2017 and switched to making electric bikes in a supposed partnership with Zero. Apparently Zero made one for them called Hercules but I couldn't even find a picture of it nevermind any mention of it actually being for sale. The name change is in reference to Glenn Curtiss who founded the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company in 1916, 104 years ago. No mention of them making anything other than planes, engines, and a helicopter. Regardless it's nothing more than a name and from what I can see they have no official link to anything Curtiss did all those years ago, they've just taken the name in hopes of profiting from it (because the Confederate name didn't work too well for them).
There's no actual connection to Glenn Curtiss; the company decided to rename itself (presumably because "Confederate Motorcycles" has a negative connotation north of the Mason-Dixon Line), and that new name was chosen just to honor him, as he was known for motorcycle speed records.
I don't see the purpose of their living room art non-rideable bikes either.
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I think it had negative connotations just about everywhere else in the entire world tbh, apart from a few redneck racist backwaters in the deep South.
Cas :)
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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
(https://i.imgur.com/y9y8kDQ.png)
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.
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I agree. speculation is fun, especially for concept bikes that have been hit with an ugly stick and where money is no object. ;D
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MVetter "Oh good, cylindrical cells. The battery cell of choice for motorcycles who can't afford to put quality pouch cells in their bikes."
Maybe they learned they give better heat management from seeing issues with tightly packed pouch cells from an Italian company?
Speculating is fun! ;D
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It's probably a coincidence that all the performance brands use pouches.
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Like Tesla, Lucid, and Rivian? Or a motorcycle that stands up to it's gas class like Alta?
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Now they don't exactly have a space/weight premium to worry about though do they, being huge cars.
Cas :)
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Maybe why I included Alta.
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Alta is doing very well I hear.
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Yea, Alta went out of business using cheaper cells... wait, what?
-Crissa
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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.
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"Bad faith" in business is usually better described as "n00b CEO made terrible mistake arranging business deal and got shafted" ("But you pwomiiiiiissssed!") but that's quite a digression from Curtiss' battery tech :)
Cas :)
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"Bad faith" in business is usually better described as "n00b CEO made terrible mistake arranging business deal and got shafted" ("But you pwomiiiiiissssed!") but that's quite a digression from Curtiss' battery tech :)
Cas :)
Erik Buell got shafted much worse by H-D, when they decided to kill Buell which was quite profitable, just because it wasn't quite as profitable as H-D bikes.
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I did wonder why EB didn't just start sourcing his engines from elsewhere eg. S&S. But then everything EB seems to turn mysteriously also turns to shit too.
Cas :)
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EBR was actually building their own engines, the evolution of the engine they developed with Rotax, when they spun off of Harley Davidson. Then he got into another disastrous partnership with Hero Motorcycles of India who got all the IP out of them they wanted and then stopped paying the bills. EBR was picked up by LAP and they're still selling EBR motorcycles, but Erik is no longer involved with ICE bikes.
We were all amused by the announcement that Harley Davidson recently signed a partnership with Hero. Can't wait to see how this plays out...
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I did wonder why EB didn't just start sourcing his engines from elsewhere eg. S&S. But then everything EB seems to turn mysteriously also turns to shit too.
Cas :)
At that point, Buell the company was 100% owned by H-D, so I expect EB no longer had ownership of any of the intellectual property.
Also, it's my understanding that the whole move was sudden (or at least secret), essentially pulling the rug from under EB, so even if he
had rights to the designs, there wouldn't have been time to source equivalent engines; at that point Buell was making 15K bikes/year.
I consider EB an amazing engineer and designer -- it's unbelievable what he managed to do with the H-D stock engines, which were not intended for any of the uses he put them to, and the wide range of model types on a very low budget (beginner bikes, sportbikes, sport-tourers, adventure, standards).
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EBR was actually building their own engines, the evolution of the engine they developed with Rotax, when they spun off of Harley Davidson.
AFAIK, EBR was a completely new company he founded with outside investors, with no relationship to H-D .
Then he got into another disastrous partnership with Hero Motorcycles of India who got all the IP out of them they wanted and then stopped paying the bills. EBR was picked up by LAP and they're still selling EBR motorcycles, but Erik is no longer involved with ICE bikes.
EB isn't necessarily good at the business side of the motorcycle business, is the impression I get.
We were all amused by the announcement that Harley Davidson recently signed a partnership with Hero. Can't wait to see how this plays out...
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Yup. Hero is about the same size as H-D; less revenue, but more profits... They make 7.5M bikes/year.
H-D isn't big enough to strongarm them, esp. when their market is declining sharply (among other reasons, because they killed Buell) whereas Hero's is growing.
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True... EBR had nothing to do with HD, and HD had already decided they would (unofficially) look the other way regarding any patents Erik had while working for HD that might've ended up in an EBR motorcycle (such as Fuel in the frame, the ZTL brake amongst other things).
Now EBR has nothing to do with Erik. Erik has a new venture in FUELL. Their Flluid e-Bike has been very well received and it is their current priority since it is selling so well. The Fllow got delayed thanks to the pandemic but I'm sure it'll be available soon.
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Back to batteries: I like pouch cells and have never used anything else. But in planning my next build I'm finding that it's hard to identify quality cells that are available to the average hobbyist. There's all sorts of cylindrical cells out there that anyone can buy though.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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Production is 15 First Editions, then 100 per year.
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I guess we'll see if it has enough interest to ever make more than those original 15.
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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.
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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... ;)
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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
(https://i.imgur.com/y9y8kDQ.png)
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.
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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.