Well Ive had the bike, coming on a year and about 1200 ish miles on it now and am loving the hell out of it.
I've played with many liter bikes and given them a good run for their money against the Electric and have made plenty of heads turn and respect the elect. My skill level is lacking, ive only been at it a year .vs. some that been doing this for decades so they get me in the corners of course but coming out and on straight aways, yah it's a run and ill pull ahead, look over nod, smile, though they can't see thru the helmet then let off the throttle a bit and let them pass. It's a track day, NOT a race day and I know I slow them down a bit in the corners, but why make someone impatient trying to get past me, and they eventually may try something that was not a good move? Just let them to have their fun so I can have mine is the way I see it. Once in a while though Ive showed my ass when the kids say something smart but generally I don't want to go tumbling. Ive got tons of photo's and video of wrecks, I don't want to be one of them. A little courtesy can go a long way towards avoiding that helo flight.
The bike is heavy, however once you are going, you really don't feel it much, just learn to handle it. I can't move as well as I really need to, so that leaves me with more arm / leg control .vs. leaning my ass way off the thing to get into the turns. This gives me the issue of dragging my foot sometimes on a really tight / hard run (if I was off the seat it'd been my knee / arm) Yes I know it's not optimum but it's what I have to work with.
The electric is very quiet, you can HEAR your tires and HEAR your grip !! Pay attention to that, LEARN the sounds, they'll let you know how you are doing, if you are at your limit, you WILL hear sliding and feel it skittering before it lets out. Have good tires on the bike. I am running Continentals, and love them. Currently since it's cooler out im running the Attack 2's. That way if their temps are not optimum because it's 28 degrees out and my dumb ass is on a bike, they still can perform somewhat, and still much better than slicks when they get cold !! I also run the front a little higher too, when you are braking hard, that battery is a TON of weight being slammed forward, a psi or so helps the tire handle it better.
The regen, this is a totally new world. Learn to use it!! I think this is an untapped resource that I need to learn / build the skills to fully exploit. That will show you down to the point you are almost tapping your ABS. Coming in hot on a turn and letting regen pull you in, pull you to where you need to be pointing, with the minor artisan hand control on the throttle to fine tune it, the bike is loaded up, the tires are loaded, you are not just free wheeling or doing a maint throttle, in fact if you do it right, you can already be working on bring the throttle up so when you DO get to about where you need to be pointing, you can hammer it.
The throttle..... it's powerful. Be very careful, yes even at over 100 mph you can still pull a wheelie on that thing, wanted or NOT
But with anything racing, you go smooth, glide in, glide out, but still ...under that full acceleration you are hanging on, literally hanging on to the bike as it is screaming towards the next turn. Try to keep down, because the front end will get light on you and if it's a shitty track, with seams or lumps, your front end can start dancing around a bit, and at a lean, this is NOT optimum.
The brakes.... are stupidly, insanely, obsurdly powerful !!! It took me a little bit to learn to go GENTLE on them, because they have a very positive, very solid engage and grip and it holds, there is no fade at all. They'll grumble if you are slowing hard but that's a floating rotor thing anyways. Between the regen and brakes you can make this bike do anything you need it to do, and more.
Tires get expensive and you can eat a set pretty quickly when you start having fun. later in the day after lunch, the track is warm, you are warm, the bragging is in 6th gear, yah lets go rumble and tear up the track !!! You get back in and tire boogers are all over in the belly pan of the bike but man did you have fun !!
The battery. Ive noticed that I can not get it to 100 percent anymore, it'll charge and just 'hang' at 98 ish percent, and can be balancing for hours on end. Ive learned not to worry about that, because I usually keep them at 94 when I hit the track anyways, I never full charge because I need the headroom to PUT the regen. After a few weeks of racing the battery would start drifting where it'd want to balance at. I had it to where it wanted to go into balance mode in the mid to upper 80 percent range. That's because the hard on / hard charge / hard on, rinse wash and repeat without a good overnight soak will throw them off after a while. Each cycle will push it a little more out of whack. Im torn on this one. One part says at the end of the day, give them a good slow overnight balance charge, yet reading some articles, i then see, that's not the best thing for them, they like being a bit lower off the top for storage, so do I really WANT to top them off, and then set for a week?
one other oddity. At the beginning of the day, the charging is goofy, it'll go into balance mode and the amps will just swing wildly all over the place from like 1 amp to 30 amps and just bounce around, no rhyme or reason AND it will do this both on fast charge or AC charge. (well AC it's only 15 amps but still same behavior) Once I've taken it out on the track and burned a few percent off, the next cycle, she charges right up and behaves as it needs to be.
Charging, that cord is HEAVY. be MINDFUL of it. you can hear the metal going clickety click as you force the thing in to charge it. The DC is very tempermental, it has to be seated PERFECTLY flat on face to face and hit the switches or it won't charge, and it won't really give you a reason why either, it'll just fail to initialize. Then the bike can get goofy and not want to reset out of it and you basically have to remove the cable so it sees it gone, then turn the bike off and on again to fully reset everything. It seems like a hard fault locks stuff out and it don't want to let you restart without a reset and intervention. This is not really a fault or failing, this is being safe. With the newer CCS protocols being able to go up to 1000 volts, you really do NOT want any seepage areas for that to creep anywhere. Trust me, you flash a kilovolt and that will btfu more shit in that few milliseconds than you ever could have imagined!!
Back to the cord, it's heavy and if it's cold out, it's STIFF. It don't want to plug in right and wants to hang off the bike, that pulling on the plug, puts strain on it where it clasps in, that's not good, plus it's often enough to un make that one switch that says im flush and plugged in and the seals are made. I find that looping it around the seat a bit ... or if you got a way, get a hangar and hang it over a canopy..... whatever you can come up with to keep it so that entire weight is NOT trying to hold on by just the plug. I just see this becoming an issue in the future and am trying to avoid that day as long as possible. Cold cords do NOT want to play right. Maybe like a fold down bar or something with a piece of small chain, you open seat up, flip lock the bar up like a mini cherry picker, loop the cord thru it just to take all the weight / tension off the actual face of the plug... I dunno... ill come up with something eventually.
speaking of faults, it'd be nice if it told me why, NOT just initialization failure....ok WHY? what did not pass muster???
Sprockets and chain - the chain looks ok, they put a 520 on the bike .vs. a 525 which is probably what it really needs because of the raw HP you are pushing into it. the 20 is lighter. ok, im not running supermoto GP here so, is it THAT important for me? The chain stretched a bit over the 1000 miles obviously and im seeing signs the rear sprocket is chewed up a bit on the teeth tips though, not so much the front bearing face. For those out there who do track days, is 1000 miles about average to show obvious wear on the sprocket?
the shocks need service more often Id say because of the extreme beating you put on a race bike. The oil in mine was awful looking after 1000 miles, and I went ahead and changed out the brake fluids too and put the high performance 600 degree or whatever the stuff is. I had one emergency extremely hard stop where it actually blued the rotor a bit, so anything to help dissipate the heat you can make going from fast to not so fast, as quickly and as often over and over again as we do, is a benefit.
Tank grips, I would HIGHLY recommend them for ANY Ego / Ribelle rider period !! The bike is big and well, it's slippery !! A lot of smooth plastic on there and it's really hard to get your legs wrapped around and a good controlling grip on it. Putting tank grips so you got something to squeeze your thighs into makes a TON of difference in your level of control on the bile. Enough that I have to say yes even a casual rider on the road, you will probably like it much better in turns when you got a little more leg lingo helping you as well. If you are someone who is working your bike, ie a track rider / street racer / racer, then absolutely not using your arms so much you will welcome after a few laps!
I didn't think of it but am now, I really wish I had heated hand grips on this thing. Just one less little distraction when you are racing / running in the colder weather.... besides, it's bragging rights, I mean the bike is already cool as shit so why not have something else to show off
Another thing Id like would be a center stand. the kickstand is wierd and it's like the bike is leaned so way over you are fighting just to get it upright when you get on it! (then again I got the 3s thing going on too but).... Short Shit Syndrome. It's like, here, someone hold my bike up for me so I can just hop on and hop off it !!
The lap timer on it, I really wish it was more intuitive / easier to use
The regen, I wish it had more settings, I want it to be able to basically lock the rear brake if I wish to. Not that I want to but why not have it at the same power as standing on the rear brake? I find that being able to use the throttle to manip the rear brake gives a lot more feedback and precision in trail braking than your foot does. I just like it. others don't. I think a lot of that is the learned muscle memory, they learned how to ride a bike the 'normal ice' way. I basically learned how to ride, with the hard regen the Energica line has the ability to give, so basically learned the trailbraking as a method instead of learning it later on as an add on. As one racer I let run the bike said, holy shit dude, that regen puts id say about 50 to 60 percent of your body weight pushing forward. My reply was, don't let off the gas so much, learn how to regulate it, just like you regulate brakes thru a turn, it's the same thing really. It just needs a little time to learn and I think is another really powerful tool in the hands of one who knows how to use it. Not trying to sound like a smug asshole but it IS a different bike, and some things are a bit different on it and you need to learn them a bit differently is all. Driving a stick shift or an auto. some things are just... different tween the two..
The rear brake, speed sensor/ all that back there.... the wire on the switch can be re routed better, and the fluid hose, a 90 angle point in would be a lot better to keep things out of the way. Sometimes things can touch in very close quarters.. or if you run off the track (it happens) don't make it so easy for grass /twigs-sticks or whatever to find something to grab onto and mess up.
and finally... and this is a pipe dream. a heated seat. how awesome would THAT be!!
In closing, now that Ive had time to run it around a bit and ride her hard and put her away wet once or twice, I am in love with this bike. So many have said, why don't you just get a little ninja 400 and ride that on the track, it can do everything your bike can do..... yah, except go 185 mph or do a 0 to 100 in less than a handfull of seconds. and a few other critical things
Man, could you imagine the Experia's balance with the EGO's power, a bit lower COG what that thing could possibly do? Maybe in a few years after they get thru this rough patch and back in the game of making awesome electric bikes, something can come of that. I'll gladly volunteer to be one of the test riders !!
Maybe Damon should take their cash and buy Energica, at least they'd have a real product that is actually on the roads!!
Aaron
