It’s not hard to find someone, be it a journalist or everyday person, who thinks electric cars are the future. While some companies struggle to sell electric cars, Tesla gets so many people in EVs that it’s making best-seller charts. The same cannot be said for the electric motorcycle industry. As of this month, things are looking bleak. Fuell, Erik Buell’s venture for electric motorcycles, is dead. It joins a list of other freshly dead companies including Energica and Sondors as well as struggling brands including LiveWire and Cake. Now, Zero Motorcycles is asking for more money as it seems everyone isn’t having a good time selling electric motorcycles.
I’ve known for a while now that electric motorcycle manufacturers have been struggling. However, I didn’t realize things were as bad as they were until I ran into a Tech Crunch article from yesterday. In it, Sean O’Kane points out which brands are struggling and which brands are dead, and what I read shocked me. A couple of these brands died just days ago with their corpses still warm, leaving the whole industry feeling uneasy.
One thing is clear, and it’s that electric motorcycles aren’t catching on nearly as well as electric cars are, and there could be more stormy weather ahead.
The Dead Ones
I think I’ll start this with the companies that have already died.
On October 17, Electrek reported the Chapter 7 bankruptcy of the promising upstart that was Fuell, a company co-founded by motorcycle legend Erik Buell.
In the report, Electrek‘s Micah Toll writes about how Fuell successfully delivered on its Flluid-1 eBike, but failed to deliver the Flluid-2 and Flluid-3 at scale despite the company getting over $1.5 million in crowdfunding. These electric bicycles were supposed to fund Fuell’s flagship product, an electric motorcycle designed and engineered by Erik Buell. This was supposed to be Buell’s answer to the future of motorcycles and the one product that would have his name on it that was actually designed by him. The Autopian had been in contact with Fuell and we were supposed to ride the Fuell Fllow when a prototype of it was ready.
Contacts to Fuell are met with this response, emphasis mine:
To the creditors of Fuell Inc,
I am currently representing Fuell Inc. in a chapter 7 bankruptcy proceeding filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin on October 16, 2024 as case #24-25492. A trustee has been appointed to liquidate the assets of the Company. All creditors will be advised to file claims in that proceeding as it appears that there may be assets for payment of unsecured claims after all of the secured claims are paid or otherwise dealt with. A copy of the Notice of the Case is posted nearby.
Management regrets the Company has been forced to take this path. Unfortunately, the Company lacks funds to pay for the labor costs and other required services necessary to assemble and ship products to its customers, and additional funds could not be raised to pay the Company’s outstanding current liabilities or to pay for the assembly and shipment of pre-ordered electric bicycles. I hasten to add that the Company has on hand what it believes to be the parts necessary for the assembly of the bulk of, if not all of the pre-ordered electric bicycles.
After consultation, management has determined that a promptly filed chapter 7 was the best way to provide value for the significant assets held by the Company including, but not limited to, a purchase from the bankruptcy trustee of substantially all of the assets of Fuell Inc. by an interested party who may subsequently, with effort and negotiations, potentially restart the operations and move forward. Obviously, this is the route preferred by management, but it is complicated and fraught with risk. Any creditor or interested party that has such an interest should be contemplating retaining experienced bankruptcy counsel to negotiate with the Trustee for such a purchase.
As the Company has little to no funds, and no employees, it is unable to directly answer creditors’ questions concerning specific orders. Creditors may direct questions to the Trustee who will be apprised of the situation. Since there are no employees at the Company to respond to questions at this time, current inquiries to the company will go unanswered.
All known creditors will receive the notice of the bankruptcy filing and advised to file claims. If you have placed a deposit for the purchase of a product, your claim may be entitled to priority to an extent. You may want to consult with a lawyer on this issue.
Great effort is being made to provide enough information in the bankruptcy schedules so that there is at least a possibility that a potential purchaser of the assets may be able to restart the Company or otherwise redeploy the assets to produce the product intended. Current equity will lose everything that is been invested in the company through this chapter 7 bankruptcy filing.
We trust that this information may be of some cold comfort to you as a creditor of the Company and will certainly give you an idea of what you can expect in the immediate future. As indicated above, you will be notified of the bankruptcy filing as a creditor or other interested party.
If you have an interest in purchasing the assets through the bankruptcy process or know of anyone who may have such an interest, you may contact the Trustee or the undersigned to discuss potential avenues to accomplish that.
Sincerely,
PAUL G. SWANSON
Attorney at Law
Ouch. It’s a shame, because I’ve been following Erik Buell for years and was excited to ride the Fllow, even if Buell’s expectations for it were a bit too ambitious. Now, it’s gone. Unfortunately, the pain isn’t over for Fuell’s customers, either. As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports, anyone who put money into the Fuell project and got the shaft now has to chase Fuell into bankruptcy court to get their money back. The company no longer even has employees who could issue you a refund.
Then there’s the Italian electric motorcycle firm Energica. This company was known for making electric motorcycles with enough range and charging speed to complete actual cross-country trips. Unlike Fuell, Energica was not a crowdfunded startup. This company was founded in 2014 and had an established line of motorcycles. For example, an Energica Experia (below) had a chunky 19.6 kWh nominal battery, which gave the motorcycle 261 miles of city range and 130 miles of actual highway range.
Unfortunately, its focus on huge batteries and touring range also meant the company’s bikes were expensive. For example, the Experia was $23,250 before any options. Still, along with Zero, Energica was sometimes considered one of the closest brands the electric motorcycle world had to Tesla.
On October 15, Cycle News reported that it, too, had thrown in the towel. Energica first thought it could get through by shaving its workforce by 70 percent, but ultimately, it also decided that to completely shut down its operation. From Energica:
“Despite the efforts from the management in actively and extensively pursuing a search for new investors – always with the aim of preserving going concern in the best interest of creditors – it has become clear in the last few hours that these alternative options are no more viable, thus leaving the company with no other choice than resolving for the opening of a bankruptcy judicial liquidation.”
Yikes! Another known name in the electric motorcycle world that has failed is Sondors.
The makers of the futuristic Metacycle struggled almost from the beginning. Remember, the Metacycle was supposed to be a quick, highway-capable electric motorcycle for just $5,000. Unfortunately, it launched with specs roughly half that as promised, eventually with a higher price than advertised, and as Electrek reported, the motorcycles may not have even been actually road legal, anyway. That company went belly up in late 2023 with the fallout bleeding well into 2024, leaving existing owners without spare parts or any support. Like Fuell, Sondors was also sitting on a stack of money given to it by prospective customers.
Sondors was such a blunder that, as Electrek reported, thousands of bikes were abandoned in the company’s Chinese factory and bills went unpaid as the company effectively just vaporized. Fans and customers aren’t thrilled, to say the least. It’s believed Sondors may have sold perhaps “nearly 2,000” motorcycles. The company was founded in 2015, but didn’t start its first deliveries until late 2022. So, Sondors didn’t even really survive a full year on the market before failing.
Somehow the bloodbath continues.
Cake, the Swedish manufacturer of seriously cute electric motorcycles, filed for bankruptcy in February of this year after it too, couldn’t keep enough money to stay afloat. Cake was a startup that was founded in 2018 and its original mission involved the creation of lightweight minibike-like motorcycles. While the company never got big, it did become known enough to collaborate with the likes of Polestar.
Yet, like the brands above, Cakes were also premium machines, or at least had premium prices. It sold the Makka moped with a top speed of 15 mph for $3,800 and the tiny Bukk dirt bike for $9,470.
Weirdly, Cake didn’t stay dead. After Cake failed, its assets were scooped up by Norwegian car dealer Brages Holding AS, which plans an “ambitious quest to lead the premium electric two-wheeler segment in targeted markets.” That one’s a head-scratcher since, as you’ve read thus far and will read in a little bit, selling premium electric motorcycles is a struggle. But, we’ll see if Cake manages to stay alive this time.
If I keep naming dead brands this article will go on forever. Two more names that started the year alive but didn’t make it through 2024 are Arc Vector and Onyx Motorbikes. If you expand the list further to brands that died years ago, you’ll see Brammo, Mission, and Alta all on the list of failures.
Burning Cash
There are probably other dead motorcycle brands I’m missing here, but those are a handful of the bigger names. Sadly, we’re not done yet because there are still two companies out there that are alive, but are still struggling.
The first we’ll talk about is LiveWire, the Harley-Davidson-controlled spin-off electric motorcycle brand. The company keeps launching new models, but sales are slow. LiveWire sold 597 motorcycles in 2022 and just 660 motorcycles in 2023. The company says it lost $85 million in 2022 with the losses deepening to $125 million in 2023. How rough is it for LiveWire? The company sold exactly zero of its flagship LiveWire One motorcycles in 2023. LiveWire is expected to burn up to $115 million of Harley-Davidson’s money by the end of this year and still end up selling well under 1,000 motorcycles doing it.
According to LiveWire, the motorcycles aren’t even bringing in that much money. In the third quarter, LiveWire sold $3.2 million in children’s balance bikes compared to just $1.2 million made from selling 99 electric motorcycles.
Zero Motorcycles seems to be going through its own thing. Zero doesn’t have a big parent like Harley-Davidson to keep on giving it money, so it gets rounds of funding to support its projects. As Tech Crunch reports, Zero is currently in the process of closing a funding round of $120 million. That goes on top of another funding round of $107 million from back in 2022 in which it got money from Polaris Industries and Hero MotoCorp. The investors aren’t disclosed this time around, but Zero says it’ll use the money to fund expansion and the development of new motorcycles.
Zero does not release sales numbers, but in 2022, it did say that it sold over 20,000 vehicles since its founding in 2006. In 2020, the company reportedly sold 3,500 electric motorcycles.
Why Are These Brands Struggling?
Of course, this begs a big question: Why are electric motorcycle brands struggling? As a motorcyclist, there are a few factors that I think make electric motorcycles unattractive as compared to something like a Tesla.
Back in September, I chatted with engineers at Canada’s BRP. The powersports manufacturer is just now hitting the market with electric motorcycles right in the midst of this industry struggle. One of the concerns of the engineers was trying to find a perfect balance. BRP’s engineers told me that current battery technology limitations mean that they have only so many levers they can pull.
They could make a motorcycle with lots of range like an Energica, but the current way to do that would be to pile on the batteries. The result would be a heavy electric motorcycle with an extremely high price. They could make a motorcycle that is super lightweight and agile by taking batteries out. This would cut down both cost and weight, but nobody wants a motorcycle that can’t actually go anywhere. Unfortunately, until there’s a breakthrough in battery tech, this is what things are like.
So, BRP’s engineers found something sort of in the middle. The question now becomes if buyers would be willing to pay $13,999 for a motorcycle with 80 miles of combined range and 47 HP on tap.
Pretty much all of the world’s electric motorcycle manufacturers are pulling similar levers. Cheaper electric motorcycles tend to have bad range while the ones that have good range cost too much.
Take the 2023 Zero DSR/X that I’ve been testing for a year and four months now.
Zero says this electric adventure motorcycle costs $22,995 and in my experience, you can reliably get 120 miles of range out of it if you stay off of the highway. However, it takes nearly 3 hours to charge, if you can find a functional level 2 charger wherever you’re headed. As of right now, a BMW R 1300 GS has a starting price of $18,895, will go lots of miles on a highway, and takes less than 5 minutes to refuel to get you back onto a road or trail.
In other words, you really have to be into EV technology to want the Zero over the BMW.
Let’s pick another bike, the $6,495 Ryvid Anthem.
We love the Anthem for its trick technology, but there are compromises here, too. It gets 48 miles of combined highway range and the standard model makes 20 HP. A Honda Rebel 300 makes similar power for $4,849 and doesn’t have to stop every 48 miles during your commute.
This isn’t to say that the electric motorcycle market isn’t growing. Data shows that there’s still tons of interest out there. China and India both buy electric two-wheelers in the tens of millions of units. Here’s what it looked like in 2021, from McKinsey Insights:
In 2022, around half of the millions of motorcycles sold in China were electric.
However, look at how small the numbers are for North America and Europe. One thing to remember is that in America, motorcycles tend to be more for leisure than for transportation. Someone in China or India may buy an electric motorcycle as their daily driver to scoot through their congested city. Range doesn’t really matter as much for that use case. In addition to that, electric motorcycles out there tend to be dirt cheap. But here in America, motorcyclists like to go on long rides across vast expanses of places where charging infrastructure sucks.
I still cannot do my favorite local ride on the DSR/X press bike because it can’t do the trip without charging at least three times, taking up at least 6 hours in charging alone. That’s just not something a cheaper gas bike will a problem with.
So, at least here in North America, I’m not sure the troubled seas will calm soon. BRP appears to be banking on a battery breakthrough that will allow it to offer more range for a cheaper price. Maybe that’s the future. Or, maybe there are just too many startup companies competing in a market that’s not large enough to support them yet. Either way, all of this is a darn shame because electric motorcycles are awesome. But, maybe something needs to change.
(Images: Manufacturers, unless otherwise noted.)
I’m a fairly new rider, limied to 125cc bikes. I use mine to commute, so I did consider an electric motorcycle.
However, the economics do not work out for me. I was facing the following choice:
– used Zero S – 7k€ with free fuel
– used Honda CBR125R -1.5k€ with 90mpg
With the ICE bike, my commute costs 0,65€ (18km/day), or 140€/year if I ride to work every single day. The price difference with the EV would’ve been amortized in 39 years, and that’s being generous with my assumptions.
Even an e-bike which costs about the same as my CBR doesn’t make sense. Those tend to get stolen (2 disappeared at work last month). So if your e-bike gets stolen in a 10 years span, the investment you made is a wash with the motorcycle. And the baby CBR is way more fun to ride!
So yeah, electric bike companies failing isn’t exactly shocking me, pun intended.
I think at this point electric motorcycles are stuck in the middle. Electric bicycles are strong sellers because many are quite cheap, they aren’t expected to have a lot of range and their small batteries charge quickly even on wall sockets. Motorcycles are expected to have equal or better performance than cars but the weight and cost don’t pencil out, where a car can have that big heavy battery and still be reasonably priced.
Watch the Fortnine video on YouTube about electric bikes, pretty much sums it all up.
Anecdotal, but I saw more electric motorcycles in a month in Africa than I have in the last decade in the US. As Mercedes alludes to in the article, in many developing or high-population-density areas, motorcycles are not simply recreational toys like they are in the states. In Africa I saw them hauling 2-3 people and a trailer, which was both impressive and terrifyingly unsafe, all in an effort to get around and make money to live. Mileage wasn’t a priority, as most only went a few miles at most each day, but low operating costs, good power, and free chargers (subsidized by the local government) made them quite attractive for the relatively poor locals who couldn’t dream of buying an actual automobile. For the US, electric motorcycles are too expensive to compete with e-bikes and have too low of range to compete with ICE motorcycles. For other parts of the world, they make a lot of sense, but only at price points much lower than they sell for stateside.
I want to want an electric motorcycle, but I already have gas powered ones for long touring (a need currently met by my classic Beemer that I rebuilt) and for city riding (a need met by my classic Vespa that I rebuilt). The former gets 40 mpg and can go 200 miles before refuelling and is a hoot to ride. It also cost me significantly less to rebuild than buying a new electric. The latter gets 80 mpg and cost me $500; the parts to rebuild it cost a further $500. I can’t meet either need as well with an electric.
Furthermore, I LIKE the fact that I can fix everything on them with hand tools in my garage. I also like that there isn’t a goddamn app to unlock extra range or power (that is already on the bike) by paying real cash money. I don’t like the fact that I have no idea if the parts to keep an electric on the road in 10 years will be there. It’s all so stupid.
I’ve had a Zero FXS for 8 years.
I completely understand the struggles. EVs need to tuck battery costs somewhere into the vehicle, and there are far fewer hiding spots in a motorcycle versus a car or truck.
I’d love a newer Zero, but I have no reason. Mine is so simple it requires nothing but tires. I’ve changed my riding profile over the years. At this point I see no all day rides in my future. Instead it’s my favorite fair weather commuter. The silence and maneuverability are my perfect fit.
I know Zero’s long term outlook is probably grim like all the rest, but I’ll ride this one as much as I can until one of us gives out.
I keep saying it but electric motorcycles just don’t make sense.
E-bikes yes, absolutely, they are the perfect form factor for inner city getting around, recharge at home, ride all over town no problem, amazing solution, Iaccoca was right to go this route but sadly his venture didn’t work out.
Electric Motorcycles just can’t compete with gas at this stage, unless some radical battery technology or design changes happens.
Cost, if it takes years to recoup the added expense for an ev car compared to similarly sized gas car then what about for a motorcycle that can get near 60-70 mpg? Some lower cc bikes get near 100mpg, that’s already EV territory.
Performance, 0-60? Hayabusa’s been doing less than 3 seconds for years, oh and can also go over 186mph, for like, hundreds of miles. Even my 27 year old carbureted Harley tourer is a hoot to ride(with new shocks and a jet kit), how much more trouble do I need to get into with enough torque to rip my arms off in these EV bikes?
Range, this is the big loser but just adds to it.
Emotion/feeling, this is I think the big one, a lot of motorcycle riders who aren’t just looking for a cheap commute are buying something fun to ride on the weekends, and then fill up quick and ride some more.
Maintenance, this is the big winner for EVs, but also see ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’. I find tinkering with my bike in the off season soothing, like a lot of us with project vehicles, I don’t “have” to get it on the road for a little while, I can take my time, and like I say tinker.
I’m a big fan of EVs, but to me, EV motorcycles just don’t make sense.
Some things that come to mind:
I don’t think that fuel expenses are nearly as large a concern in the motorcycle market, and the people who are thinking of fuel costs can’t afford electric motorcycles.
Another thing is that the electric motorcycle you want, if indeed you want one, is always about two years away from being sold, at which point all the bikes you can buy will become obsolete, so it’s best to wait.
Some people love the simplicity of motorcycles, and electric bikes tend to not be simple.
Electric motorcycles have been sold on the basis being logically better in the long run, but people who think in the long term tend to not ride motorcycles. I’m not going to touch the logical part.
Sondors make electric bicycles and was sketchy from the start. The owner was interesting to be polite. The metacycle was a meme on the forums. I see them for sale on Facebook marketplace all the time.
Electric makes sense for mopeds right now and not electric motorcycles. High speed just eats range and the battery tech is just too heavy.
The Metacycle had me really excited. It fit the bill as a replacement for my supermoto – perfect for around town and could handle the short highway stint I needed to get to work. I rarely spent more than half an hour in the saddle of that bike – it was just too uncomfortable and I didn’t have a group I’d go on longer rides with – so fun rides were still within it’s range limits. If it had launched on time, they may have actually gotten me into one even with the production specs falling short of what they had previously touted. But the delays led to questions on what else was going to be coming down the pipeline.
At the same time, the Japanese manufacturers were coming out with fantastic new offerings in the sub-500cc categories. The very beginner oriented 250s were being replaced by 300-400cc models that would fit the bill for what I needed and were still down in the $5k range.
So in the end, it was slightly too little and very too late. It’s a shame, I still really like the idea of the simplicity of an electric motorcycle, but I (and I suspect many other potential buyers these targeted) don’t have the extra cash to pony up for bike.
You definitely hit on it here, but it feels like these companies are building these for a market that doesn’t really exist in meaningful numbers. Like your targeting Urban and Inner-Ring Suburban younger professionals right? Because my Dad and his fleet of overpriced Harleys are out there racking up highway miles, so boomer cruisers are out. They won’t let you die at 200 mph, so sport bike audience is out. And they ain’t cheap, so weed delivery drivers are sticking with their Groms. So, you’re going after these younger green minded professionals who are bike-curious. The thing is, now you’re competing against pedal bikes and e-bikes. Which are thousands less. And the primary reason people don’t use those who are curious is the whole fear of death. Which making said bike faster, really isn’t going to sell. It goes to this general misunderstanding of the “last mile problem”, or in this case let’s say 7 mile problem. It’s not speed that’s going to get people out of cars. It’s them not feeling like any second will be their last that would actually move this stuff. That’s at least my working thesis on why every single new mobility project placed between car and pedal bike has failed. From It!, Motocomp, E-bikes currently, One-Wheels, E-Skateboards and now E-Motorcycles.
They need to have some sort of quicker charging to be useful here. But that once again runs into the bugbear of weight. Transformers and adapters weigh a bit. There’s also no benefit while riding. Not like a larger battery to allow more sustained acceleration or longer range. Cars get around this issue by accepting that weight penalty and making up for it with more power.
I think the current EV tech or rather, the battery tech just doesn’t scale well enough for larger bikes. Too heavy, too expensive, too little range aren’t good qualities for most bikes.
The scooter 50-150cc equivalent, short distance city commuter category is where it shines, because range and speed are not big concerns.
Taiwan also has battery exchange stations for their electric scooters so delivery drivers can swap batteries multiple times a day.
Something like that could make sense for bigger electric bikes to ease range anxiety, but in the US there is just not enough “bike density” for that to ever happen.
Maybe in SE Asia, parts of the Mediterranean it would be more feasible to develop hot-swap stations.
Highway range is too low for touring, so they’re basically very expensive city bikes, but then you’re paying for more range and performance than you need or can barely use over a much cheaper e-bicycle that does about the same thing with greater ease for a lot less money. For not much more than some of these EV motorcycles, one could get an EV car and an E-bicycle and a maybe even a hitch rack to easily transport the latter on the former. Competing against ICE motorcycles in the US where they’re mainly for fun over transportation, fuel just isn’t a major cost and certainly not to pay several multiples of the price for less usability. Really, one has to only want an EV motorcycle for what it is as they just don’t hold up in comparison to anything and I love the idea of them as I can’t stand the noise of most motorcycles.
And, damn, the radar signs tell me I can do 15 mph in my 55 lbs old cruiser bicycle with a 3-speed IGH without much effort and pretty much any cheap e-bicycle can do better than that quite easily unless it’s electronically limited. No wonder Cake went under.
In the US, motorcycles are not transportation, they’re entertainment devices. More like a sailboat. So performance and price are really important.
Cake isn’t going the distance? And at 15mph, it certainly wasn’t going for speed. Ended up all alone in its time of need.
Well played.
Hybrid bikes? Is that even a thing? Look at full on vehicles… all electric is dominated by some asshat rocket surgeon, while Hybrids sell well, and receive the range anxiety some. This article does not address the charging requirements these companies machines require. THAT would be an interesting article.
Yes Kawasaki makes a hybrid.
They almost make sense.
https://www.motorcyclenews.com/bike-reviews/kawasaki/ninja-7-hybrid/2024/
https://www.cycleworld.com/motorcycle-reviews/kawasaki-ninja-7-hybrid-motorcycle-first-ride-review/
To me, the US is too large geographically with too poor of charging infrastructure to make an electric motorcycle worthwhile.
$23k for 120miles of range is an awfully tall order when you can get full electric cars quite a bit less money and more range, or a nicer ICE bike for less money and far more range.
Look at the markets where electric motorcycles do well: Taiwan for instance. They have the Gogoro swappable battery network with battery exchange vending machines everywhere. It’s also a tiny island where a bullet train can easily take you top to bottom in about 4 hours. New electric scooters and motorcycles are under $1000, and access to the battery swap network is just $7/month. Just pop the battery out the scooter and exchange it for a charged one. 30 seconds and you’re on your way.
The key takeways here? Access to very easy and cheap charging, short travel distances, and VERY low cost of entry. The US is 0/3 on that, and I don’t see an easy fix for any of them.
I’m all for electric bikes, but most electric bikes are either too heavy, or they don’t do much more than many e-bikes which in most places are not subject to licensing, insurance, etc.
Good point. I hadn’t considered the admin aspects as well.
There’s another reason that doesn’t get enough discussion, which is timing. The entire motorcycle industry has been down quite a bit since its spike of 2020 and 2021. Motorcycles were a popular side effect of the pandemic with fewer people on the road and it being a good way to social distance. Many of these companies were hoping to ride the wave of popularity, but since the spike was short lived, many of these bikes were introduced when the market was contracting.
I brand like Can-Am hopefully will be able to absorb the growing pains since they already have a larger product offering, but all of the ones that failed were built on the the success or failure of a single product.
I think another part of this is, for lack of a better term, market overcapacity.
At least in the west, there are just too many good ICE motorcycles available right now chasing too small an audience for a lot of e-moto offerings to make sense. We’re mostly NOT daily riders, so the calculus is different than for automobile makers.
Unless someone is wealthy and really committed to the idea, there’s no value proposition for an electric motorcycle, at least until batteries get cheaper and lighter with more range than they currently offer.
It’s great that there’s someone like Zero out doing the real world pioneering work, but the average biker is going to give these offerings a hard pass. One could buy two gasoline bikes for the price of a comparable electric.
Also consider that currently the motorcycling world is kind of rediscovering that small, nimble, light bikes are their own kind of awesome. I mean, the Ducati Moto E race bike weighs 496 pounds (which actually undercut the previously used Energica by nearly 80 pounds!). That’s a porker, and not really what a lot of people want out of their non-touring bikes these days.
Good point and allied with mine above I think. The demise of Fuell, as much as I hate to say it, isn’t that different from what happened to Buell back when (pick which time) – there just weren’t enough buyers willing to pay a big premium for what they’d get.
And I’m no hater…I owned a Buell and loved it, but the reality was hard to ignore even for a devoted fan like myself.
“Part of the reason the company didn’t pick up my 2023 Zero DSR/X presser for over a year was that the press person at Zero quit, leaving nobody there with knowledge of where the press bikes were. Now, the company does have a press staff, but it would appear that letting me keep the bike longer is easier and cheaper than sending a truck out to Illinois from California to pick it up.”
Sounds like you need to do a lot more reviews for them.
Sounds like we all do!
Go to any mildly affluent suburb in SoCal and the streets are filled with teenagers on electric motorcycles – they’re just Chinese grey market imports from SurRon and Talaria. People love electric motorcycles, just not built like gas sportbike equivalents. Legal system needs to catch up and carve out some form of legal system for them – it’s clearly financially impossible for manufacturers to build electric bikes to the same standards as gas ones.
Car & gas companies only make money off people sitting in traffic trapped in large CUV’s so I’m not holding my breath though.
Beat me to it, direct to consumer e-bikes are becoming more and more popular. They cost thousands of dollars less than electric motorcycles, and don’t require license, registration, or insurance. As long as you are not going on a freeway and the weather cooperates, they are perfect for getting around town. My 20-year old son in SoCal doesn’t have a Driver’s License, he rides his e-bike (my old one) to work and college. I take mine on the train with me to work every day.
Those are not grey market at all, they are sold legally and rode illegally on the road. They are legal off road vehicles like ICE dirt bikes. In many areas they can be registered as mopeds. They are not legal as e-bikes anywhere because they do not meet any of the 3 classes. People put fake pedals on them but that does not cut it either. Below are the classes that are used in the US. Locality laws may be more restrictive, Its been a lack of enforcement which has picked up at least in areas of California.
Class 1 eBikeA Class 1 eBike, or low-speed pedal-assisted electric bicycles, is equipped with a motor that provides assistance only when the rider is pedaling and that stops providing assistance when the bicycle reaches 20 mph. These e-bikes are legal on any paved surface that a regular bike is allowed to operate.
Class 2 eBikeClass 2 eBikes, or low-speed throttle-assisted electric bicycle, are equipped with motors that can exclusively propel the bicycle, but that cannot provide assistance when the bike reaches 20 mph. These e-bikes are legal on any paved surface that a regular bike is allowed to operate.
Class 3 eBikeA Class 3 eBike, or speed pedal-assisted electric bicycle, is equipped with a motor that provides assistance only when the rider is pedaling and stops providing assistance when the bicycle reaches 28 mph. Operators of Class 3 e-bikes must be 16 or older and wear a helmet. Class 3 e-bikes are prohibited from Class I multi-use bike paths unless specifically authorized by a local ordinance
They are definitely grey market. There are a few dealers but the vast majority of people buy them from friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend who get them off Alibaba.
I’ve flirted with the idea of an electric motorcycle, and there is a lot of appeal for it, especially with motorcycles being a bit mechanically different than the automobiles I’m used to working on. Relatively quiet so I don’t sound like the 2-wheeled angry mosquito-sounding sport bikes that terrorize the nearby highways, nor the bassy farts of the road bike crowd, but powerful enough to get up to highway speeds as fast as a regular car if not faster. However I’m repeatedly dismayed by the price for them, along with many of the compromises and risks.
Risks especially being parts availability, if/when a new product from a new company would show up, what happens if something goes wrong, battery longevity and servicability, the list goes on.
The prices for the good ones from established brands (or their subsidiaries) are about what one might spend for a commuter car with four wheels, a roof, and hundreds of miles of range available within minutes at a gas station. So they would be for more affluent folks to use as a toy, not really a daily-use vehicle.
The ones that were most appealing were like the Cake offerings, being the cost of a decent well-used car (at/under $5K) so justifiable as an occasional-use vehicle, not a year-round commuter, but with good range for a day trip or a nice day to and from work.
However I – and other consumers I expect – are justifiably wary of never-heard-of-them startups, especially for such a niche market. It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that what happened to Coda, Carbon Motors, Elio, Fisker, Lordstown, etc. is happening to these start-ups, despite their admirable ambitions and apparent product quality. In the age of Kickstarter and such where there seems to be many cool ideas with top-tier presentation qualities, but essentially vaporware at best, skepticism is reasonably rampant.
Heck, even offerings from established brands – especially newer ones with shallow entrenchment – like Tesla, Rivian, and Scout/VW can be difficult to trust, especially when it seems like they’re asking for folks to fund the R&D of something that may never see the light of day. Are they a modern day Ponzi scheme? Perhaps, especially with bankruptcy and golden parachutes being rampant.
Is the Zero you have still on the 2024 sticker? They’re not renewing the reg I guess?
It sure is! It expires at the end of next month so I might ask for a new sticker. 🙂
If they don’t pay the sticker and they don’t pick up up how long till you can claim it as abandoned property?
The battery dilemma is surely a part of it, but I think engine noise is a big part too. It’s a huge part of the experience and since you are out in the elements there isn’t the same quiet refinement to be had switching to electric like in an electric car.
And on top of that, the lack of gears in EVs means that, as fun and fast they may be, riding an electric bike is not entirely unlike a ‘twist-and-go’ scooter. That takes away a key component of what makes motorcycling engaging to many people who ride for fun!