this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
193 points (97.1% liked)

Electric Vehicles

268 readers
1 users here now

A UK-centric Electric Vehicles community, where discussion/news of the wider European continent is welcome.

All discussion of EVs (and hybrids for the moment), charging networks, etc, welcome!

No USA/Americas news unless it is relevant to the UK/Europe - most of the existing EV communities on Lemmy are awash with US discussion, please use one of those. US news and discussion will be removed.

The main "global" EV community is !electricvehicles@slrpnk.net

Electric vehicle avatar/icon created by Freepik - Flaticon

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I don't really see the point of this. It's just adding complexity for the sake of it. As far as I can tell when you change gear it just changes some software parameters, there are no physical gears. Yet there's a clutch and the ability to stall?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] CodexArcanum@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

People in niches generally pay more. EVs are more expensive and made in smaller quantities (until production ramps up, maybe). So making EVs to appeal to a niche consumer with disposable income can be a smart move to jumpstart the EV business.

That's (one reason) why Tesla started with luxury sports cars. Car enthusiasts and other lovers of manual gear shift are another interesting segment to try and tap. I wonder what other segments they might go for? Racing? Off-road? Delivery? Taxi? Commercial transport?

It's tricky though. You don't see a lot of EV motorcycles, but I think that's because ebikes are a better power/weight ratio for the form-factor and use case. No one's getting a Harley to save the environment.

[–] misanthropy@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The biggest reasons ev bikes suck are: shitty range, weight, cost.

Bikes are small, batteries are heavy. The Harley live wire, for example, can do less than 100 miles on a charge. Second, but part of that first point, they're HEAVY. My bike weighs ~360lbs. An energica sport bike is in the high 500lbs range. Thirdly, they're obscenely expensive for worse performance, handling, weight, range. If someone could produce a 400lb bike with a ~200 mile range I might be interested.

I'm biased, but 99.99% of my riding is in the middle of nowhere in the mountains, there's no chargers out there and there won't be for decades.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I've not seen an attempt to make a practical electric motorcycle. I've only ever seen attempts at superbikes. Give me an electric Ninja 250, something that can comfortably handle a couple hours of highway driving so you could handle a commute from one small town to another small town and I think it would be an actual product.

[–] SuperSpruce@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Kawasaki recently launched some entry level electric Ninjas, but they're complete garbage for the price. $8000 for a bike with 10hp, 55mph top speed, and 55 miles of range. That should've been $4000 or less.

Just get a $3500 Grom with the same power and speed but also the fun of a mini-bike or a $6000 Ninja 400 with 5x the power and still 55mpg.

Kawasaki also just announced a hybrid Ninja motorcycle that actually looks really intriguing, but we don't know the price yet.

Wow yeah that is garbage.

[–] Aux@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

There are plenty of practical e-motobikes, they're just made for people in normal countries where you don't need to ride for more than 10-20km.