More power and storage in less space. Faster charging. Longer-lasting. Less likely to explode and set everything around it on fire.
In the area of personal vehicles, I went from a bicycle to an electric bicycle because my knees just couldn't handle pedaling 100+ miles per week anymore. Then I went to an internal combustion engine scooter, then a motorcycle, because if I was going to ride a motorized vehicle I wanted more speed, more range, and the ability to refuel in minutes, not hours.
I've been watching the electric motorcycle market for some time. Not closely, but checking in every now and then. At the moment, they're expensive and while there are available ranges of 100-250 miles, and while they can handle highway speeds, their batteries require several hours to recharge.
Prices will come down as production/sales scale up, but unless you're just using the bike for commuting and short runs to town, what good is it? If I'm traveling from Gainesville to Miami, I don't want my "gas stop" to take eight hours in the middle of a five-hour ride. Even with my small-tank bike, I can make that trip with two or three five-minute gas stops.
The Ducati bike is just a race prototype, but that company tends to go from track to street pretty quickly. So hopefully within the next year or two we'll start seeing fast, long-range, quick-charging electric motorcycles on the market. And a couple of years after that, we'll start seeing cheap fast, long-range, quick-charging electric motorcycles on the market.
Will I get one? Eventually, I suspect. I've grown to love the sound of a motorcycle engine, but I like the reliability equation of a bike with fewer moving/breakable/maintenance-requiring parts. The price will have to be right, but that's just a question of how much longer I live.
No comments:
Post a Comment