[Richard230]

I'm not to much into retro styling of an e-bike that is supposed to look like a petrol engine powered bike, but I'm not the market neither a potential customer. E-bikes may need to discover their own styling.

If I wanted anything like that and burn cash on it, it would be a custom one off. If I sold more than 3 a commie would come along (or some Swedish dwarf on a fat Harley with  inferiority complex) asking for a donation for sure, so why bother.

One of the early highway-capable e-bikes (top speed of about 65mph) was the Brammo Enertia.  It had distinctive styling. The vehicle was originally being distributed and sold by Best Buy stores starting in the fall of 2010, until the state of California DMV found out about it and informed the store that they didn't have a license to sell motor vehicles out of an electronics store.    Photos attached.

[Richard230]

And now we have the "Founders Edition"  of the Streetdog. And they are already sold out of them: https://electricmotorcycles.news/first-100-founders-edition-streetdogs-from-start-up-ftn-motion-are-sold-out-in-new-zealand/

[Arschloch]

One of the early highway-capable e-bikes (top speed of about 65mph) was the Brammo Enertia.  It had distinctive styling. The vehicle was originally being distributed and sold by Best Buy stores starting in the fall of 2010, until the state of California DMV found out about it and informed the store that they didn't have a license to sell motor vehicles out of an electronics store.    Photos attached.

  ...the "green" state outlawed a supposedly "green" vehicle.

...and replaced it with a ridiculous design of some privileged children.

[AzCal Retred]

And now, the rest of the story...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brammo

Brammo, Inc. was an American producer of electric traction motors and traction batteries[1] based in Talent, Oregon, United States. Brammo also developed and sold a range of electric motorcycles via the company's website and motorcycle dealers throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia.[2]

On January 15, 2015, Polaris Industries announced that it had purchased the entire electric motorcycle business from Brammo. Production of an electric motorcycle, the rebadged Victory Empulse, commenced at Polaris' factory in Spirit Lake, IA during the second half of 2015.[3]

In 2017 Polaris announced that they were reluctantly closing down their Victory Motorcycles brand.[33]

https://www.mailtribune.com/news/20171016/brammo-assets-sold-to-cummins/

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171016005785/en/Cummins-Announces-Acquisition-Energy-Storage-Technology

http://www.brammoforum.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

[Richard230]

I am still irritated about Brammo. Sometime around 2012 they announced their new 100 mph, 10kWh battery, Brammo Empulse, would be available for something like $11K and they were accepting pre-orders for the bike. I visited Scuderia West (now a KTM and RE dealer) in San Francisco and saw the pre-production model (photos attached). I also met and spoke with their chief engineer that was there at the time. I really liked the bike and put in an order for one. Then the company decided to redesign the power train to include a six-speed transmission (which it didn't really need), to replace the original direct drive. They also raised the price a couple of thousand dollars and it was higher than that when the new version was released two years later.  So I canceled my order and bought a 2012 Zero ZF9, which I thought was a great motorcycle for the time. It was good for 85 mph and I once was able to travel 100 miles on single charge on a Marin County back road on that model.

I did buttonhole the owner of the company, Craig, at the Sears Point race track and asked him why he didn't come out with the direct drive model first and then follow it up with the 6-speed version later. He told me that he was in the business for "fun" and he felt that motorcycle riders liked to shift gears as part of the experience of riding. I told him that wasn't a big attraction for me, but I don't think he really cared about my opinion and only built the version with an Italian transmission - which is still giving Empulse owners maintenance and reliability grief.

[AzCal Retred]

So why did everything blow up for Polaris? Sounds like the basics were all there. Market change on them? Brand conflict? Bad marketing?

[Arschloch]

So why did everything blow up for Polaris? Sounds like the basics were all there. Market change on them? Brand conflict? Bad marketing?

If you work at Brammo, your products are outlawed from selling, you get bought up by polaris who have the powder to bend laws and lubricate the politicos and they tell you now what to do after you've invested your life into that brammo brand development what will you do? Walk out. Speculation on my part, Brammo didn't find financial support after 2009 due to the market downturn so they sold out.

I'm still irritated about almost everything that happened after 2010.

[Richard230]

So why did everything blow up for Polaris? Sounds like the basics were all there. Market change on them? Brand conflict? Bad marketing?

It was due to a chicken-liver board that was loosing a lot of money at the time due to recall issues with their three-wheel car. The Brammo Empulse had been sucked up by their Victory brand and when that folded due to lagging sales, mostly due to the success of their Indian brand, the electric motorcycle went down the tubes with the rest of Victory. Plus, I have a suspicion that most Victory dealers didn't really want to sell and especially work on electric motorcycles as that required a lot of expensive and time-consuming staff retraining and were happy to get rid of them and start selling nothing but top-dollar Indian motorcycles.

BTW, Brammo's chief engineering development guy, transferred to Victory where he helped make some further changes to the Victory Empulse TT. When Polaris pulled the Victory plug, he moved over to Zero where he is now their Chief Engineering Director.

[Richard230]

If you work at Brammo, your products are outlawed from selling, you get bought up by polaris who have the powder to bend laws and lubricate the politicos and they tell you now what to do after you've invested your life into that brammo brand development what will you do? Walk out. Speculation on my part, Brammo didn't find financial support after 2009 due to the market downturn so they sold out.

I'm still irritated about almost everything that happened after 2010.

A portion of the Brammo assets, mostly the production rights to the Empulse, were sold to Victory who apparently saw H-D's LiveWire and thought they needed to be on the EV bandwagon, too. The owner of the Brammo company had just lost interest in manufacturing and selling motorcycles (he was really a car guy) and the startup-fun for him had just faded. He retained some of the useful EV tech that his company owned and started up another business as an EV consultant.  I have no idea what Craig is doing now.

[AzCal Retred]

Thanks for the write up! Looks like Zero is the front runner then, if they have the engineering brainiac behind Brammo.

[Richard230]

Thanks for the write up! Looks like Zero is the front runner then, if they have the engineering brainiac behind Brammo.

I like Zeros, but real EV enthusiasts prefer the Italian Energica models. They have more power and a higher top speed, a faster L3 charging system (Zero is stuck with L2 because of its 115V battery pack, while Energica's power train is around 320V), it has a better suspension and cooling system, higher chassis components, more electronic features and being Italian look a lot better. Their latest models also have a larger battery pack. However their bikes are about 150 pounds heaver than most Zero models, require much more maintenance, have a much smaller dealer network in the U.S. and cost more. Right now all Energicas in the U.S. are sold out and dealers have a waiting list and are waiting for more bikes to arrive, which have been delayed by manufacturing and shipping issues due to Covid.

My BMW dealer sells the Energica line. Attached are photos that I took a couple of years ago.

[axman88]

No offense, but it might be difficult to get further from my intended focus of discussion, than these high powered, high speed, very stylish and sporty E-motorcycles.  I realize now I should have used the word "Velo" or "bicycle" in the title, since "bikes" has been appropriated so completely by the motorcycle culture.  My intention was to discuss moderately powered vehicles that are being developed to meet practical transportation needs.

It's a sad fact that, barring some profound reduction in air pressure values, those of us who live on the face of the Earth must accept that the net energy we spend on moving from place to place will always be exponentially related to the velocity of that travel.  Nothing makes this clearer than riding our human powered bicycles, where every change of grade and puff of wind is immediately felt.

I do find it ironic that it often seems, that those most free of any time constraints, most absent of any need to be anywhere at any particular time, the retired community, seem most certain that they require the ability to travel at 60 or 90 mph, then take half the day so doing, only to return at the end of this time, to the same place they started, while it's young creative people, like Johan Erlandsson, who are developing such radical concepts as the Velove Armadillo.
https://newatlas.com/velove-armadillo-cargo-cycle/36995/

Perhaps if these folks knew that these new vehicle forms didn't have to be entirely practical, that they could also be a camper, they might actually look at the links, and discuss those new ideas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvfEm3h0CAQ

Or perhaps not, if they are disinterested.  Plenty of my past threads have been sparsely responded to or ignored, I'm fine with that.  There's lots of room for varied topics here on the forum, especially here in the Campfire section where new threads, on diverse topics, show up all the time.  Strange that, with as much interest as folks have in them, that a thread doesn't seem to exist about Brammo.  A search for Zero yields far too many results for me to dedicate the time to search through, one of the drawbacks of branding using a word with pre-existing meaning in the time of the internet.

[Richard230]

If you are looking to see a wide variety of both e-bicycles, scooters, urban electric motorcycles and just about everything else that is battery-powered and is available on the market, or in pre-production, you can visit this site. Although you may have to go back a ways to see everything that has been posted as they drop news about new EVs on the site every few days and have been doing so for a couple of years:  https://electricmotorcycles.news/news/

[AzCal Retred]

We read's 'em! 
Some flexible PV arrays on top of that "Covered Wagon" and you're set to camp for weeks in splendor.
A bit like these intrepid travelers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_handcart_pioneers

Pling Transport – Cargo bikes

https://smartcitysweden.com/companies/1951/pling-transport-cargo-bikes/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kcaq7vTYymQ&t=4s

[Arschloch]

@#28: That's just too useful and good. 

 ...maybe something to transport that insect burgers and cookies.