Zero Motorcycles Announces 2016 Bikes.

[Codezombie]

[Cadbury]

I quite like the idea of an electric bike, irrelevant of the practicalities (although charging up for pennies is nice) Makes me feel all futuristic like..

The Zero fzs, and the ktm freeride e-sm are on my list of looking at in 2016. If the electric vehicle grant does come in for bikes to get those prices closer to the 6-7k rather than 8+ I'd be tempted.
I'd keep my cbf1000 as my commuter and the electric bike as a weekend thing. Yes, I know, it doesn't make sense...
Are the batteries on the zeros removable? So could I ride to work, stick the battery under my desk on a slow charge and ride back in the evening, or does it need to be charged in situ?

[Codezombie]

[Rogerborg]

I honestly wish them the best of luck, and they're certainly saying the right things, but my take-away from that mailshot is that I live far too far away from the single seller of electric bikes. Too far to try and buy, too far for warranty work, too far to trade in.

As Yamaha look to have reneged on the PES/PED bikes, and BMW only do that £13K+ scootay, I'm not seeing much hope for a mass market bike.

An electric Lexmoto might be intriguing, mind.
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Biking is 1/20th as dangerous as horse riding.
GONE: HN125-8, LF-250B, GPz 305, GPZ 500S, Burgman 400 // RIDING: F650GS (800 twin), Royal Enfield Bullet Electra 500 AVL, Ninja 250R because racebike

[G]

[stunthamster]

So I'll fess up, and say I've just put down some cash for a 2015 model (Got a reasonable discount that brought it sub 9k after trade in). For my commute it's got the range, and after test riding one, it was a right giggle. For me, the lack of vibration and noise is great for whistling down Suffolk country lanes.

Amusingly, my KTM duke 390 has decided to die the very day I agreed the trade in, and is enjoying a brief laydown back at the dealer

[Codezombie]

What you gone for, the SR?
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2015 Zero-SR; Yamaha Diversion 900

[Rogerborg]

[stunthamster]

Yup, I can join the not so exclusive club of pissed off 390 owners. Turns out it was one of the cables rubbed through and shorting out on the frame; TBH, looking at some of the cables, I'm not surprised. Shame, lovely bike to ride, but not the greatest build quality.

I went for the SR. I could have saved some money and got the S, but what the hell, if your going to make a dubious and slightly insane purchase, you may as well go all in!

[kovy]

i drove the dsr... i have always been fan of gasoline engines untill i drove zero. that torque and that acceleration... wow simply amazing. no shifting, no clutch only throttle and brakes.

but unfortunately on my opinion their build quality is not very good. plastic covers look like plastics on china made scooters.

as far as motor goes... fantastic, but their build quality is not at the same level as major motorcycles brands... yet

[G]

[stevo as b4]

So GSXR1000 is also the ideal bike for zipping down the Suffolk country lanes, as well as the city commute too?

What sprocket sizes would be best for the purpose, you might as well give the OP the optimum gearing ratio as well as identifying the optimum bike too!

[G]

If you want a boring bike with a flat power delivery that you don't need to change gears on country lanes... pretty good, actually ... same reasons it's a good commuter. No need to change gearing from stock for this. Added bonus that you've got six more gears above the one of the zero and it doesn't have a problem sustaining max (possible) speed in any of them if desired .

[kovy]

[G]

I wouldn't call the 796 'fat' - it's quite light weight actually; though not very powerful to make up for that, especially with the rather poor aerodynamics, meaning it's slow compared to sports bikes as far as overall acceleration etc goes.

A modern litre bike doesn't need to shift gears before it gets to over the top speed of the zero, so nothing will be lost in shifting in comparison.
Having ridden bikes of similar stature/aerodynamics, I'd be confident that 50hp will be starting to seriously suffer from aerodynamic losses as the speed improves, while the litre bike will be accelerating at a similar rate at 90mph to 10mph. The litre bike is limited by the front wheel coming up, while at that kinda speed a 50hp tall bike will be using most of it's power to overcome aerodynamic resistance.
The litre bike can do a wheelie at any point you open the throttle harder. No more torque than that is needed - all that more torque would offer you is a higher/easier wheelie.

Remember a 100hp sports bike would be setup to typically change gear at 75mph. The DSR is listed as 3.9 seconds 0-60, while sports 600s are typically listed at around 3 seconds. I couldn't find a standing quarter time, but I'm sure the electric bike will be well behind by that point.

Having a high revving engine with a wide spread of power doesn't make up for not having power in the first place.

The P1 makes 9/10 of the power of a Veyron, but is 7/10 or so of the weight. The Ferrari weighs less than that and makes even more power than the Veyron. The German's stats aren't quite as favourable, but still better power/weight.

As far as 'efficiency' goes, it depends on what sort of efficiency you are talking - if it's fueling speed, they're terrible, of course. If it's powerline, yes it's pretty good, but of course you're starting with a massively inefficient storage method on a power/weight basis.

[kovy]

[G]

I well understand electric bikes are limited by batteries. Which is why I think something like these Zero models seems pretty silly.

My original point was that the torque/acceleration of these bikes isn't particularly amazing.
Yes, I suppose it's not entirely fair to compare them to more powerful bikes that cost a third of the amount - maybe I should be thinking S1000RR rather than GSXR1000 to make it 'fairer'?

I would suggest 918 advantages come from AWD rather than the type of horses. Power=torque*rpm. You could have a bagzillion torques, but if it's at 0.0001rpm, it will be dog-slow. You need to know the rpm for gearing etc, which gives us... power!
According to autocar the P1 is .3s quicker to 100 and .2 over the quarter mile. It also has 8cm less tyre width overall.

As far as drive train, yes. Efficent. But why does that matter, apart from for marketing?
It's very efficient at transmitting an incredibly inefficent power storage solution to the tyres.
As an idea, for home heating; electric heating is 100% efficent. That's massively more than using gas and so on. Why don't people use electric? Because per kwh gas is much cheaper, so being ineffcient isn't an issue. Further, it's much easier to transfer large amounts of gas.
A couple of 80kw gas combi boilers in a large house is fine.
Try and continuously use 666A (160kw @ 240v) through a domestic power connection and you're likely to be having some issues!

I worked out the power needs to recharge an electric bike in a similar sort of time to an ICE bike in another thread. Lets say you have the sort of capacitor storage that can be charged as quickily as you'd like. You'd need a massive cable and the sort of power output that a dedicated power station the size of a medium barn would provide.
We're talking the sort of currents that'd vapourise your bike pretty quickly if it went wrong.

Never heard a 2 stroke Ducati myself. Much prefer moddern bikes in general. (Did you mean 2 cylinder - aka wet-fart-sound?)

[Rogerborg]