Electric Motorcycles and Bikes

    Hi,
    I am wondering what people think the prospects are for electric motorcycles and bikes. In some markets they seem to make sense but I worry about the cost of the batteries and the range issue. Could the project better place model for for motorcycles as well? Are there any plans along those lines?

    Electric bikes & scooters

    LionMan, you need to rephrase your survey. From the way it is designed, it looks like you are not a rider yourself.
    First, "sport" and "recreation" are essentially the same category. By "sport" do you mean competitive riding? Most people who buy sportbikes don't actually ride competitively, or on racetracks.
    It is also not quite clear what you mean by "cruising" -- it can be anything from riding 10km to the nearest café on a weekend morning to long distance group riding -- which is very different in term of distance patterns, speed etc.
    You are also neglecting the group which does the highest mileage, where the term "round-trip" is ill-defined: Long distance touring, where the trips are multiday affairs (are you counting daily distance, or the entire trip, which is usually 1000s of miles?)
    Your other questions also don' t take into account multiple-bike ownership, very common in the US & Europe, and you are also miscategorizing bike types ("street" actually includes cruisers, touring- and sportbikes). Please get some assistance on redoing the survey from an actual rider.
    Back to the original question:
    This needs to be looked at separately for urban/suburban commuting (i.e., scooters) and for the larger motorcycles.
    Scooters:
    make a lot of sense to go electric. The power-to-weight ratio is reasonable as long as you're not expecting amazing acceleration. Battery capacities must be much lower, but I expect range to be more or less linear with battery weight and inverse-linear with vehicle weight. You could probably get the same range as an electric car with a battery pack weighing 1/8 as much, assuming urban driving patterns & speeds (up to 50-60km/h) and one driver/rider in the vehicle. If 95% of daily driving in transportation islands like Israel/Denmark don't need more than the 150km range, this is true for 100% of scooter riding (many gas-powered scooters can't go further on their gas tanks anyway).
    Charge time is also very attractive -- as the range per battery cap. is much greater, you'd need linearly less charging time as well using the same charge current.
    Also, the market is cost-driven, and towns are likely to promote their use as car replacements to avoid parking & road congestion, as essentially a bicycle substitute (a scooter takes up about the same room as a bicycle when moving, and slightly more when parked). 
    Actual motorcycles:
    are a whole different issue. In most of the world they are in effect expensive hobbies and not utilitarian transportation, and the primary customer consideration is performance or image.
    I'm not sure how easy it would be to provide typical motorcycle performance with decent range (say 250-300km; very few bikes have more). A typical motorcycle does 0-100km/h in <8 seconds (performance bikes in <5) and they tend to be ridden fairly quickly. A non-fully-enclosed motorcycles actually generates a lot of  aerodynamic drag, so is less economical than a modern subcompact car at, say, 130-140km/h.
    Fuel cost isn't the dominant cost of ownership -- service is. Bikes typically need very expensive service at 6000km intervals, and essentially are much less economical to run per mile than a compact car. It's possible that using in-wheel electric motors can greatly reduce maintenance cost vs. gasoline bikes, which may be a big plus.
    I ride a sport-touring bike as my only transportation, and would be happy to go all electric if performance was not compromised. 
     

    We are studying the viability of this exact question in detail

    I am a MBA/MS student at the Unversity of Michigan, working with a top lithium-ion battery technology company on a project to try to find the answer to this question.  The bikes appear to be near what may be acceptable to consumers' preferences for range, speed, and price, but are definitely not going to be able to beat gas-powered bikes on any of these criteria.  Also, most motorcycles already have decent gas mileage so the fuel that is saved is not as big of a savings over time relative to the cost of the battery.  My personal opinion at this point is that battery-swaps, and a leasing model would be pre-requisites to drive mass-adoption, but would not guarantee it.  Regulation might do that though.
    Please help us with our research by filling out this quick survey!  I will post the results online when this is finished.
    http://tinyurl.com/yqacew 

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