Recent stories and news from the world of the electric motorcycle … and various other electric contraptions.
Are electric motorcycles the future. To some extent that seems almost inevitable. But as it stands now, it is almost impossible for an electric motorcycle to serve the need of every single rider. It isn’t a problem of the motor as the electric motor in itself is an old piece of technology – although ever improving. It is the battery capacity that is the challenge for electric motorcycles. But that too is changing with new technology and many manufacturers are working hard on packing more and more capacity into far more energy dense batteries. We will talk about that and other electric developments in these features and new items.
ELECTRIC MOTORCYCLE FEATURE STORIES
Tarform Electric Art – A Museum Piece (Issue #358)
The Hydrogen Motorcycle: The Alternative Alternative (Issue #357)
Electric Impressionism – The Beautiful Elettracker (Issue #356)
BMW CE 04 – New Style, New Words (Issue #355)
Scooter Nation – eMobility Gets A Different Look (Issue #355)
Light Bike, Heavy Price – Novus One (Issue #354)
LiveWire Rebrand – After All That Effort! (Issue #354)
Eric Buell – Those Guys Aren’t Me (Issue #354)
Triumph TE-1 : Electric Motorcycle in Progress (Issue #353)
Living Electric – Day to Day on the LiveWire
469 Eletric Horsepower from Yamaha (Issue #353)
The EV and The Solid State Battery
Bespoke Electric Motorcycle – The Curtiss One (Issue #352)
Science and Salt: Electric Land Speed Records (Issue #351)
Rokon v Volcon : Escaping Zombies (Issue #351)
Polaris and Zero – Wasn’t Polaris Already There? (Issue #350)
The New Plan? Sell Them an Electric Bike First (Issue #349)
The Iron Will of Dr Leeming (Issue #349)
The Electric Gamble – Harley-Davidson LiveWire Review (Issue #344)
Fuell From Buell : Never Say Die (Issue #343)
Zero Dressed Upas a Nine (Issue #343)
10 Electric Motorcycles to Charge You Up
Was The Whole Buell Thing Harley-Davidson’s EV1 Moment? (Issue #340)
LiveWire Prototype : Riding the Original (Issue #313)
ELECTRIC MOTORCYCLE NEWS ITEMS
Ninja 7 and Z7: Kawasaki’s Hybrid Ideas
Kawasaki dares to tackle the electric future with a different answer in the Ninja 7 – a hybrid alternative. Let’s get the obvious out of the way. The Ninja 7…
Honda Electric Motorcycles – 2030 or Bust!
Honda to focus its efforts and bring massive corporate muscle to the electric motorcycle segment. At the end of 2023 the company provided a briefing on the plans for Honda…
Race on Sunday, Charge on Monday – Ducati Electric
Ducati has announced the commencement of production of the company’s electric race bike. It is not going to be a big run as the grand total is to be 23…
Harley-Davidson to Go All Electric – Say What?
All electric Harley line-up! What is that all about? It turns out that is what Harley-Davidson CEO Jochen Zeitz told the magazine, Dezeen, about the company’s future in a recently…
Honda Goes Electric – For Short Trips
Honda has released it first electric scooter that will be sold in Europe and all the first electric offering since Honda announced they would bombard the two wheeled segment with…
BRP Doubles Down on New Electric Motorcycle Investment
BRP, parent company of Can-Am, has doubled down on their commitment to bring a series of electric motorcycles to market in 2024. What seemed like a long lead time of…
Honda Sees Scooters as Electric Future (Mostly)
Honda announced the company is finally making a big push into the electric segment. According to statements from the Honda’s head of motorcycles there will be 10 electric models available…
BRP’s Electric Future (From Before)
Can-Am just announced that there will be new electric motorcycles in the company’s stable but this item from issue #345 of the magazine (back in September 2019) shows that there is…
Can-Am Electric Motorcycles Revealed
BRP, the parent company of Can-Am and the genre defining creators of the Spyder, has revealed the first two electric models that will be available from the company some time…
Triumph TE-1 : Impressive But Equivalent to What Exactly
Triumph announced that the prototype electric motorcycle, the Triumph TE-1, the company has been developing in collaboration wth other UK-based firms and organizations has completed its final round of testing…
LiveWire Del Mar – Following the One
With the LiveWire Del Mar, Harley-Davidson is doing its best to stay ahead of the curve and the wave of electric bikes that is supposedly coming from all the big…
The Size of Things To Come – Sondors Metacycle
When the Sondors Metacycle appeared, we had a couple thoughts. The first was that it looked great. Electric motorcycle design is all over the map, from emulating traditional motorcycles to…
Touring Electric – Energica Experia
It is a beautiful bike. Little doubt about that. Italian and looks a little like a Ducati Multistrada and if it was splashed with gloss red paint and seen from…
Batteries as Service – Grab and Go
Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki and Suzuki had previously announced the intention of working together to standardize battery technology to create a one size fits all scenario for future electric motorcycles. The…
Can-Am Electric Motorcycles Announced
Can-Am announced today that the company will be returning to two wheels with the introduction of several Can-Am electric motorcycles commencing in 2024. After creating an entire successful segment from…
Yamaha EO1 – Electric Scooter
Electric scooters are being revealed at a rapid rate by Yamaha. The latest is the Yamaha E01 which is said to be a 50 to 125cc equivalent scooter (as opposed…
Solid State Batteries To Go
As we discus in Canadian Biker Issue #358, the Gogoro battery system provides one of the best platforms for the success electric two-wheeled vehicles. The swappable battery technology dominates the…
Honda CRF-E2 – Electric Motorcross
A press release made the rounds regarding a collaboration between American Honda and Greenger, a supplier of electric Powersports product. The CRF-E2 electric motocross bike certainly looks like a Honda…
Neo, We have Been Waiting For You: Yamaha Electric Scooter
Yamaha has introduced an electric scooter to European markets as an extension of the company’s NEO line. Yamaha claim the electric NEO is a “50cc equivalent” scooter and is the…
Consortium : The Universal Battery Pack
Remember when charging various portable devices required a tangle of different charge cords and AC adapters? It was inconvenient and inefficient. In an unusually cooperative play, Yamaha, Honda, Suzuki, and…
Race Proven Electric
Yamaha, often at the forefront of engine development, will be providing electric motors to Subaru STI. What is STI? It is the skunkworks at Subaru. The Subarubian version of Mercedes’…
Tilting Quickly – Arcimoto
As we have noted in the past, Tilting Motor Works builds leaning front end kits to transform everything from an Electra Glide to a Gold Wing into a three-wheeled vehicle….
Ford and BMW Team Up on Battery Tech
BMW and Ford have teamed up to invest in a Colorado-based company called Solid Power. The intent is to secure solid state batteries for future electric vehicles. Both companies apparently…
Electric Ambiguity – BMW Electric Concept
Proven frequently is how it’s nearly impossible to purposely design a product that will excite Gen Y and the Millennials. They are a temperamental crowd with an independent streak and…
The CAKE Recipe
We couldn’t leave this one out. The Cake Ösa is the Swedish Swiss army knife of electric motorcycles. The Swedish company straight-up acknowledges electric motorcycles are best used in urban…
On the Verge of Success
Deposits have become the norm when buying electric motorcycles – or a possible future motorcycle. We noted how Verge Motorcycles of Finland was once asking 2,000 euros deposit on its…
What a Future Electric Harley-Davidson Should Have Been?
As with many electric motorcycles, deposits have come before delivery. The Sondors Metacycle was no different. With a new target for deliveries said to be the first quarter of 2022,…
Electric Possibilities From Husqvarna
Husqvarna has released concept images of an electric motorcycle based on the Svartpilen and Vitpilen platform – the E-Pilen. The silhouette shows the obvious family resemblance although it would have…
The SR/S : A Lot of Zero Appeal
We have to give credit where credit is certainly due. The Zero SR/S ends a chapter as the new faired version of the SR Zero Motorcycles has closed the book…
Electrified by Yamaha in Two Sizes
Yamaha has begun taking orders from outside companies for a 200 kw high-density electric motor that is suitable for cars and, as the company states, other types of vehicles that…
Kawasaki’s Electric Prototype – Just an Idea
Kawasaki has long had the idea of entering the electric bike market and at EICMA, company motorcycle division president unveiled a new prototype machine that looked quite traditional in its…
Slow Burn on the LiveWire
Harley-Davidson has announce that the company will be introducing an electric motorcycle. Oh, come on, you say! Didn’t we go down this road already? Indeed, it was in late 2014…
Zero Emissions from Motorrad
BMW has been researching alternative fuel mobility for many years and the company’s willingness to go outside the box is admirable . Marketed under the motorcycle oriented Motorrad name of…
C-Evolution: Plug-In BMW
BMW continues to embrace an electric future with the reveal of it’s new Cevolution scooter. The C evolution Long Range models is said to be capable of distances up to…
Victory’s 115MPH Electric Lap
With the Isle of Man TT Zero electric bike race only days away Victory finds itself and rider William Dunlop second in time after practice sessions but pleased to be…
Victory Electric and Isle of Man
After a relatively successful run last year on the famed island course, Victory Motorcycles again plans to be at the Isle of Man in the electric class in 2016 with…
Empulse Electric – Sparking a Thought
There it was staring right at me on the motorcycle show floor, the Victory Empulse – an honest to goodness electric production motorcycle. Zero Motorcycles have been around for years…
eRR – BMW’s Electric Superbike
Without getting all experimental for the sake of being experimental and understanding that when you have a good thing use it (or if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it),…
Apple Car? How About a Motorcycle?
Apple of iPod, iPhone, iTunes etc fame has said they are targeting 2019 for getting an iCar (?) on the road. They say they have the expertise in software, batteries,…
Part 2: Recovered! One Very Unusual Electric Motorcycle
The long arm of the law reached out and grabbed back the stolen Victory Isle of Man TT racer on Sunday. Police in Talent, OR had a suspect in custody…
Part1: Stolen! One Very Unusual Electric Motorcycle
Stolen Victory! In an electrifying story of a shocking theft, Victory Motorcycles has announced that one of the electric race bikes that reached the podium at the Ilse of Man…
Eight Inches Across, Five Inches Tall, 175 hp
While Victory Racing is facing rider challenges due to injury at the Isle of Man TT, the Parker Racing GVM electric motor is propelling the Victory bikes to 157 mph…