Brammo Enertia Electric Motorcycle
In an article written on March 17, 2009, by Susan Carpenter of the LA Times, the great news for electrically powered motorcycles was highlighted.
Companies including Vectrix, Mission Motor, Zero and Brammo expect to have great success with their new e-cycles on two wheels.
The Tesla Roadster and Chevrolet Volt are electric cars in production. However, the electric motorcycle is also staking its claim to the roads.
In 2007, Vectrix of Middletown, R.I., first released its battery-powered Maxi Scooter. Since then, a lot of U.S. start-ups have entered the market. They’ve invested millions of dollars in vehicles, many of which are poised for production within a year.
“It’s amazing how inefficient the vehicles we’re driving today really are,” said Forrest North, founder and chief executive of Mission Motor Co., a San Francisco company.
They unveiled the prototype for its 150-mph, 150-mile-range electric motorcycle at the Technology, Entertainment, Design conference in Long Beach in February. North is a former mechanical designer for Tesla and leader of Stanford University’s solar car team in the mid-1990s.
Like many EV entrepreneurs, North, 33, had looked into hydrogen and biodiesel as power sources but found them impractical. Hydrogen is abundant, but turning it into fuel and developing a distribution infrastructure are costly. Biodiesel can take more energy to produce than it generates.
Mission’s debut product is called the Mission One, which is touted as “the world’s fastest production electric sport bike.” It is scheduled to ship in early 2010, at an estimated retail price of $68,000 — most of which is attributable to a large lithium-ion battery pack designed to compete with a gas-powered, performance-oriented sport bike.
Weighing less than 25% of a typical passenger car, two-wheeled scooters and motorcycles require fewer expensive batteries to bring them to speed. They are also simpler machines; they require fewer components and safety features and aren’t subject to the same stringent governmental requirements as passenger cars.
Vectrix was the first company to manufacture a production electric two-wheeler. Since introducing its $11,000, 62-mph Maxi Scooter in August 2007, it has unveiled a second model and sold more than 1,500 vehicles globally. Though that may not be a lot, compared with the millions of cars sold every year, it represents a 300% increase in annual sales from 2007 to 2008. This year the company says it’s on track for 150% sales growth.
This spring Vectrix will roll out a third scooter model, the $5,195, 30-mph VX-2.
Spring is also the target launch season for two other electric two-wheelers — Zero Motorcycles’ Zero S and Brammo Motorsports’ Enertia. Like Vectrix, the S and Enertia are oriented toward the commuter market. Unlike Vectrix, they are motorcycles, rather than scooters.
“The market is definitely getting excited for an electric motorcycle,” said Neal Saiki, the 42-year old founder of Zero Motorcycles, located in Santa Cruz. “It’s going to grow really rapidly as people realize how practical and fun and fast these motorcycles are. They can be environmental and have fun.”
Zero was the second manufacturer, after Vectrix, to make a production electric two-wheeler. Founded by Saiki, a former NASA engineer, and funded in part by former Sun Microsystems executive Gene Banman, who now serves as Zero’s CEO, the company has sold 200 of its $7,500 Zero X models — an off-road electric motorcycle with a 50-mph maximum speed and 40-mile range off a single charge.
In 2009, it expects to sell at least twice as many bikes as it expands its model offerings with an S model — a supermoto-style, street-legal bike with a top speed of 70 mph and a maximum range of 60 miles per charge.
By 2011, he anticipates Zero will be in the black and doing $100 million in business.
Honda and Yamaha have said they’ll be coming out with electric motorcycles in two years.
Though a rapidly deteriorating global economy and relatively low gasoline prices may not seem like ideal conditions for launching or ramping up a company in an unproven field, many of the two-wheeled-EV start-ups say they have benefited from it. Craig Bramscher of Brammo Motorsports in Ashland, Ore., says he raised $10 million in venture capital last year — all of it after the financial system froze up in September.
The first of his planned 300 Enertia bikes will roll off the line in May, he’s thinking his firm will be aided by the government’s $787-billion economic stimulus package. The program includes a 10% tax credit on the purchase price of two- and three-wheeled electric vehicles with batteries generating at least 2.5 kilowatt-hours of power.
“It seems like the right place, right time,” said Bramscher. He’s the former owner of Santa Monica software technology firm Dream Media. “A lot of people haven’t forgotten we’ve got an oil problem.”
Brammo’s Enertia claims a top speed of 50 mph, a 35- to 45-mile range on a single charge of its lithium-ion battery pack and a $8,995-to-$14,995 price tag. The least expensive version reflects a battery-lease program that reduces the bike’s cost, bringing it more in line with similar, gas-propelled products.
“If you buy an electric vehicle, it’s like buying three years’ worth of gas because the batteries are the lion’s share of the propulsion cost,” said Bramscher, who’s experimenting with distribution as well. In May he’ll launch a pilot program at a handful of Best Buy stores, where the bike can be test ridden before purchase.
