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electric Harley not going well

6K views 40 replies 12 participants last post by  Deeksvstarclassic 
#1 ·
#3 ·
Electric cars have limited uses as it is, I Just don't see the market for an electric motorcycle.

With combustion engines you have gas stations to keep things moving and it only takes a few minutes to refuel and you are on your way again.

With electric cars if you have to recharge you will be down for a little while to charge those batteries. Imagine if you had to wait in line to get a recharge and you were the fourth or fifth person in line. Instead of 15 minutes to fuel up and get back on the road you are now down for a couple of hours to get to a charging station to your batteries charged to get back on the road.

Or imagine your electric goes out like here in Florida after a hurricane for up to a couple of weeks.

Or you have the planned black out like they are doing in California now.
 
#4 ·
Sounds like a limited market solution...But it gives HD some credit among the "do something" crowd...You know the ones....they shout you have to "do something" but they never have a well thought out solution...ooops break is over I guess I have to go "do something"...LOL:smile::smile::wink:
 
#5 ·
every car company that is making electric cars is STILL losing money on every EV car they sell, including Tesla

I hope HD is making a handful of electric bikes just so they can say "Me TOO!" but they cannot afford to lose money every year. If they are not turning a profit they are toast.
 
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#9 ·
The EV car companies got a $7500 tax credit to their customers for the first 200k or 250k cars that company sold

that means for the customer the car cost less $7500 less, the customer got the money from the IRS, and it allowed the company to sell the cars for more than they could have, so the money really ended up in the company's pocket.

when that expired the customer was paying the full price... so to make it the same Tesla would have to drop the price by $7500... Im not sure if they did that or not.
 
#10 ·
combustible engine vehicles won't be here forever. and Harley's market share has been decreasing as its customer base is getting older and older. if companies aren't looking 10, 15 years down the line then they are sure to fall behind the competition. while electric bikes don't make sense to a lot of people now, it's only a matter of time before they or some other non-combustible engine does. US cars must achieve a 54.5 mpg fuel economy by 2025. the quickest/easiest way to do that right now is with a hybrid or full electric motor. even though motorcycles are currently not subject to the Corporate Average Fuel Economy that cars must adhere to, it's just a matter of time that the technology with bike engines evolve as well at some point. so maybe more big bike manufacturers will soon start implementing some sort of alternative power source so to not fall too far behind the technology being implemented with cars.

https://20somethingfinance.com/obama-new-fuel-economy-standards-for-2025/

https://www.cycleworld.com/where-are-hybrid-motorcycles/

https://www.wired.com/story/dyson-sucks-air-out-electric-car-dreams/
 
#11 ·
Have any of you driven a Tesla? One drive and I would suspect attitudes would change. I am not a leftie, I am far more a techie but I have drove a Tesla a couple of time and those things are FAST! Almost feels like the car reads your mind, you think about going faster and discover the car has already started accelerating. I would never get the advertised range as I would be pressing the accelerator way too much. Tesla's are a BLAST to drive!
 
#12 ·
The Livewire is $29,779 146 mi range in the city takes about 11 hrs for a full charge from empty. I've ridden my buddies Zero quite a few times and love it. If I was going to get an electric bike I would get a Zero Black Forest $18,995 157 city miles 9.8 hrs to a full charge from empty. Quik charger for the Zero is $600.00 2.8 hours. Harley does not list a price for theirs but 1 hour to full charge . Only as a second bike.
 
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#13 · (Edited by Moderator)
This country would come to a grinding halt going all electric vehicles, there is the charging issue, they still pollute because they have to rely on power plants to recharge them, then there is the environmental impact of having to dispose of the batteries when they go bad and there is the cost of replacement batteries which will be in the thousands of dollars.

Imagine traffic jams, could electric vehicles work in them when you are spending one to two hours in stop and go traffic, how about you get caught on an expressway where they closed it down due to a crash and you are stuck in 90+ degree heat, are you going to happily shut off your electric vehicle to save the battery or are you going to want to keep cool.

To answer the post about how fast electric cars are that is because they are all torque right now. However Tesla has had multiple fatal crashes in their cars due to people using the auto-pilot system and their computer failed to detect a hazard.

Nope I am against self driving vehicles and electric vehicles. I just saw a piece online a few days ago where in another country they are finding that self driving cars are not capable of detecting pedestrians at night. As for electric vehicles they pollute just as much as a combustion engine vehicle does when you factor in having to charge the batteries and the disposal of said batteries when they go bad.

Plus electric vehicles still use petroleum products, they have to lubricate the transmission and differential so they are not 100% petroleum free either.



I could not even do some of our lunch runs on either one of those bikes, and forget about charging them when you are on the road.
 
#14 ·
Looks like with those in between charge numbers a good ride will be around the block a few times...Plus as to what @American said the environmental impact that these electric vehicles, also solar panels, would have seems to be all negative...Once these components start to degrade and leach into the water supply or contaminate the soil our food is grown in then it is game over for the EV crowd...but as is the history of man...new inventions are right around the corner if the younger generation can put down their video game controllers and cell phones and become productive citizens...so yea I am throwing that challenge out to the next generations if fossil fuels are so bad get together and develop something that is both economically feasible, environmentally feasible and consumer desirable...
 
#15 · (Edited)
tesla wants people to think their cars are fast

they are not fast, they are quick, specifically quick off the line

for a vehicle to go twice as fast requires 8 times the HP to the wheel

that means to go the same distance you use 4 times the energy (fuel) because you are burning it 8 times faster, but you get there in half the time

for a car like a tesla, if its rated to get 200 miles on a quick charge, that is at 60 mph. You drive the car 120mph and your range is only 50 miles

so now you have to stop every 50 miles if you are driving 'fast' and recharge for half an hour, if the battery will take it, because you cant quick charge a battery if its already hot, its more like an hour for the battery to cool down and charge.

if you do the math the faster you drive the more time you spend charging, so on a road trip your average speed drops well below 45mph, because you are running 120mph for 25 minutes, then charging for an hour, and your average speed is 50 miles in 1.4 hours = 35mph

that is not a "fast" car - unless you are only taking short trips. $70,000+ is a lot to pay for a commuter car.

and $29,000 is a LOT to pay for a commuter motorcycle

BTW, I take a 700 mile (each way) road trip several times a year to visit family in another state

there are no superchargers along the path I take, so I would have to go out of my way, driving thru Washington DC for example instead of skirting around it, to hit a supercharger

there have been a few times when I have been driving 75 in a 65 zone and passed tesla cars on the interstate. They have their destination programmed into the GPS, and its tracking how much power they are using at their current speed, and if they speed up to 75 or 80 it flashes red and warns the driver that will not make it to the next supercharger, at that speed, 100 something miles away...
 
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#37 · (Edited by Moderator)
The complainers would have been correct, too. The old cars were noisy, stinking, frail things. They cost a lot to buy, own, and operate. Gas, oil, and rubber were worries outside the city. Collisions with horses, wagons, and other cars were worries in the city.

It's kinda fun to watch my buddy plan a road trip in his tesla to a place he's never been. The car is fun to drive. He loves it. His teenage girls love it. I still think electric cars are a solution looking for a problem, but they are interesting and fun to drive. To each his own. He thinks the same about my motorcycle.

If entrepeneurs of those days would have listened to those folks we would still be riding horses.
Fortunately in western civilizations that never happens. Those entrepreneurs gotta preneur. Or whatever. Inventors gotta invent. Early adopters gotta adopt. It works for all of us even when it doesn't work out.
 
#18 · (Edited)
actually bevo there were electric cars and steam powered cars 120 years ago,

THEY replaced the horse and buggy

and then gasoline powered cars replaced all the electric and steam powered cars

the laws of physics have not changed

you refuel a gas car by transferred an extremely high energy density fuel into a storage tank, which can give it 500 miles of range in seconds

you "refuel" an electric car by transferring energy thru a wire, which must then be converted into a change of chemical states to be stored in the battery

that chemical change of states cannot happen without generating heat, in either direction

we have a word for a fast conversion between energy and chemical states: Explosion

all the talk about an electric vehicle that can be charged in a few minutes is a blatant lie, and the people making those claims know they are lying.

The laws of physics have not changed in the last 120 years.

I would love to have an electric vehicle with a 500 mile range like my Toyota, that only has 3 moving parts in the drive train, that I can charge up over night in my garage, and charge up in 3 minutes on the road, and its less expensive than a gas powered car.

When you see one, let me know.

in the meantime, an electric car makes a great commuter, as long as your daily mileage is predictable, and the battery can cover it in all weather conditions - they are still expensive, but you can find used ones for less than $10,000 that will get you from A to B and back everyday.
 
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#35 · (Edited)
actually bevo there were electric cars and steam powered cars 120 years ago,

THEY replaced the horse and buggy

and then gasoline powered cars replaced all the electric and steam powered cars

the laws of physics have not changed
hence, my post about people making arguments about horses getting replaced around the year 1900. that was the point of my post. there were probably people saying these new vehicles were more costly, lack of service stations to re-charge or re-fill (whether gas/electric/steam/hamster/etc.), environmental impacts, and any other number of points they made back then that seem to be popping up again now




When Ford came out with the first gasoline engine car, I'm sure you could imagine hearing all the farmers and common folk saying " yea, great idea but where's that next gas station to fill it up".
Common working people did not own cars for decades due to their high costs.
If entrepeneurs of those days would have listened to those folks we would still be riding horses.
he gets it
 
#19 ·
^Can you imagine the changes to the infrastructure that would need to take place all across the globe just to provide a fringe solution to a fringe crowd? Just the volume of property acquisitions needed to install charging stations is mind boggling. We can not even get pot holes filled and other needed work done now. Electric vehicles have not evolved enough to fill any desirable market. Currently in Columbus they have electric scooter rentals scattered about because they do not get returned because they ran out of juice. Not a viable solution. The coal required to generate the needed electric would make the environmental crowd's heads explode..they say no to nuclear so how do we address the added strain on the grid? selective brown outs? I like some of the idea behind this but once again the "do something" crowd has yet to think it through...IMO
 
#20 ·
^ a thruway food/gas rest stop typically has 8 or 16 gas pumps

16 can fill 16 cars in 3 minutes, or 160 cars in half an hour

if an electric car takes 30 minutes for a quick charge, you will need 160 "pump" or connections to get the same capacity

and you will only get half the range compared to a car taking on full tank of gas

which means there will be twice as much traffic at the rest areas

if its a holiday and cars are lining up waiting, you need the 160 car parking lot for that cars being charged, and if the backup is 1 car deep per charger, that is line of 160 cars in a que (a line of cars 4800 feet long, almost a mile), waiting their turn, moving up one car at a time for half an hour till the last one gets a spot
 
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#21 ·
^ yep... that is just a small snippet in terms all passable roads around the world.. . in time they may improve it. It would be nice to have a way for a charge to be applied as the vehicle is moving. Small turbines spinning as the vehicle is moving providing a charge to say a 3 battery system where there is a switch that can auto transfer to a fully charged battery while charging the other 2 in flight...Not sure if that is feasible..I will defer to the electronic engineers to correct me once they get done laughing...me and electric do not play well together...
 
#24 ·
... It would be nice to have a way for a charge to be applied as the vehicle is moving. Small turbines spinning ... providing a charge ...
that is a hybrid electric, like the Chevy Volt my son got used this year for $10k. It goes 40+ miles (local commuting) from its overnight battery charge, and then the gas engine kicks on for longer trips and it gets more than 40mpg running on gas - the best of both worlds.

That car too loses half its battery range in the winter, because the battery is cold and the heater runs off the battery, but its still useful running with no gas for 20 miles every day.

For the entire summer he has only filled the tank up once, for a 200 mile road trip, and the gas engine has not spun up otherwise from May until now.

If there was a way to connect power to the car on the highway, like an electric train, that would work well too. A small battery for commuting, and power from the highway for road trips.
 
#22 ·
When Ford came out with the first gasoline engine car, I'm sure you could imagine hearing all the farmers and common folk saying " yea, great idea but where's that next gas station to fill it up".
Common working people did not own cars for decades due to their high costs.
If entrepeneurs of those days would have listened to those folks we would still be riding horses.
 
#25 ·
Fords first hand built cars yes.

The Model T was the breakthru that changed all that. It ran on gas or kerosene, which is what Stanley Steamers ran on, and oil lamps, so it was available at first more than gasoline.

And Ford did make the Model T cost effective for millions of owners - something like 15 million sold in ten years?

that is the thing - gas cars replaced electric cars and steam cars, but for a few decades they did not replace horses because they were not cost effective.

Here we are 120 years later, and electric cars are STILL not cost effective over a gas car for the way that most Americans drive (commuting and long distance road trips).

its not like Elon Musk invented the electric car 13 years ago and re-invented the modern assembly line to make them cost effective - he has accomplished neither, and they are still losing money on every car sold, depending on stock and bond sales to keep the company running.

The path for electric cars did not start 10 or 20 years ago, it started 120 years ago before gasoline engine cars, and its STILL behind the curve.

If Ford had not created the Model T 100 years ago, we would not all still be riding horses, we would all be driving Steam-punk Stanley Steamers. That was the benchmark that got replaced.
 
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#23 ·
If you ever get bored when with a group of people that are diverse in age and life experience ask them a simple question. What is the greatest invention of your lifetime? Many say things that are not inventions but improvements made on prior inventions. It really helps point out that past generations were very instrumental in how life is lived today. They very much proved the saying...necessity is the mother of all inventions...
 
#26 ·
^Electro- magnetic propulsion similar to what roller coasters do would be fun. My niece has a Volt. Great idea in larger cities. Charging stations are not readily available. I did see today that Ford announced the launch of the largest EV charging network in the US that will go nicely with their planned release of the E-F150 and some new SUV based on the Mustang...Again the problem will be acquisition of property, vicinity of users, maintenance of the stations, safety of the stations, brand specificity...too many to list..
 
#27 ·
Walmart has a vast automotive charging system in place with more locations on the way. May be in the not so far future charging your car on trips won't be the issue it is today.

RESTON, Va. and BENTONVILLE, Ark., June 6, 2019 — Electrify America and Walmart announced today that more than 120 plus ultra-fast electric vehicle (EV) charging stations are now operational and open to the public at Walmart stores across the U.S. Building upon the original commitment set forth in April 2018, the companies are planning to expand the relationship in the coming years with additional Electrify America charging stations located at Walmart stores across the country.

 
#32 ·
Many Walmarts are in some pretty seedy areas, no where I would to be in a $70,000 dollar car and most of these charging stations are located pretty far from the stores at the far end of the parking lot that I have seen, I have not seen a Walmart with a charging station where I live.
 
#31 ·
I have bugged him about putting a stabilizer in the fuel, if he is not going to drive far for months at a time

or to only put a few gallons in instead of filling it up, then if he takes a road trip fill it up when he leaves

the car will start the engine up and run in hybrid mode if the engine has not been run in something like 60 days - I guess they know E10 fuel breaks down if its not used.
 
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#33 ·
how many people with a $120,000 tesla shop at walmart?

I think they are targeting the Leaf and Bolt owners...
 
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