The article is a clear indication that neither the authors nor the manufacturers of this hideous monstrosity have the faintest idea what motorcycling is about.
British startup Maeving is in the vanguard of a growing market worldwide for clean two-wheeled travel
So we start with a lie. EVs are not clean. The fact that they do not produce emissions does not make them clean. It is simply that the environmental damage they cause is hidden while their users can feel smug about their ‘green’ vehicle. It’s a lie. A big fat hairy lie.
The motorcycle industry has problems: its petrolhead riders are ageing, customer numbers are shrinking and bans on fossil-fuel power are looming.
This much is true although the latter is an entirely artificially created problem. If the politicians had just left us alone, eventually, more environmentally friendly technology would have evolved naturally. As it is, we get useless, range-limited anachronisms that take ages to charge. I can refuel my petrol bikes in a matter of minutes and be on my way – even though my Indian FTR has a similar range to an EV.
However, a growing number of companies are trying their luck. Harley-Davidson, the biggest US motorbike manufacturer, is offering the £29,000 LiveWire, with a 146-mile city riding range, and California-based Zero’s SR/S model starts at £20,100 for a 161-mile city range. At the other end of the scale is a host of Chinese manufacturers such as Super Soco, whose TSX starts at £2,900 for a 40-mile range. Another British startup, Arc, will deliver the first of its £90,000 Vector sports bikes in November.
Those prices are prohibitive for most riders. Okay, I’ll spend around £15k for a bike – but it will be a damned sight more useful than any of the eco wankery on offer. Oh, and if you are stupid enough to buy a Zero, you have to pay extra to enable the options that are already fitted to the bike but are locked down until you cough up, so rather more than the £20k mentioned here.
Two 40-mile-range batteries, made by Samsung, can be charged at home and then slotted into compartments in the RM1 (which starts at £4,495 for a single-battery version). These power an in-wheel motor made by German automotive parts giant Bosch. The bike is limited to 45mph.
“We have completely, unashamedly designed this to be a great urban commuting vehicle,” says Inglis-Jones. “It’s just about making something that makes sense in context. Why don’t more people appreciate that motorcycling doesn’t have to be a niche sports activity?”
This tells me that they are a pair of fuckwits who have no understanding of the market they are entering.
Stirrup and co-founder Seb Inglis-Jones, 29 and 31 respectively, left careers in finance and marketing to found Maeving.
Well, there you go, what do you expect?
I train enough new riders to understand that they want much the same thing from riding that I do and it isn’t necessarily about sport – indeed, it is rarely about sport. It’s about something much more – the freedom to travel, and a limited range with 45mph top speed makes this pretty much useless for anything other than posing about on – might as well stick to one of those stupid electric scooters. This hideous contraption deserves to fail. I will certainly not be putting any of my money into one. Instead, I’ll buy something that really is a motorcycle.
Paying £20k for a zero is the perfect example of people with more money than sense.
Also further proves that the green agenda is driven by the virtue signalling well offs.
So this toy has a maximum radius of 40 miles and it tops out at 45mph. Ideal for the london bubble kleptocracy but pretty well useless in the real world..
Saw it in the grauniad. A penetrating piece by Jasper Jolly and the key market is “eco conscious millenials”.
Yep, satire is truly dead.
But looking at the linkedin pages of these titans of industry, perhaps not.
I’ve just bought a Royal Enfield Scram 411. This bike it pitched firmly at the young, urban market and is selling in droves. As an aside, they have inadvertently appealed to older riders like me who want something smaller for local riding. I also want it for training and the occasional green lane.
At 24bhp it is very low powered, but ideal for what it is intended to do. Unlike the useless contraption designed by these two fuckwits, it is capable of taking luggage and a passenger. With a 15 litre fuel tank and fuel economy of 80+mpg, range and refuelling is massively better than being offered by any electric vehicle – even if they do have swap out batteries.
For some reason, these two seem to think that the bobber style is a seller. The bobber is a small market segment as anyone who has any understanding of motorcycling will realise. The rest of us tend towards more practical machinery, but let them learn the hard way. The only people likely to want this hideous monstrosity will have man buns and bum fluff on their chins with zero comprehension of motorcycles, but might think that it gives them a cool factor.
I’ll stick with my Ninja, thank you very much.
Jasper Jolly wrote the article, but the photographer did the test ride.
So The Observer wasn’t able to come up with a writer who would dare ride something that’s equivalent to an underpowered CG125.
Yes, you can get more than 45mph out of a CG125. Downhill with a tailwind, but even so…
The CG125 was my L bike in the early 80’s. It was bored out way past max and the piston from a 750K1 fitted, gaining around 20cc. Gear shafts from a XL125 for a 5 speed box, gearbox sprocket down a tooth, airbox removed and carb rejetted. That would, and did, easily take out a 250N. A bog standard CG125 would do 55mph flat out, provided that a fly didn’t land on the headlamp. I started out legally with a Suzuki Stinger and like its bigger brothers, that bike was quick for its capacity, 70mph+ was available.
That was the thing about Hondas at that time, you could cherry pick parts from other models and build your own version if you wanted to. I doubt you could do things like that with an EV. My CG125 didn’t even have a battery.
“…bans on fossil-fuel power are looming.”
Am I being naively overconfident in saying that this will never happen? Those useful idiots that think that it will are simply oblivious to the practical obstacles that block the route to their all electric utopia. As has been mentioned over at Samizdata, the real plan is to force the plebs off the roads altogether and get them back on the buses where they belong. Once that becomes undeniably obvious it will be torches and pitch forks.
I’d like to think so. People like Klaus Schwab and George Soros have amassed power and influence without any accountability and are swaying governments to their will. No one voted for this. Few actually agree with it. I am hoping that the open war on farming will focus minds as well as the drive [sic] to force us all off the roads and the populace as a whole start to really take notice. So far, we seem to be sleepwalking into a totalitarian dystopia and only a few really make any noise about it and we get labelled as conspiracy theorists. It will be too late when the Soviet style war on food production brings the inevitable food shortages, the lights go out and no one can travel.
In the meantime, they are coming after our savings…
https://youtu.be/N6w16q8DWug
With the cost of charging an EV set to outstrip the cost of filling up with petrol, the schadenfreude is running strong:
https://www.energynewsline.co.uk/energy-live-news/as-energy-prices-jump-evs-will-cost-more-than-petrol-cars/
Presumably this will apply to two wheelers as well.
Off topic from motorbikes but on topic for green schadenfreude, apparently the virtue signalers can sign up to only receive green electricity (presumably leaving the dirty brown stuff for the plebs). Apparently the price cap does not apply. Oh dear! Virtue signaling can be expensive.
https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/green-energy-suppliers-exempt-from-price-cap-9238004
For a while, I was with Green Energy as they were providing the cheapest supply. They went bust and I was transferred to EDF.
That’s fair enough, but there are people who genuinely believe it, who purport to truly believe that their “green” energy is actually 100% “renewable”.
I have met a few and in response to the simple question “where does your power come from at night when no wind is blowing?” I’ve never received anything but various levels of abuse of the sort I would expect in response to a deliberate personal insult. That tells me that they know it’s all a scam but they so desperately want to believe it.
There are various rationalisation, typically parroting the party line about the wondrous “green” technologies (I.e. grifts) they’ve read about in the “tech” media (largely another grift and home for wannabes too stupid and/or lazy to learn proper science/engineering).
And with tiresome inevitability, the answer is always more regulation, more “nudge” (I.e. coercion), more government, more “educational” for unbelievers.
I just can’t get my head round these attitudes, and believe me I’ve tried.
People will buy this toy, as they have bought milk floats, and will dedicate their time and effort to suppressing the truth -particularly to themselves – about how impractical and downright useless these toys are.
I’ll be watching with great interest over the next 6-12 months.
I was into sports bikes (retired) and never understood the attraction of a Harley-Davidson…
But they surely can’t think their customer base would be attracted to smooth noise-free riding!
My attraction is for big muscle bikes, but I also like sports tourers. Likewise, not into the Harley thing. My Indian FTR is every much a modern machine and is smooth to ride, more European in feel than American. Nothing I ride is remotely like that contraption. Indeed, it looks like something from the early twentieth century.
Bringing a battery pack into your house to charge it is a pretty bad idea, unless maybe you’re thinking of burning your house down to claim the insurance.
I see a disproportionate number of electric cars at the gym. Gym membership isn’t prohibitively expensive but you do need to be fairly comfortably off to be able to afford it. This suggests that people with too much money might be the ones that buy them. I’ve seen an electric Aston Martin there.