How can you tell when you are clinging to a bad idea? Easy. If you’re having to make excuses for it, it’s a bad idea. Someone ought to tell it to this guy.
He is an apologist for the electric motorcycle – which is itself a contradiction, since a “motorcycle” without an engine (and even more importantly, without a transmission) is functionally a scooter or moped designed to simulate the appearance of a motorcycle. Some will dispute this assertion but consider the facts. On a moped or scooter, you just sit there and rotate the right grip to get the thing to accelerate. You do the same on an electric “motorcycle.” There is no transmission; the electric motor is directly connected to the rear wheel. No clutch to engage – to disengage the engine when you’re stopped, so the engine doesn’t stall. No gears to shift as you go. Just sit on the thing and rotate the right grip.
Whee!
This is ok on a moped or scooter because neither are pretending to be what they aren’t. Electric “motorcycles” are objectionable because they’re fundamentally a fraudulent presentation. They are sort-of like those kit cars you used to see back in the ’80s that looked like Ferraris but were actually Fieros with Ferrari-looking bodies. What you’re seeing isn’t what you’re getting, in other words. When an individual engages in such fakery, it’s harmless and even funny (unless he’s representing what’s fake as real to someone who thinks he is buying what’s real but is fake). When it is done at scale, it is an affront. One wants to scream: Leave motorcycles alone! Go ahead and sell your electric scooters and mopeds but stop styling them to look like what they aren’t – and stop misrepresenting them as being what they’re not. If they are so wonderful, why not be honest about what they are?
The question answers itself.
This circles us back to the apologist, who produced (and it is well-produced) a long-form video of a trip he took on his electric imitation “motorcycle” that focuses on all the stuff you can see and do while you wait for your electric imitation “motorcyle” to suckle some charge. The long-form apologia is especially ridiculous because the electric imitation “motorcycle” being demonstrated is a facsimile of an adventure touring motorcycle, one of of those go-anywhere bikes that combines the highway use capability of a middleweight sport bike with the of road capabilities of a dual sport. The apologist admits the facsimile is “useless for its stated purpose” – because it can’t go very far on the highway or anywhere else – and then goes on to make excuses for this.
It’s silent, too! And – look! – there’s no driveline lash because the little electric motor mounts right up snug against the rear wheel!
“Rather than a quick splash-and-dash at a gas station before continuing to your destination, you’re forced to slow down and spend at least a little while immersing yourself in the local culture,” says an apologist for the apologist.
“It’s the journey, not the destination.”
No, it’s the evasion – and misrepresentation.
The diversionary bullshit. The same tactics used by some religious apologists to avoid having to deal with some of the batshit bullshit in their holy books. When you go for a motorcycle ride, you’re not going for a motorcycle stop. Yes, of course, you can stop anytime you like – and motorcycle riders often do just that. But the point is you can keep going for as long as you like – aside from the “quick splash and dash” at a gas station, where you can top off the typical bike’s 3.5 gallon tank in about 90 seconds. There is freedom in that, you see. And it is freedom that most motorcycle riders crave. An electric fugazi dressed to look like a motorcycle has an invisible leash that curbs your freedom by preventing you from riding as long as you like, wherever you like. Or whenever. You can’t just go – on a whim, on the spur of the moment. You have to ride within the safe radius of places to stop and wait for the hour or so it takes to suckle enough charge to get back on the road. And you can’t just randomly take whatever road presents itself because it looks like it might be fun to go that way – because there might not be a place to suckle electricity along the way.
This is doubleplus so when you take a dirt road somewhere.
Yes, of course, there are nice places to stop along the way. But – sorry Charlie – the destination is not journey when it comes to motorcycling. It’s the ride that’s the thing. Everything else that you encounter along the way is peripheral.
But you’ve got to be someone who understands that to get that.
. . .
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Well, I’ll tell you all one thing I detest about these Gott-damend “E-Bikes”, and like the Teslas and the “Prii” before them, it’s not the tech, it’s the DRIVERS/RIDERS…
There’s nothing that concerns me more than some 13 y.o. little shit, zipping along the sidewalk at 30 to 35 mph on his electric two-wheel scooter, no reflective clothing or helmet, no lights, at DUSK, practically invisible, and as I pull out of Adalberto’s with an order of rolled tacos, one of the little bastards runs into me and goes ass-over-teakettle, over my car, onto the sidewalk, and gets even more “Dain-Brammaged” (brain damaged) than he ALREADY was. Yet it’ll be his parents suing my ass and maybe even the coppers pressing charges over some little fucker who, AFAIC, just qualified for the year’s “Darwin Award!”
Second this, Douglas –
In my neck, it has become common to see these e-bikes – the rental ones – just tossed/discarded by the side of the road after the hoodlum got done with it. Gnomesayin’?
Seems to me a guy could get a Royal Enfield 650 for about that money. Two, if you get lightly used 350 cc ones, and have a bike that you’d ride with a smile.’
Believe me, I’ve been shopping.
Silent, electric motorcycles are just a sign of apocalypse. Here in jewlandria, everything is inverted. Instead of creating products people want, the monopolies try to convince people to buy shit that makes no sense, no 1 wants and everyone hates.
Electric “scooters”=Fake & Gay….
ICE Bikes=Miles of Smiles…
My favorite “fake & gay” replica-car was the Bradley GT kit car…body of a supercar, but the frame and running gear of a VW Bug!!! LOL, and they weren’t cheap conversions either….always SMDH when I saw them on the road…but they did look great!!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Automotive
You can always carry a spare gas container, i did regularly when riding in remote areas…
But its hard to carry a spare electron container!!!
YMMV….
Morning, Saxons!
Yup. I remember the Bradley GT. I think one of them starred in Hardcastle & McCormick – an obscure ancient reference to start the day!
I think you’re too hard on him. In another video he review the bike and said it pointless to have a dual sport adventure bike that you’re stuck to pavement hops between charges.
Still he gives it shot and shows the reality. Ride an hour, wait an hour, ride an hour, wait an hour. Hope like Hell the charger works. The apologists are the ones in the comments defending them.
He lets the waiting do the speaking and it’s no doubt an editorial decision to be sarcastic throwing rocks at a water bottle rather than speak plainly. CanAm can’t sue or drop him from sponsorships for anything negative he -actually- said but implied.
As far as kicking around a place, what’s wrong with that? It’s a serious drag if you’re trying to put miles down. I do the same thing on trips like this. Now the critic would point out I get to choose my stops. Interest roadside history, mining ruins, scenic overlooks, hikes, eating when actually hungry are what consume time, not waiting in a town for a charge. Still, the overall pace is roughly the same.
Yep. Ryan’s /sarc went over Eric’s head.
Try this on a western USA road trip, good luck. Several stretches we’re going over the map to ensure we have the fuel load to make the next available gas stop. Gets lonely in the middle of nowhere!
Head northwest on Idaho 28 from the junction with 33. There is NOTHING but the paved road and sagebrush till you get to the tiny town Leadore. You probably won’t see another vehicle in that 76 mile run. Dead EV battery? You may be dead as well.
Fistfull of Dollars, Jerry Can Full of Electrons.
What’s the diff?
Get three coffins ready….
Where they are used for work (e.g. motorbike ‘taxis’ in the 3rd world) gas engine to electric conversions are popular with the battery designed to be swapped out quickly when needed.
There’s no infrastructure in place for such rapid ‘refueling’ here in the USA.
That only works if you standardize the size, shape, connectors, etc. of the battery packs. And there isn’t any money in that (which is why chargers aren’t standardized either).
It’s just another gigantic ripoff. And you are, once again, a sucker for buying into it (as if you had a meaningful choice in the matter).
“ you’re forced to slow down and spend at least a little while immersing yourself in the local culture,” says an apologist for the apologist.
You better hope that the “local culture” doesn’t include gangbangers who will not take kindly to you being on their turf.
Driving past a local charging station yesterday, google maps said its “busier than usual”.
One Tesla in 1 stall. All others empty. Adjacent gas pumps over 50% full.
Total crock a BS.
Keep deporting until the traffic on my commute improves.
(but cut it out with the jackboot stuff, that is neither healthy nor necessary)
>You better hope that the “local culture” doesn’t include gangbangers who will not take kindly to you being on their turf.
If the “local culture” is the South Side of Chicago (pick your neighborhood), los Negros (the Blacks) will slit your throat in broad daylight to see of you are carryng anything of value.
Been there, experienced that (Hyde Park, 1971-72) CPD caught up with a criminal, covered in the blood of his victim, in the alley behing where I lived, 5334 S. Kimbark. Related to me by the tile setter my landlord sent to re-tile the bathroom shower. According to him, CPD taunted the criminal with “Why don’t you run, MF?”
Of course, the boiling frogs who live in Hyde Park think this is totally normal. It is not.
‘The same tactics used by some religious apologists to avoid having to deal with some of the batshit bullshit in their holy books.’ — eric
The scientific method holds that competition between competing theories will advance knowledge. So does Amendment I, which encourages a marketplace of ideas — including bad ones — in the confidence that the better ones will prevail.
What a contrast to religions, all of which have a sordid past of imposing belief by force, up to and including death for heretics. Likewise, the quasi-religious belief in ‘the six million Holocaust victims’ is enforced by criminal law in much of Europe, and by the tax-funded Third Temple (i.e., the Holocaust Museum) in Washington DC.
Any belief system that uses force to compel compliance is axiomatically deceptive and wrong. Laws forbidding people to ‘question the Holocaust’ are prima facie evidence of malicious intent. Smite the zionites. And read E Michael Jones’s takedown of the latest deceptive book about the
IsraelJew Lobby:https://www.unz.com/ejones/john-mearsheimers-category-mistake-and-the-israel-lobby/
‘Zionism is another word for Jewish nationalism. Communism is another word for Jewish internationalism.’ — E Michael Jones
Indeed, Jim!
One of my favorites is the tale about the 600 year old man who built a boat… I mean c’mon. When I bring this up with believers, I say to them: The evidence that human beings have a maximum lifespan of about 130 years – and by 90, if a person lives that long, he is almost certain to be frail – is overwhelming. What evidence is there that any human being has ever lived even 150 years? Let alone 600. And was hearty enough to build a boat. It’s contra everything we see and contra all that is known about the human lifespan.
But wait, there’s more! After the 600 year old man built a huge boat, God caused a breeding pair of every living creature to march to the ark – including, presumably penguins from Antarctica. Dinosaurs, too!
The world was then inundated in a global deluge that didn’t destroy the biosphere (including the fresh water fish that had to deal with salt water) and we’re all descended from the 600 year old man and. his three sons, none of whom was black or Asian.
Oy vey!
But the unicorns were hiding, playing a silly game…so they didn’t make it onto the ark.
https://youtu.be/_EPsuOEH1fY?is=06a0QGCZ9Td_x4Oj
Every literature gets distorted by translation and time. The Bible in general is a cultural touchstone and undergirds a great civilization, but probably shouldn’t be read literally.
Which is one reason why, even though I’m “staunchly” LDS (Mormon), I don’t buy that Caucasians, Asians, and especially “Knee Grows” (Blacks) all descend from one breeding pair, save that “Gawd” did something dramatic, yet UNDOCUMENTED, to create differing races and DNA. Then again, the first LDS President, Prophet, Seer, and Revelator, Joseph Smith, Junior, did say that “many plain and precious things” had been removed from Scripture.
FWIW, most ancient religions and cultures had some “flood” story, but who’s to say how it actually went down?
Indeed, Douglas!
If anyone can point me to persuasive evidence (not hearsay “testimony”) that any human being has ever lived much past 130 years, I’d be delighted to hear about it.
https://www.corvus-rising.net/blog/about/
>In my view, the society in which we find ourselves today is one which
has swung entirely too far in the opposite direction, one in which the
denial of objective reality is all too common, in which individuals
assert that all opinions are equally valid, in which the principles of
logic are denigrated as “racist,” and the concept of scientific
investigation which may, and must always, be tested against objective
reality, is perverted into the enshrinement of dogma clothed in the
counterfeit vestments of “The Science,” which is treated as unerring,
received Truth by those incapable of critical thought.
I normally love your columns but on this one you missed the mark.
Your personal preference is blinding you and you wilfully ignored what he said about the bike riding better than its ICE counterpart, owing to the fact that the drivetrain is self contained in the swingarm.
Yes it’s not fit for the intended purpose and comes with a bunch of drawback.
But I can see one of these as being the perfect commuter bike. In fact, if they weren’t so damn expensive I would get one for the city.
It’s not for lack of loving ICE bikes, there is a 2T 300. in my garage after all. But I can see some use cases where these make perfect sense.
> if they weren’t so damn expensive I would get one for the city.
If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.
Not sure he is 100% serious that its really better or anything, but he does do good reviews though. He sold me on his yamaha tw200 video a few years ago which is straight cinematic and informative.
I find youth electric bikes and motorcycles make worse riders because of bad habits, and are contributing to the popularity of automatic transmission bikes since they never learn shifting.
People who think electric motorcycles are a good idea should take their next vacation via an electric plane.
I took his apologies as being tongue-in-cheek. Afterall, he did state that the bike is unusable for its stated purpose.
Michael Parks…call your office…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYsztoaU9Ls&t=5s
“It’s silent, too!”
One of the stated reasons for muffler removal on bikes is because the loud engine will get cagers to better notice the motorcycle. It’s a Saaaaaaaaaaaaaftey thing.
They better get busy building their own version of Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust™
I never entirely bought into the “loud pipes save lives” thing. My cynical nature thinks it was an advertisement for Vance & Hines.
Morning, MH!
Overloud exhaust is obnoxious. But part of the motorcycle’s appeal is the sound of its engine.
Right. Once the windows are up and the stereo is blasting you can’t hear outside anyway. I guess it helps pedestrians and people watching TV at home avoid getting hit by a biker.
That is probably mostly bullshit, but making a lot of noise is part of what makes motorcycles fun. So is going fast, and looking like a badass, and danger, and adrenaline. Take away the engine and you have a “steak” that leaves a little puddle of beet juice behind on the plate. It is not the same thing.
>Fratzonic
Well, *somebody* had fun deliberately misspelling “Fartsonic.”
Small acts of rebellion, I suppose.