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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“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.