Riding Man author Mark Gardiner provides insight into motorcycle racing, history, and industry news. A focus on road racing is to be expected from an ex-Isle of Man TT racer but Backmarker also covers everything from flat track to electric bikes.
Trump: I thank Harley for building in America from CNBC. What a difference a year makes, eh? Shortly after he took office, Donald Trump met with Harley-Davidson executives and union leaders, taking the opportunity to describe Harley as "...an American icon; one of the greats." Now, the company finds itself in a feud with the Bully-in-Chief. Last week, an unsourced quote ostensibly from Harley-Davidson's CEO Matt Levatich flew around the Twittersphere.
“Our decision to move some of our operations is 100% based on President Trumps tariffs. Mr. Trump knows nothing about economics and even less about trade. The man is a moron.”
I knew the moment that I read it that it wasn't a real quote, and frankly, everyone else should have known, too. (In the limited defense of people who believed it, Levatich did, before the last election, criticize the Republican primary field in what was likely a thinly-veiled insult to The Donald.) Harley-Davidson, in frantic damage control mode, issued a strong denial.
The matter should have ended there, but it seems not to have ended, because this morning, Donald Trump responded with something that isn't a fake tweet, attacking Harley-Davidson.
There are about seven levels of bullshit in this, beginning with the fact that Trump cites 2017 sales figures, figures from a year when Harley execs put on a fawning display on the White House driveway for Trump and Pence -- after which Trump thanked Harley for building so many bikes in the U.S. (If you want a point-by-point explanation of just how stupid this tweet is, go here.)
Harley-Davidson faces a host of challenges, not the least of which are increased costs of materials and new tariff barriers as a result of Trump's trade policies. As a Kansas Citian, I'm bummed that they're closing the plant here.
This iconic company may not face an existential crisis, but it's not far off. Whenever I'm at a gathering of motorcycle journalists and motorcycle industry executives, the topic of "What can Harley do?" inevitably comes up, and few if any of the assembled 'experts' have any good ideas to offer. I, for one, actually have high hopes for the 'Livewire' project, but I'll breathe a sigh of relief if that even happens.
This story's not going away today, either; since my original post I've even heard about it on NPR. What should Harley do? Nothing, for fuck's sake. Just wait, head down, until Trump turns his attention somewhere else.
That said, I can't help but wonder whether, some day, Trump will attack some American icon and have his supporters finally decide it's beyond the pale. I can only dream... In the meantime, the last fucking thing Harley needs is Trump kicking 'em when they're down.
In the last few months, Harley-Davidson’s stock has fallen about 20%. Most of that drop occurred in one day last October, when Matt Levatich told an investment call the company was cutting guidance for overall 2015 results based on a lackluster Q3.
Harley’s problems are not, however, of a quarter-to-quarter (or year-to-year) nature. Harley shares the same big, structural issues with another brand that is very much in the news: the Republican Party. In particular, where the 2016 Presidential election is concerned.
My fellow Canadian ― the economist David Foot, author of ‘Boom, Bust, and Echo; How to Profit From the Coming Demographic Shift’ ― once said, “Demographics explains two-thirds of everything.” And both Harley and the GOP face the same demographic challenge. That is to say, both brands are favored by angry old white guys; a market that is literally dying off, while the U.S. gets younger and more diverse every year.
There are guys back in the smoke-filled rooms at the Republican National Committee who cringe every time Donald Trump says he wants to build a wall along the border with Mexico, because they know that he’s alienating Latino voters in states like Nevada and Colorado that are in play in 2016. Even reliably-Republican Texas will become a swing state before long, as Hispanic Texans will outnumber white ones by 2020 and be an outright majority in about 30 years.
When Mitt Romney ran against Obama, he barely pulled 20% of the Latino vote. It’s now accepted wisdom amongst political strategists that it is not possible to win that office with less than about 40% of the Latino vote.
"I don't actually ride a motorcycle, but if I did, I'd ride this douchebag's motorcycle.
Harley-Davidson needs a far more diverse market too. Although the company has long owned the angry old white guy demographic ― and those guys seem, if anything, angrier than ever ― as they age, they will inevitably stop buying new motorcycles. And the scale of Harley’s problem is, to say the least, challenging. Put it this way: about half of all the ‘heavyweight’ motorcycles (over 600cc) sold in the U.S. are still Harleys. 2008 was the last year that Harley released its data on customer ages. But back then, it admitted that the average age of new-Harley buyers had already climbed to nearly 50.
Harley blithely says it is targeting younger riders and a more diverse crowd. But that really doesn’t address the scope of the problem.
They say “50 is the new thirty”, and “Seventy is the new 50” and shit like that. But the problem for Harley is, 85 is still eighty-five. If most of Harley’s buyers are over 50 and most of those guys, by definition, are going to stop buying new bikes sooner or later... simple math says that Harley doesn’t just have to do a better job of attracting the young, less-uniformly-white audience that currently favors other brands; it has to do a way, way better job.
Think about it: Harley still has almost half the market, but if the half it has is aging out and the company wants to preserve its sales, it has to capture virtually all of every competitor’s market share ― not to grow, just to maintain volumes.
The GOP has successfully gerrymandered Congress; it will have a majority in the House for decades. (Sorry, Democrats, but in all that ‘Change’ euphoria, GOP strategists completely outplayed you.) But when it comes to electing Presidents, the lily-white GOP is basically reduced to hoping that the Democratic candidate self-destructs and young, non-white Dem-leaning voters stay home.
Harley and the GOP don’t just have a problem in that their brands are favored by angry old white guys; it’s way worse than that. They’ve both styled their brands to appeal to the same base of (often Confederate-) flag-waving, ‘Murica-Fuck-yeah, open-carry conservative white guys. Neither brand is eager to alienate that base; in fact, they’re afraid to stop pandering to it. And that means they’re wrapping their brand in imagery that strikes younger and more-diverse consumers as out-of-date at best and coded racism at worst. But wait, it gets worse; the core supporters of both brands are angered when the brand even attempts to woo new fans with language and imagery that deviates from the arch-conservative. (To be clear: There will be guys in the marketing dept. in Milwaukee who'll read this and think, "But what about our product placement in the Captain America movie?" That was an attempt at dog-whistle marketing; an effort to reach out to the young, liberal movie audience that Harley's conservative base despise, but that Harley's base would either not see at all or if they did see, would interpret it differently. It was a nice try, but you can not build a great brand on product placement.)
Harley-Davidson is smart enough to realize that it has to be on the right (read: 'left') side of some conservative image issues. For example, The Motor Company has officially said no dealerships can sell Confederate-flag clothing. That doesn't change the fact that its customer base is overwhelmingly made up of the very same angry white guys who support The Donald. If you don't believe me, set up a booth registering Democratic voters at next summer's Sturgis rally, and tell me how it works out for you.
Harley and the GOP’s dilemma is that they can either attempt the tricky challenge of crafting two entirely different messages; one for the base and one for new fans, in the hope that neither group is exposed to the others’ message. Or, they can suck it up and just make the brand-jump from the old image to a new, younger message that will resonate with a diverse audience.
Way back in the ‘90s, there was a business book called, If It Ain’t Broke, Break It. Back then, I remember thinking that it was total bullshit advice. As an ad guy, I knew that for every client who stuck with a good campaign too long, there were two or three clients who abandoned good campaigns too soon.
But Harley really should have broken the brand. What would that have looked like? Building a bike to compete with the more technically advanced, sportier brands favored by younger buyers.
There’s an object lesson in an iconic American brand that was stuck with an obsolete product that appealed only to aging consumers, and worked its way out of the bind: Cadillac. Back in the ‘90s, If you had told me that some day I’d want a Cadillac, I would have laughed in your face. (And ironically, I wrote a ton of ads for them.) Remember when Cadillac said, “Fuck it, we’ll race at Le Mans”? That was the beginning of a beautiful thing. In the last decade or so, Cadillac relentlessly improved tech and performance, without fear that they were inevitably alienating their old customers.
A couple of years ago, Cadillac briefly tried to recapture the brand's old, original, conservative white male market with this famous ad. To get a sense of how it went over, try entering the phrase "Cadillac ad d..." in Google and watch it fill in '...ouchebag'.
There must’ve been a group in Milwaukee that thought that way, too, when Harley briefly attempted to build the VR1000 superbike and compete with Ducati on the race track. Some day I’d love to write an in-depth assessment of what went wrong with that project. I have a little more insight into the Buell debacle; I think that a big part of the problem, for Buell, was that there were people in H-D head office (and far more at the dealer level) who actively resented the Buell brand. There were plenty of people in orange and black who had grown to hate the jeering sport bike riders, and those H-D employees resented Erik Buell for trying to make a competitive sport bike and, worse, failing.
In 1994, Harley-Davidson attempted to take on European (and possibly to a lesser extent) Japanese competitors with the VR1000 Superbike. That project limped along until about 2000. That was when the Cadillac LMP ('Le Mans Project') broke cover. Neither of these race machines was very successful. But Cadillac sent a signal with the LMP that it was willing to reinvent itself, and build cars to compete, technically and performance-wise, with the European and Japanese luxury brands. Sadly, Harley concluded, "Let's never do that again."
I thought that Harley had played a strategic master-stroke about a year and half ago, when I rode the Livewire. As I wrote at the time, Harley could leapfrog right over those high-performance ICE sport bikes and bring out the first truly mainstream EV motorcycle. I was sure that the Livewire was not a 'market test' but a real prototype. Now, I'm not so sure; if there are any plans to commercialize the Livewire, I’ve not heard about it. And in the meantime, Polaris has purchased Brammo. (And Polaris’ Indian brand seems to be doing a better job of taking an iconic American motorcycle brand, and upgrading its technology and performance.)
Right now, the GOP is desperately hoping that, somehow, more than half the American electorate will forget the appalling rhetoric of the Republican primaries, and that the GOP nominee ― whoever he or Carly Fiorina is ― will be able to wrap himself in less overtly racist imagery for the general election. The Republicans may succeed in convincing a few younger, less white voters to come over. But really all they’re hoping for is that he Democratic nominee will self destruct and, as a result, Democratic leaning voters won’t show up on November 2. The only long-term strategy for the Republicans is to field a candidate that a more diverse U.S. actually finds palatable, and the party cannot do that unless it’s willing to alienate its base.
That definitely isn’t a strategy for Harley. They can't wait for competitors to self-destruct; not by a long shot. So Harley can either age out of relevance with its current customers, while perhaps succeeding in selling its current bikes in, say, half the volume at best to a younger and more diverse audience.
Or, Harley can learn from the painful failures of the VR1000 and Buell ― and perhaps pay attention to some of the things Polaris is doing right with Indian ― and develop a strategy to grab market share from a younger and more diverse demographic with a revitalized 21st-century brand.
So, here's my executive summary for Matt Levatich: In the long run, winning does not look like convincing younger and more diverse consumers that they are wrong about the Harley brand. Winning looks like building bikes those people actually want.
Polaris made an investment in Brammo back in 2011 and upped their stake again 2012. Now, they've acquired the rest of Craig Bramscher's motorcycle business. I haven't spotted the amount they recently spent; I may not find that out until their next Annual Report. But the first two investments were (IIRC) $11M and $28M.
It begs a few interesting questions:
What motivated Bramscher to sell out once and for all? Is it significant that Polaris' press release makes no mention of Craig's continued involvement?
Polaris says it will begin making electric motorcycles in Spirt Lake IA, this year. Does that mean Brammo's existing operations will move from Oregon to the midwest? Will the bikes made in Spirt Lake be Brammo models, or is there an electric Indian in the works?
Was Polaris influenced by Harley-Davidson's impressive LiveWire foray into electric motorcycles? If so, should Craig should send a box of chocolates to Milwaukee?
Is there any significance to the fact that, like Mission, Brammo's evolved from an electric motorcycle company to an electric powertrain company?
Back in the early days of Brammo, Zero, and Mission I visited all those companies and found that they were staffed with the expected engineers and nerds, and that they all had a few serious riders on board. But they didn't have motorcycle designers. Mission solved that problem by outsourcing that role to the iconoclastic genius James Parker.
When it created the LiveWire, Harley went the other way; they had motorcycle design capability in house and brought in powertrain expertise (from Mission).
The fact is, while there are a number of good engineering schools where you can go to learn how to make a decent car from scratch, motorcycle vehicle dynamics are more complex, and there are far fewer places you can go to study motorcycle engineering (as distinct from styling). I was always struck by the lack of serious brand-building, sales channel development, and marketing expertise in those upstart companies, too.
I always walked out thinking, They say "What you don't know won't hurt you", but if you don't know what you don't know, that can be deadly.
So it makes sense that two of those three companies have now shifted their focus to supplying other builders with batteries, motor controllers, and motors; that's what they know.
Polaris' product mix offers a ton of EV potential; far more than Harley-Davidson's does. The basic shape of a quad, snowmobile, or 'Slingshot' lends itself to heavy, flat battery deck carried in the bottom of the chassis. That's way better than trying to swing a great big battery pack from side to side in the turns.
Just the other day, I found myself thinking, I've let it go too long between lunches with Harry 'Brammofan' Mallin. I'll pick his brain and get back to you.
High-tech battery maker (and prominent EV motorcycle sport sponsor) A123 Battery Systems of Waltham MA is bankrupt. Over the summer, A123 announced that it would give Wanxiang Group Corp., China’s largest auto-parts maker, a majority stake in exchange for financing. But that deal has fallen through, and now Johnson Controls will pick up most of the pieces for $125 million. Not surprisingly, the apparent failure of another green energy company has been pounced upon by the Romney campaign, which had earlier accused Barack Obama of "backing losers" when he encouraged government investment in tech like EVs, and solar and wind power generation.
A123 received a $250 million grant from the Dept. of Energy, and has used about half of it. A123 was given $125 million in refundable tax credits from the state of Michigan that it never collected, although it did collect a $10 million state grant. Before Republicans succumb to too much schadenfreude, however, it should be noted that A123 received U.S. grants in 2003 and 2007 under Republican President George W. Bush’s administration, before the stimulus grant from the Obama administration. A123 has been supported and endorsed by several Republican legislators over the years. More than it shows any real lack of oversight, the A123 debacle illustrates an often-overlooked truth: the second mouse gets the cheese. A123 was an early leader in developing EV battery tech. It's undoing came when batteries it supplied to Fisker -- and early player in the EV sports car segment -- had to be recalled.
It's a bit of a bummer for the small players in the EV-motorcycle racing field, since A123 was an enthusiastic sponsor and technical partner. It remains to be seen whether Johnson Controls -- a $10,000,000,000 company -- will even notice such fledgling efforts, much less support them. I noticed the news of A123's failure on the same morning that my friend Susanna 'Pinkyracer' Schick posted a six-month old Bloomberg story to the effect that electric cars will save users about $1,200 a year on energy costs.
If you plug that savings into the equation for the electric Ford Focus, it's a little disappointing. The base model Focus EV lists for about $40k -- $32,500 after federal tax credit. That's about double the base-model ICE Focus. It would take ten years or more to recover the additional cost in energy 'savings'. I think it's cautiously safe to assume the EV's battery pack will last that long, but a Norwegian university conducted a 'life cycle' study that I noticed on Phys.org, which suggests that when you take into account the energy used to make and decommission EVs, they'll reduce greenhouse gases by no more than 25%, compared to ICE alternatives.
What does all this mean? It's too early to tell whether electric motors will or even should replace ICE in light vehicles. In the short term, the solution is smaller vehicles that we use less because we have better public transportation alternatives, and increased use of bicycles and walking. I use a motorcycle that gets a real 50 mpg for long/highway trips, and a 70 mpg scooter, bicycle, or walk for in-town trips. If I'm picking up 100 pounds of stuff at Costco, I borrow my wife's nine year-old Focus. There's neither an economic nor environmental case for me to even consider an EV.
If A&R has its facts right, San Francisco's Mission Motors has just laid off most of its staff. It's been an up-and-down few years for Mission, which burned through its founder and $10,000,000+ while producing a handful of prototype motorcycles. A year or two ago (if my blog is to be believed) the company basically shitcanned its plans to actually produce motorcycles and repositioned itself as a specialty engineering company offering its EV knowledge to the auto industry.
So, how do I interpret this new news?
I'd say the venture capitalists who funded Mission have run out of patience. Either they've just decided to stop throwing good money after bad and written the company off, or they're getting ready to hawk Mission's only assets while there's still time -- "I-P!! Get your Intellectual Property now, while it's still warm. Ten cents on the dollar!..."
The fact that it's going down this way, with ignominious layoffs of most of the staff -- including engineering staff -- is an indication that no existing auto (or bike) maker wanted to acquire Mission's IP, expertise and staff even for a few million bucks. It suggests that most if not all potential buyers for a company like Mission have already internalized their EV teams.
So will Mission just be wound down, or will some company come in and acquire the assets? Time will tell.
In the meantime, I went back and reviewed the notes I made in 2009, when I first wrote about Mission and Brammo, in advance of the first TT race for EVs. I made a road trip up the West Coast, first visiting Brammo and riding an Enertia prototype (the company's first race bike was being assembled while I was there.) Then, I went back down to S.F. to spend the morning at Mission and the afternoon at Infineon, where I was one of the first outsiders to watch the Mission race bike test.
The overall impression that I had was, Mission had a lot more engineers and IQ points in the room, but Brammo had a business plan. (To be sure, Brammo's had to revise its plan plenty, but at least they had one.)
The old expression goes, "What you don't know won't hurt you."
What you don't know that you don't know, however, will kill you.
At Brammo, the guys seemed to have a better sense of what they didn't know. At Mission, they were sure that they knew it all. Brammo's still not delivered its first Empulse, but at least it's still in business, so I feel that my first impression was accurate. And, to help you recall those heady days all of three or four years ago, when it seemed we were only, oh, five years away from a viable EV-moto segment that could seriously threaten the ICE bikes, I dug up a few pics from that first Mission visit.
Hacking the world's first (self-proclaimed) electric superbike. Those were the days.
Forrest North, the company's first CEO, didn't have a corner office, but he had a corner. That's his dog, Tonka. A year or two later, North was in the doghouse with Mission's investors.
Tom Montano, Mission's resident test stud, was an American TT racer before that was cool.
Remember Yves Behar's striking prototype design? After hiring a neophyte designer, Mission threw this out and hired James Parker. That, ironically, meant that the final, gorgeous iterations of the Mission R were designed by a guy who still drew on paper with a pencil. Parker was the right choice, but it was too little, too late. He and I had many long conversations in which he bemoaned the fact that there were too many people at Mission who didn't really know -- or even like -- motorcycles.
A closing thought. Back in 2009 (which is a long time ago, in the tech world) people said, "We're five to ten years away from really threatening the fossil-fuel status quo." And today? We're still five or ten years away. What's God's way of telling you that you have a great pitch, but an oversimplified approach that will fail in the real world? You find yourself presenting at TED.
A model couple enjoying their limited*-edition Zero S. (*by buyer interest.)
I see over on A&R that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has issued a recall notice* for Zero's two road-going EV motorcycles. The bikes, apparently, have some defect that can cause them to suddenly lose power.
What caught my eye was, when NHTSA issues a recall, they cite the number of vehicles affected. In the case of the Zero S and DS models, that number was 312.
Yes, with the peak of the 2012 riding season well past, they've sold a total of 312 street bikes this year.
(*Insert your own election-year rant about over-regulation here. I'm sure Rand Paul would happily eliminate NHTSA's funding, confident in the belief that a completely free market is the best mechanism to ensure that auto and motorcycle manufacturers will sell us safe, reliable transportation.)
Anyway, with that many gullible nitwits out trolling the net for motorcycle news, I am probably wasting my time with this serious observation about the emerging electric motorcycle category. (N.B. For once, I used a word other than 'nascent' to describe the e-bike phenomenon.)
Over the last week or two, I've noted the following bits of news from the e-moto world...
The Brammo Empulse R was revealed, and it emerges that it will cost about $3,000 more than a BMW S1000RR.
The first North American TTXGP race took place but nobody came. OK, two teams entered three bikes. Two bikes started; one bike finished.
Daimler has promised to begin producing the Smart electric scooter by 2014
This costs as much as...
...this. The BMW is completely dominant by any measure. Does Brammo really think the Empulse R, at almost twenty grand, can be anything other than a rich tree-hugger's bauble?
The first two items obviously relate to the high-end sportbike segment of the market -- a segment that, to date, really doesn't exist at all. Still, it's seductive to think of electric bikes coming along and jerking the filthy, polluting rug out from under the hidebound ICE sportbike world. Even I've been caught up in the hype that this will be the year an electric bike laps the TT course at 100 miles an hour.
But. Come on...
Brammo's still talking about 'over 100 mph' and '121 mile city range' in their press releases. Trust me, this will not be the bike that makes range anxiety a thing of the past. Ex-Zero brainiac Neal Saiki has a post on his web site about the skewed results for EVs in 'city' mileage tests.
For the price of the Empulse, you could buy the BMW, and cover all of your operating costs for a couple of years -- years in which you'd have an incomparably superior riding experience in every way. And what will really have been proved when the Mugen laps the TT course at 100+ next month? That it's as fast as a Manx Norton was 50 years ago, with half the range. And that if you could buy it, it would be an order of magnitude more expensive than the Manx was (corrected for inflation.)
Proof that I respect some Mormon Republicans. And yes, I'm aware that adding 'Republican' to 'Mormon' is redundant.
All this leaps to mind because I was reminded of the theories of management guru Clayton Christensen when I read his profile in this week's New Yorker.
Christensen's book, 'The Innovator's Dilemma' is the most important business book written since the invention of the integrated circuit. Steve Jobs described The Innovator's Dilemma as one of his profound influences. Christensen coined the term 'disruptive technology,' and is -- at least arguably -- the expert on the adoptions of new tech that, uh, disrupts established sectors of the economy.
For the visual thinkers... I'd draw the red line slightly steeper, to acknowledge that at some point in the future it will likely pass, performance-wise, the technology being replaced -- that's true if only because the disruptive technology will, eventually, get the R&D spending. Or, here's a perhaps oversimplified take on it...
Christensen's take on disruption is that it follows a predictable arc, which is not dependent on the category being disrupted. He's studied examples from industries as varied as steel mills and steam shovels to hard drives and transistor radios. (The Honda Cub step-through was one of the disruptive technologies he identified and studied, too.) And in the Christensen model, the way disruption happens is that new technology displaces old technology at the bottom of the market, while it is still clearly inferior to the best of the previous tech.
The low-performance/low-price portion of the market is often happily ceded by established companies dominating the old technology, who think, We don't want to make that crap anyway.
Then, two things happen over time... First, the cheap new products attract a whole new group of consumers to the market. The first Sony transistor radios were cheap and portable, but their reception and sound quality was atrocious. Companies like RCA, that were in the radio business -- where are they now? -- didn't feel threatened by Sony at all. RCA couldn't imagine anyone buying a Sony, no matter how cheap, instead of an RCA tube radio, because the performance gap was so huge.
What RCA didn't see coming was that there was a huge, new market for radios. Teenagers, who were on the move, and wanted to listen to rock and roll music that their parents (who controlled the RCA) couldn't stand. They bought transistor radios by the million. That enabled the second thing to happen, which was -- those new customers funded R&D that enabled transistor radio performance to improve, and supplied a huge pool of consumers who, as they became more affluent, stuck with the technology they were familiar with.
If Sony had decided to go head-to-head with RCA, going for RCA's performance and price right away, it would have failed miserably. Honda, with the Cub step-through, also carefully avoided competing with the likes of Norton. At the beginning, Honda wasn't even going after motorcyclists at all.
At some point in the future, we may look back and say, "Remember when electric motorbikes stole a march on the old fossil-fuel-powered bikes?" The bikes that disrupted the old regime will, I'm betting, be more like this one.
That's why, after mulling it over, I think the news that Smart will produce its innocuous urban runabout is far more significant than the unveiling of the Brammo Empulse R. If Christensen is right, it's vehicles like the Smart that will prove to be the real disruptors. It won't matter that they offer dramatically worse performance than comparable ICE bikes, because they'll create their own completely new market.
I don't know what the Smart will sell for, but you can be sure it will be a fraction of the Brammo's price, and if Daimler is, well, smart, they'll lower performance as far as they need to, to sell it at a price that undercuts every other autonomous, motorized option.
The lesson from The Innovator's Dilemma is that change, when it comes, doesn't come from knocking off the top of the market and trickling down. (Where's Mission, by the way?) Change comes from knocking off the bottom of the market, and bubbling up.
A little while back, I noted that in spite of a ridiculously small field at the first 2012 e-Power race at Magny-Cours, it seemed the FIM had upgraded the series from an 'International Championship' to an official FIM World Championship. I just noticed that the series is now listed as a World Championship, like MotoGP and SBK.
I guess the FIM's staking its claim to the future, because at present, most EV motorcycle races are laughable. Not that racing a motorcycle with 100+ hp is ever a joke in itself, as Brammo's Steve Atlas now knows. He was bucked off the Empulse RR and broke several vertebrae(!!) Then, Brammo tapped Steve Rapp (an Infineon expert and a notable 'hired gun' in the AMA paddock) to take the ride, and it threw him down the road, too. Rapp broke his wrist, knocking him out of an actual motorcycle race he was entered in later that weekend. I hear they've already contacted Guilherme Marchi, a Brazilian, to take over riding duties at Laguna Seca.
Brammo ran this ad to celebrate it's 2011 TTXGP 'championship'. There's only one real race for EV motorcycles right now, though, and only one win will matter.
That left precisely two entries in the TTXGP 'premier' class at Infineon. Both Lightnings. One finished. Yes, one entrant crossed the finish line.
Note to the EV racing apologists: One bike doesn't make a race.
And that was at Infineon; a race in the back yard of America's EV moto industry, such as it is. (Yes, I know Zero was represented in the 'super stock' class.) I presume a few more bikes will show up at Laguna Seca, when TTXGP and the FIM hold one of their interlocking races, but as an outsider looking in, I'm expecting another laughingstock.
By contrast there were, last I saw, close to 20 entries for the TT Zero event, pitting all the highest-profile U.S. endeavors against, among others, the most intriguing electric bike yet -- the Mugen. This is as it should be. Right now, EVs are still struggling to establish relevance, and prove they're meaningfully functional in real-world applications. The Isle of Man 'Mountain Course,' with its long lap, elevation change, long fast stretches and full set of real-roads challenges (bumps, terrible weather, crazy cambers; you name it...) has always been the place to prove that your bike's the best one out where real motorcycling happens, on real roads.
Until the TTXGP and e-Power get their shit together -- until they can field a reasonable number of competitive entrants -- there's only one EV motorcycle race worth paying attention to.
Wake me next month.
And a note to the FIM: 'World Championship'? Get real.
When the FIM announced the e-Power racing series (late in 2009, races beginning in 2010) it was careful to call it the FIM e-Power International Championship. Note that they didn't call it a World Championship (my italics.) As the first e-Power races started to take shape, the FIM clarified that choice of words, specifically noting that it was not (in the FIM's view) a World Championship like the ones awarded in ICE categories ranging from MotoGP through Trials.
The first event of the 2012 e-Power series took place recently, in support of the World Endurance race at Magny-Cours in France. During practice and qualifying, the FIM released an abashed statement about the fact that the grid was comprised of three bikes. I saw that the pole-sitter's time was 20 seconds off World Endurance pace, and that the third bike was about 30 seconds slower than that, and wondered if the FIM was even going to persevere with the electric sideshow.
Was calling the thus-far underwhelming e-Power series a World Championship just an editorial accident on the part of someone at the FIM? I doubt it. They're Swiss, after all. And they made the same editorial choice in English and French versions of the release, so it was proofed more than once...
I was surprised to note that today, on the FIM's web site, there's a press release that describes the series as a World Championship (Note the capital letters.)
I thought that could just have been an editorial oversight on the part of whoever writes the FIM's english-language press releases, since the FIM (based in Mies, Switzerland) works in French. But no, the corresponding French-language release describes the recent Magny-Cours race as, "la première manche du Championnat du monde FIM ePower".
That translates as, the first round of the FIM ePower World Championship.
I could be making too much of this. After all, elsewhere in that release there are references to the 'International Championship'. Still, I can't help but wonder if -- despite sparse and uneven grids -- the FIM has quietly upgraded the e-Power series to full World Championship status.
Why do that now? One reason might be that the FIM, like the rest of us, sees Mugen's TT Zero entry as a tacit entry by Honda in a rival championship (albeit a championship fought over a single lap.)
The truth is that the TT course, with its long lap and elevation change, is a far better proving ground for real world EV technology than a handful of laps around any circuit. If, as I assume he will do, John McGuinness hands Honda a historic first-EV-lap-over-100mph, Honda will generate far more positive exposure than they could ever get in the e-Power Whatever It Is Championship.
The FIM is all about protecting its turf, and while it grudgingly acknowledges the Isle of Man TT, it doesn't want the Isle of Man to consolidate its status as the de facto world championship for the emerging EV moto category. Upgrading e-Power to full World Championship status sprinkles a little FIM piss on that rock.
In the last few weeks, we've seen another round of press releases presenting nice-looking (or at least, nicely lit) EV race bikes. First, there was the Mugen Shinden -- Honda's back-door entry into the 2012 TT Zero race.
Then, the BRD Redshift MX broke cover. BRD's been one of the tougher-talking EV makers of late, and the company has pretty much said that this bike has the performance envelope of contemporary 'Lites' class ICE motorcycles.
Now, you can talk all you want about 'race performance.' The only way to back that up is to actually race. And not just against other EVs. (After all, there are races for solar-powered cars that obviously offer 'race performance' in their own class, but so what?)
The first time any EV maker that actually does offer race-level performance -- at a true national-championship level -- it will provide a huge boost to that builder, and the EV moto industry as a whole. I'm talking, like, finishing mid-pack in a 600 Supersport race on the Mugen (or similar.) Or putting the Redshift into the Main at an AMA SX Lites race, or qualifying for an outdoor National (and surviving it.)
Doing so wouldn't just make those bikes a hell of lot more interesting, it would make those races a lot more interesting, too.
So here's my modest proposal to AMA Pro Racing: Eliminate technical restrictions and homologation requirements on EVs in those classes. Let them be wide open to EVs.
There would need to be some basic rules to ensure safety. But we could adopt/adapt rules already devised by organizations like TTXGP. And, to ensure that the EVs weren't dangerously uncompetitive, they'd obviously have to meet the same qualifying standards that the rest of the (ICE) competitors meet. It's not as if there aren't some very competitive riders who'd be happy to twist the rheostat for any EV entrant; Tommy Hayden leaps to mind. And, to prove that they've got enough battery life to last a real race distance, EV entrants could be obliged to show up at one of the AMA tracks used last year, at their own expense, and lap at or above qualifying pace for race distance plus a couple of laps.
We can worry about tightening technical standards to ensure that ICE bikes aren't disadvantaged, or worry about instituting homologation rules re: number of units sold, etc., if and when EVs start showing up on podiums (podia?)
If any EV builder can actually do that: prove his bike will last the race distance at the race pace, pass a basic safety tech, and qualify with the ICE bikes, I think they should be allowed to race in AMA national events. Frankly, I don't think anyone can do it, but if they can, they should be allowed to.
I spotted an interesting story in the New York Times this morning, about a Tesla that had been allowed to sit while its battery completely drained, and then sit some more, unused, while chemical changes in the flat battery rendered it permanently incapable of being recharged.
The event, which Tesla has been unwilling to cover under warranty, means that the owner's EV now requires a $40,000 replacement battery. Tesla claims that most of its products have a set of fail-safes which will prevent this from happening (or at least reduce the risk of it happening) in other models.
Still, it's an example of the kind of problem that can only really become known as the number of EVs in circulation gets large enough to make oddball problems apparent.
It makes me wonder, though, whether the much smaller batteries in EV motorcycles are even more subject to flattening by parasitic power drainage, if left unattended. I have enough trouble keeping my ICE motorcycle batteries charged, and have been frustrated a few times that 'modern' gel batteries seem less capable of being deep-cycled.
Anyway, if you want to read more on the Tesla problem, check it out hereon today's NYT site...
My friend Lennon Rodgers - who was an actual rocket scientist before he returned to MIT to lead a team that fielded a bike in last year's TT Zero race - just sent me a draft version of a paper that he co-authored with Radu Gogoana and Thomas German. Their paper, entitled, Designing an electric motorcycle for the Isle of Man TT Zero race, and how electric vehicle racing could be used to spur innovation will be presented in Los Angeles in May.
Since I'm always on the lookout for an interesting story - especially one that I can just cut-and-paste into this blog - I immediately asked him if I could excerpt it. He said that I could, and in the next few weeks, I'll get into a more detailed look at the MIT team's simulations and data captured during the event. Lennon tells me that some of the material they're presenting will put numbers to and provide explanations for the things that I've felt while actually riding electric motorcycles.
In the meantime, though, I wanted to preview this part of their paper which was primarily written by Tom German, who worked at Penske on both NASCAR and IndyCar projects. German, who is now a fellow at MIT's Sloan School of Management, looks at the role racing might play in the development of EV technology as a whole.
The cliche is, 'Racing improves the breed.' I was interested to get the authors' take on a role for racing that is not just about improving individual bikes or selling a brand, but is about driving pure research improving consumer confidence in whole categories of vehicle.
Electric Racing
The Isle of Man TT Zero is an example of a new breed of “zero emission” races. The aim of these races is to spur innovation that will reduce the environmental impact of consumer vehicles. Racing has historically been a catalyst for innovation, particularly in the early years of motorcycles and automobiles [8]. New concepts were tested on the track, and the desire to win drove companies to produce superior technology. Consumer demand for better performance motivated companies to transfer the technology from the race track to the mass market.
The fundamental question is whether or not zero emission racing will yield the desired outcome. With the goal of contributing to the success of zero emission racing, this section outlines a set of guidelines for designing zero emission races that will yield relevant innovation. In this paper innovation is defined as the act of generating a product or service that (1) reduces the environmental impact of vehicles and (2) consumers want to purchase.
Drive technology
Many diverse participants, including inventors, academia, and corporate research labs, contribute to generating and developing innovative ideas. Consumer-focused companies choose relevant developments, refine them, and promote them to the consumer market. Identifying which ideas will succeed is a challenge facing all vehicle companies. Resources are often not available to invest in multiple emerging technologies. For example, it is costly for an automobile company to invest in batteries, fuel cells, and super capacitors simultaneously. Racing competitions should be structured to accelerate the transition from ideas to mass production and simultaneously facilitate the development of multiple technologies.
Provide valued entertainment
Any repeated event that the public finds entertaining will draw a large number of spectators both in person and through the media (e.g. internet, TV, etc.). Spectators and media drive advertising, which creates an influx of funds through team, rider and event sponsorship. These funds help finance the teams, who in turn develop the technology. Thus, valued entertainment is drawing in extra research and development funds that would otherwise not be available for that purpose (Figure 24). For example, an energy drink manufacturer might be indirectly funding battery research. This could translate into millions of dollars spent on zero emission innovation [9].
The influx of available sponsorship also reduces the risk that the team with the most personal wealth will win. In other words, sponsorships are typically chosen based on which team is likely to win; if the teams generating the most innovative vehicles are more likely to win, these teams would be rewarded through sponsorship funds to develop even better technology.
Figure 24: Valued entertainment can produce millions of dollars in research and development funds.
Consider the historical context
Gasoline vehicle racing has evolved dramatically over the last 100 years. Because of this, caution should be used when copying a modern gasoline race with a zero emission equivalent. Zero emission racing might require a different approach, and lessons may be learned from looking back into the beginnings of gasoline racing.
Patience will also be required when directly comparing modern gasoline and zero emission racing. It is easy to forget that it took decades for gasoline engines to make dramatic improvements. For example, it took 50 years for the first gasoline motorcycle to reach a 100 mph average lap at the TT. The electric motorcycles will likely reach the same milestone within 5 years.
Utilize the power of regulation
Regulations should be used as the fundamental tool to engineer a race for a desired outcome. For example, assume that consumers want to refuel their vehicle quickly; if winning a zero emission race is dependent on fast refueling, then the regulations are successfully guiding development. A successful racing innovation platform must focus on technology relevant to the consumer market. Inspire consumer demand
It is critical that the races inspire consumers to purchase the technology that is found superior on the race track. Otherwise, true innovation will not be achieved through racing, and the objective of reducing the environmental impact of vehicles will not be achieved. One way this can be accomplished is through styling, and ensuring that the race vehicle has brand identity. For example, a motorcycle company should use styling that is distinct and that connects their race vehicle to their commercially available vehicles.
Secondly, inspiration can be found through education. The race should strive to inform the consumer of the environmental affects and implications of the various technologies.
Finally, races can inspire consumer demand by building confidence in new technologies. For example, racing could prove that rapid charging is feasible, which might convince the skeptical consumer that the technology will satisfy their needs.
It's clear that the organization and evolution of EV racing is, like EV technology itself, still in flux. Right now, there's a little too much posturing and rock-pissing going on, and not quite enough effort to actually create a racing series (or series, plural) that provide a rational forum for both competition and R&D.
What we need are rational rules and a comprehensible 'ladder' from local series through a World Championship. Small-scale innovators need a place to prove concepts, and major sponsors need a potential return on investment. To the extent that proving the merits of EV motorcycles as practical road machines are one racing goal, the TT course remains a very relevant test - but it will never be recognized as such by the FIM or other international organizers.
That said, what Lennon et al learned on the TT course was more relevant than anything that they could have learned on some short circuit. I'll delve into that in more detail in coming weeks.
My wife forwarded this interesting video to me, which shows work in progress on a gyro-balanced, fully enclosed electric motorcycle made by an upstart company called Lit, in the Bay Area. They call this model the C1.
I think it's pretty cool, although whether it should be thought of as a motorcycle or not is one of the questions that go unanswered in the video. It's sort of a cross between a Segway, a BMW C1 and a Quasar, tweaked to run on batteries.
20-some Quasars were built in the 1970s in England.
The bodywork for the BMW C1 was built by Bertone. Users commented that they'd have liked a more enclosed design for improved weather protection.
Unlike either the C1 or Quasar of course, it's fully enclosed. The female model's seen hopping out of it sans helmet. BMW had originally hoped that countries that homologated the C1 would allow riders to operate it without a helmet, too. The C1 'bubble' was actually a pretty strong roll cage that BMW claimed provided protection comparable to most ultra-compact cars, and C1 riders sat in car-like seat equipped with a four-point seat belt.
Some countries did allow C1 users to go without helmets, although one reason it 'failed' was that one key market, the UK, maintained that it was a motorcycle and as such users needed a helmet. In fact, there was some concern voiced about the weight of a crash helmet exacerbating whiplash injuries in frontal or side collisions, assuming the operator was tightly strapped in. Sweden ruled that C1 users did have to wear crash helmets but didn't need to use the seat belts.
I've read that BMW sold about 20,000 C1s (there were two versions, one with a 125cc Rotax single and a nominal '200' that actually displaced 176cc.) I'm not sure what the years of production were, but the run was short (2-3 years) and ended in the very early 2000s. That made it a failure by BMW standards, although of course 20,000 units would be a wild success for any existing e-bike manufacturer.
If there's a cautionary tale for Lit here, it's got less to do with helmet regulations than the pitfalls of trying to market a vehicle that's neither car nor motorcycle. (And that it's highly unlikely they'll bring their vehicle to market as the 'C-1', a trademark that BMW will surely challenge, since it harbors its own ambitions for an electric version.)
The whole is-it-a-car-or-a-motorcycle question isn't just a marketing pitfall. One reason there are as many e-bike startups as e-car startups in the U.S., despite the fact that the car market offers vastly more commercial potential, is that motorcycles face far fewer regulatory hurdles. While Lit chose to show us a 'fender bender' which its virtual C-1 survives unscathed, the fact is that as a motorcycle it won't need to undergo a multimillion dollar crash test prior to U.S. homologation. That's a huge advantage for an upstart company, but it comes with an offsetting disadvantage, which is that only a tiny fraction of U.S. commuters are licensed to ride motorcycles.
There are plenty of motorcyclists who might be talked into (literally) a fully enclosed vehicle, although few motorcyclists will be swayed by Lit's gyro stabilization system. We already know that falling over, per se, isn't the problem. (Though I suppose that a combination of full enclosure and gyro stabilization might add up to a two wheeler that was practical on snowy winter roads.)
I note that the prototype is fitted with a steering wheel and not a handlebar. It's not that obvious to me whether the Lit C-1 would need to be countersteered like a motorcycle or simply steered like a car. In the slalom portion of the video, it seems to handling like a motorcycle. But their little proof-of-concept seems to be fit with two gyros. That, along with the C-1's spinning wheels, would mean that it presumably has gyros spinning on the x, y, and z axes.
They wouldn't need to spin all the time; motorcyclists keep their bikes on two wheels with no trouble at all once underway. But the gyros would inevitably have a spin-up delay that's not visible in the crash simulation, which leads me to think that Lit intends that the gyros will run all the time. If they do spin all the time, then, I don't really know why the C-1 needs to lean into turns.
Does anyone from Lit care to get in touch with me and explain the Lit system in more detail?
Until then, I have to say that - style wise, anyway - the vehicle's kind'a cool and aerodynamic. I've argued to 'bring back the dustbin' before, as a way to differentiate between Superbikes and MotoGP bikes. Oh well. As MotoGP moves towards production motorcycles, I guess I'm really a lone voice in the wilderness arguing that MotoGP designers should at least have the option of fielding bikes that are fully enclosed/streamlined. Longer, lower feet-forward designs would inevitably face cornering clearance issues, but throwing a few gyros into the equation might reduce cornering lean angles, or even eliminate them.
There was quite a buzz around the all-electric KTM Freeride trail bike launched at the recent EICMA show. I'm sure, given the high level of resolution displayed in most KTM products (and given KTM's long heritage in off-road motorcycling) that the Freeride will enter the market as the best thought-out and put-together entry in the nascent EV-dirtbike category. That said, in pursuit of light weight they've admitted that battery life could be as short as 20 minutes, under an expert rider. This puts the Freeride into the 'backyard use' category. There's not enough battery life to ride even a few miles to your off-road rec area, nor is there enough battery life to justify transporting the bike any distance.
By contrast, the 300cc ICE-powered Freeride will, I think, turn out to be a gangbusting success; I bet it will offer far superior off-road capability than competing bikes like the Yamaha 250, and it will really be that machine you can ride to the trails and back. It will be five or ten years before improvements in battery energy density give us a 200-pound motorcycle with that kind of range, so ICE it is. But surely taking the pickup truck out of the equation not only makes this a far more affordable solution, but a greener one, too?
EICMA's thunder (or should I write 'lightning'?) was stolen on the EV side though, by the release of pics of a Honda electric sport bike, the RC-E which will be unveiled to the public at the Tokyo show.
Wow, eh?
Months back, my friend James Parker, who designed the latest iteration of the Mission electric sport bike, told me that soon, a major OEM was going to enter the electric sphere, and when they did, it would be with amachine that no upstart company could compete with.
That was in a conversation in which I suggested that Mission really had backed away from its initial strategy to actually become a motorcycle manufacturer. At the time we talked, Mission had already done some work on a Honda-backed R&D project involving a hybrid race car. I interpreted James' comment as meaning that in his opinion, small companies like Mission, Brammo, or MotoCzysz were about to be steamrolled by Honda.
I wondered, "Does James know, or has he seen, a Honda project involving some of Mission's technology?" I didn't ask him, because I knew that if he had seen it, he'd have been sworn to secrecy, and I didn't want to put him on the spot. Anyway, we'll presumably learn more at the Tokyo show, about how close the RC-E is to turning a wheel.
Which brings me to my last point...
Another thing you read here first was that there would be no TT Zero race in 2012. Well, that was wrong. My friend Steve Hodgson recently cited (on his Facebook page) a Manx Radio report that there will be a race for EV bikes at the 2012 TT.
In my limited defense, I wrote that there would not be another TT Zero race unless and/or until a major OEM showed interest. Now, I wonder if Honda looked at last year's disappointing results and realized it has a chance to introduce the RC-E with a historic first, by lapping the TT course at over 100 miles an hour. Amateur Honda historians, like me, will already have noted that the 'RC' nomenclature assigned to this bike is what Honda gives to a 'homologation' bike -- a bike built for racing purposes, and then minimally adapted for road use.
Is this the first zero-emissions vehicle to lap the TT course at over 100 miles an hour? Uh-huh.
I was reading a post on Hell for Leather earlier this morning, about the implications of the 'frameless' Ducati MotoGP bike's failure on the soon-to-be-released 1199 production bike. It was better than the average motorcycle blog post, but one sentence stuck out... Michael Czysz credits himself for perfecting this arrangement on his stillborn C1 GP bike...
You know, the French have a great expression that, loosely translated = The only things that are new are those that have been forgotten.
I can't possibly know what part of this design Czysz claims to have invented, but 'frameless' motorcycles have been around a long time. Phil Vincent's famous twins used the engine as a stressed member and had only a rudimentary 'spine' bolted across the tops of the cylinder heads.
More recently, John Britten's V-1000 was a frameless design. So there's nothing particularly new or innovative about cantilevering the steering head off the motor. At the other end, the MZ Supermono Cup race bikes pivoted the swing arm through the cases. And my friend James Parker has designed bikes that are even more frameless than any of those examples. So what's the innovation here? Building that front subframe as a monococque and using it as the air box? Maybe, but quite a few very conventional bikes draw engine air through the castings of the steering head, so the idea is only as big as expanding the volume of that channel, to make it a resonating chamber.
Is there something about those electric motorcycle entrepreneur types that makes them especially prone to claiming to have invented ideas they've, at best, repurposed?
