Triumph Daytona - Electric Version

[loneavenger]

"American battery manufacturer GoWheel have adapted a Triumph Daytona into an electrical motorcycle! Called the evDaytona, you get a top speed of 103 mph, and 0-60 in 2.7 seconds Read More

[tbsrider2000]

$77,000???!! So... even at today's prices of about $3 per gallon... You could buy 25,666 gallons of gas. I think that would get you pretty far on a standard Daytona 675... lol

[Kenneth_Moore]

True, but the interesting thing may be that now that there is an absurdly expensive, yet usable version, that bodes well for an affordable bike in the near future. Almost any technology tends to rapidly drop in price...the "Li-Po" batteries the R/C guys use for their planes now cost a tenth of what they cost just a few years ago. The performance and range are well within what I'd be looking for.

WTF is that windscreen?? They must have stolen the prototype from the Vision.

[tbsrider2000]

True and I do see these becoming a viable option in the future. Here is an awesome car for not much more and close to the same performance as this bike.. of course, a car as more room to store a battery

http://www.teslamotors.com/performance/specs.php

[Kenneth_Moore]

I've seen Tesla on Modern Marvels or one of those shows. Very interesting. What I don't get is why the very usable electric Saturn EV1 was taken off the roads and scrapped. I watched "Who Killed the Electric Car?" a while back, and I gotta tell you, even if you factor in a large degree of melodramatic BS from the producers, it sure seemed strange that they were dragging these cars out of the hands of leasees who were begging to keep them. Evil "Big Oil" in cahoots with GM? Behind the scenes engineering and safety issues? Or just not the right time or place market wise? Hmmm.

[SmokeU]

The range is still much much too short.

[Kenneth_Moore]

Really? They said that about the EV1. But, most people don't actually drive almost 200 miles day to day. And, although it took several hours to completely recharge the EV1, you could get 80% in 20 minutes. Not perfect, but not really that bad. 143 miles would work fine for me for 90% of my trips. Then again, I'm not in Utah or Texas.

[seruzawa]

Originally Posted by Kenneth_Moore

I've seen Tesla on Modern Marvels or one of those shows. Very interesting. What I don't get is why the very usable electric Saturn EV1 was taken off the roads and scrapped. I watched "Who Killed the Electric Car?" a while back, and I gotta tell you, even if you factor in a large degree of melodramatic BS from the producers, it sure seemed strange that they were dragging these cars out of the hands of leasees who were begging to keep them. Evil "Big Oil" in cahoots with GM? Behind the scenes engineering and safety issues? Or just not the right time or place market wise? Hmmm.

...with the EV is that you are not really saving much fossil fuel rather you are shifting the smog from SoCal to central Utah. While it might make some people feel better about themselves it doesn't affect the planetary situation much. But that's not the real problem. We do not have an electrical power infrastructure that could begin to handle the demand of a hundred thousand EVs in SoCal much less millions of them. Changing away from fossil fuel energy production in the USA will require a complete shift in thinking and I suspect it will take a lot more vision and creative thought than I see demonstrated.

I vote for Dr Bussard's fusion plants. Small ones placed in every neighborhood. Then you don't need the nationwide power grid any more or the huge oil/coal burning plants and all the employees and bureaucrats and associated lobbyists, etc. etc.

Yeah. That'll happen soon.

[Kenneth_Moore]

First, I completely agree with you on the fusion, or even well managed fission electrical generation. It's almost criminal how we've allowed ourselves to fall so far behind on this technology, especially considering what we have to go through to use fossil fuels.

However, I'll disagree with you on the electrical grid. It's a very well known fact that there is huge amount of excess capacity in electrical generation and distribution virtually everywhere, at night. I realize the people who made the movie had an agenda, but their stats (my recollection, BTW) showed enough excess capacity to charge hundreds of thousands of cars every night without adding one iota of generation or distribution capacity.

Finally, consider this: industries and technologies tend to be symbiotic. There was no petroleum industry until there were autos, and autos didn't really take off until there were readily available sources of gas and diesel. I suggest that starting the migration away from fossil fuels in the auto industry can provide the leverage to build clean nuclear power that I think we both want.

[seruzawa]

All I know is that when I visit my brother in Torrance, Ca he has brownouts fairly often. Utah might have the excess capacity but SoCal is much more marginal.