How many appliances do you own? Let’s see, refrigerator, washer, dryer, TV and maybe a few things like a blender and a toaster. These are things you buy to use, but when not in use, they’re turned off until needed. Do you ever spend an evening working on your refrigerator to modify it, customize it or tune it for more performance? How about your TV? Put a turbo on your washer lately? Are you a clothes dryer enthusiast? Is it your hobby or passion? How do you get more performance out of an appliance? It’s pretty simple, you buy another one.
If you buy an electric motorcycle, you could probably add it to the list of appliances you own because there won’t be a lot for you to do other than ride it, charge it back up and ride it again. What will you be able to do with it? What will the manufacturer allow you to do with it without voiding the warranty? Since the whole thing works as a unit, a high current battery pack, an electric motor, a motor controller and all running some proprietary software that will probably be upgraded now and then over the internet, what else could you do? If spending some quality garage time working on your bike is something you enjoy, you may want to hold onto that internal combustion ride because the new world of electrics might not have a place for you. You could build your own, of course, but what we’re concerned with here is the factory built model.
Rebuilding an electric car gives insight into electric motorcycles
Rich Benoit, a guy up in Massachusetts, bought a salvage Tesla and thought he could rebuild it, a nice way to get an expensive electric car for less money. As you might expect, he ran into a few problems beyond his initial lack of know how. He found out Tesla wants their cars repaired in authorized repair centers and won’t sell parts to the guy who just wants to work on his own car. Rich set up a great YouTube channel, Rich Rebuilds, that documents his long journey. The story is quite interesting. Is this how the world of electric motorcycle repair will be handled?
Whether it’s repairing an electric motorcycle that’s not working right or modifying one just because you want to, the real question is will you be able to? There’s going to be a learning curve while you get up to speed on how an electric motorcycle works, but once you have that handled, will you be able to do anything with it? Will you have to take the route followed by Rich Benoit, buying a salvaged bike for parts and going from there?
Will you buy it if you can’t work on it?
For some of you, the hands off, never touch it, just ride and park it concept is a dream come true. For you, an electric motorcycle is what you need, an appliance, but there’s a sizable number of motorcycle enthusiasts who aren’t just riders, they swap parts, modify and customize and for them an electric will be a challenge. It may not fit into their hands on world at all, in which case, motorcycles may cease to be the hobby or passion they’ve been.
How are electric motorcycle companies going to handle this?
It will be interesting to see how the various companies handle the guy who wants to work on his own bike when it’s an electric. Will they sell parts to anyone who wants them? How will warranties be affected? These are pretty important questions and I haven’t heard much discussion on the subject. Before you put your money down, you might want to decide if being able to work on your own bike is important to you and then ask a few questions to see what you can do.
No user serviceable parts inside. For motorcycles, this is going to be quite a change and I’m curious how it’s going to turn out. What do you think?
Bill Lawson says
This is already the case in the world of farming (john Deere) many large machinery companies will only allow the factory to work on it. they will not even allow independent service centers to service it.
the failure of a simple sensor cannot be serviced by the owner. the factory guy is required to come out and change anything even somethin as simple as replacing a neutral lock out switch to prevent starting in gear is a factory job.
thus you probably will not be able to customized the motor/ battery/ control combination if you want. the software will be proprietary and owned by the manufacturer.
there are good reasons for this if you look at it from the manufacturer’s viewpoint as if you really do not understand how thing work you can really screw it up. (think the equivalent of running straight gas in a 2 Cycle)
However this will really limit the ability of the owner to customize the cycle to his liking.
David H says
Tesla is a bit strange , in that their patents to a certain extent are open source.
The service/repair aspect kicks the ball into the slates.
I may be wrong did Cadillac not have a service interval at 500k miles and the dealers had a fit, there profits were heading to the toilet bend
The best description that I heard was”the manufacturer was not honoring the franchise”
From the author, Tesla seem to be “honoring the franchise ,in one sense.
In the alternative it ruins personal individuality,
Does the manufacturer create a “High Speed Volt Division” complete with the bits
Electric power makes the add-ons cheap, not like a cam , barrel and piston
Mr.Lawson points out a simple sensor problem, cost the operator both time and money,, consider if it’s a truck seat sensor , a block of wood holding the seat in position, isn’t going to help .
Simply it will not start , I was told that was a £200 reset charge , plus the sensor that you’ve bought and fitted
Am I just being old and cynical by thinking it’s for the greater volume sales? I’ll think about that for a moment
Yes I am being old and cynical!!!
todd says
Nobody is forcing anyone to buy an electric motorcycle. I see it much like the current trend of “transformer-esque” or “insectoid” motorcycles. If this is not your thing, you buy a Triumph or Royal Enfield, maybe a Guzzi. I’ll probably just keep what I have or continue to buy used. That said, iPhones are locked up by the manufacturer. That has not stopped many people from “jail-breaking” their phones and modifying them as they chose, it’s just a new, different set of skills that anyone can spend a month on YouTube learning. I’ve even rebuilt an iPad and a couple iPhones, replacing batteries, screens, haptic buttons, etc. Everything mechanical is screwed together in some way or another. Anything that has been put together can be pulled apart and modified. As for not repairing leased tractors, that makes more sense, or maybe the suggestion above is that you can’t even work on something you own. If that’s the case, I’m not sure how manufacturers are going to enforce that or even know what you’re up to.
noahzark says
When does ‘right to repair’ kick in? I thought US had it already.
Paul Crowe says
It varies by state. Some have passed laws to that effect, Massachusetts, where Rich Benoit mentioned above in the Tesla reference is from, has one.
todd says
doesn’t that mean he cannot purchase OEM parts? He is free to find suitable aftermarket parts and use those, if such parts exist.
Paul Crowe says
When I say Massachusetts has a law, I mean they have a “right to repair” law that says he can get access to the same diagnostic info and parts a dealer has, but according to the article I linked, it says it applies to franchised dealers in the state, which does not apply to Tesla since they have no dealers there, just authorized repair centers. There is supposed to be an effort to expand the law to apply to those instances as well. I don’t know how it applies to OEM vs aftermarket parts.
I’ve never liked any restrictions on repairs, but the arguments reference things like liability if the repair is done badly and Tesla talks about the chance of electrocution from the battery. The whole repair question seems far more convoluted than it should be. If you decide to do the work yourself, the results of that work are on you.
Justin Belshe says
On the other hand, imagine an open source electric bike…
Look at some different models: bicycles, skateboards, PCs, electric guitars and tube amps, loudspeakers, etc. With these items, you can buy something that a manufacturer put together, turn key with a warranty… Or you could buy the components and build it yourself. The modularity of these devices means that you can stay a step ahead of obsolescence by upgrading components as newer, superior components go on sale.
Warmoth sells electric guitar necks and bodies, as do many other companies. If you have a Fender Stratocaster, you can replace every single part of it to better suit your needs. Is the neck too narrow? Are the frets too small? You can buy a neck that fits your hand just right. If you’re really hard core, you can make own neck from lumber. You can also wind your own pickups, cut out a new pickguard out of whatever material you want.
Most guitar amps are designed around transistors and the printed circuit board. The good ones are still made by hand, and they use vacuum tubes. You can buy very nice transformers from Mercury Magnetics or Dynaco; speakers from Weber, Celestion, Electro-Voice; tubes from Electro-Harmonix, JJ/Tesla, Reflektor, etc. Not many people are winding their own transformers in their garage or rolling their own capacitors… but some people do!
Motors, controllers, batteries, chains & sprockets, brakes and suspension, wheels, frames and bodywork are already available in generic form from a variety of companies.
Lots of people build their own gaming PC with this motherboard, that RAM, this graphics processor, and that hard drive. (As far as I know, nobody is making chips in their garage.)
It’s already possible build an electric motorcycle from components. In the coming decades, we’re going to see hotrod culture adopt electric bikes. Companies will sell new and improved components. Throttle response will be tunable from your cell phone. Electric vehicles are poised to take over the market, we’re just waiting for the next step in battery capacity and recharge rates.
I’m optimistic for the future! I’ll miss the sound of gasoline being combusted, but when I consider the possibilities, I get excited!
Paul Crowe says
The Kneeslider has always been a big promoter of build your own and as noted in the post, this question applies to factory built bikes. DIY avoids the issue altogether.
A couple of months ago I pointed out some electric builds that looked interesting and very accessible, even to someone who was not highly skilled, but who was ready to dig in and learn. Battery and motor know how is there for anyone who wants to learn.
There’s going to be a period of transition for a lot of motorheads who will find the field of electrics uncharted territory. Some will take up the challenge, some will prefer what they know and there’s no right or wrong with either choice.
Bill Lawson says
Having looked at electric bikes a lot, the one around here that is selling is the KTM electric Freeride. however it is expensive but has good performance for real off road riding. with a good suspension etc. compared to a conventional Enduro bike, therefore none of the $5000 electric bikes are much fun. so the $10,000 electric is the only game in town.
the problem is with the Freeride is that if you ride it hard it only has a half to 1 hour of endurance and an extra battery is expensive. also its cost is such that buying an equivalent 250 CC bike costs the same amount and will go much longer on a single tank of gas and is 30 lbs lighter.
But it is quiet so the urban rider can ride it.
the cost per watt and the weight per KWh is a major problem with Electric bikes at this time.
when battery cost comes down dramatically 1/.2 to 1/4 the price per watt Electrics will take off.
Paul Crowe says
I did a price comparison a short while back and it’s eye opening, but the REAL eye opener is looking at the price of some of the e-bicycles from the motorcycle manufacturers, $8K and some as high as $12K! That’s for an e-bicycle, not an electric motorcycle. Wow.
Axel says
The positive outlook: There’s a lot of new freedom coming to us, at least if we want to build street-legal bikes.
Right now, it has become impossible to modify anything from airbox to exhaust and run it on the street – no chance of passing an EURO5 homologation.
In an ideal world (I know, there’s a lot of obstacles, but bear with me), swapping out a motor for a different one just might need proof of strength – from your AutoCAD files.
And there’s already a bunch of aftermarket ECUs (e.g. Ignijet). Why not build open source controllers? Why not come up with ways to integrate an IMU? Some people at Bosch like Open Source and some like racing, too.
Bob says
The motors, battery, and controller might fall under the heading of “Non User Serviceable”, but the rest of the cycle (That second half of the word, “Motorcycle”) hasn’t changed at all. Which is both a shame and an opportunity.
https://www.lightfighter-racing.com
Most people can’t/won’t perform basic servicing on IC engines of any vintage – even less make their own replacement parts or, even less common, make the engine in the first place. That Non User Serviceable power unit has real world appeal.
A better way to look at it is by studying the changes in the R/C aviation world. People still build the airframes, rig the flight controls, cover and paint, etc… A lot of people do not miss the noise, smell, and oily mess of running glow fuel engines. In the mean time, glow plug engines are still available, sort of – when was the last time you saw one of those Cox .049 powered model planes at any store? Those used to be on every shelf where toys were sold – oh yes – that market has been overwhelmed by the Non User Serviceable drone market. Cox is long gone…
Gabe Ets-Hokin says
Nice point of view, Bob–and here’s a thought: any and every racer knows that if you want to cut seconds off your lap times you invest in chassis improvements and rider practice. It would be nice to see something to steer moto-culture back towards the software of the sport and focus less on hardware.
walkingshadow says
If we understand that manufacturers are aiming for greater control of the product, this will also result in greater responsibility.
If I can not change anything, for each of my needs not shipped from the “pact” that I have with the manufacturer at the time of ‘purchase.
It is possible, even today, to annoy the manufacturer by flooding him with requests for everything that is not well explained or covered by the user manual.
If the manufacturer does not respond you can ‘bring before a judge.
I am for an improved customization, to increase the efficiency of the vehicle where the manufacturer has stopped (for any reason).
Electric or traditional, in Italy tuning is very limited and sometimes it has been the right choice.
Regarding the maintenance … we will change the method and we will invent something new. 😉
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