This is the stuff of dreams, and it would make for a great project….
It’s one of many treasures in the Land of Enchantment. Gresh certainly has a lot of cool toys!
An MGB GT…
Author: Joe Berk
The Tinfiny symphony…
We made it to the Tinfiny Ranch today, where Sue and I had a great visit with world-famous motojournalist Joe Gresh…
The China ride we referred to in the above video was a hoot. Here’s Joe’s vide0 on it…
Good times. I love road trips. More to come.
An e-bike comparo…Zero and Slick
This is an interesting thing to do…a comparison of two electric motorcycles, the Zero SR and the CSC City Slicker. Some of you might think I’m nuts for even attempting it. After all, the Zero costs $16,990, and the Slicker is $2,495. And that’s before you put all of the fees, taxes, and other stuff on either bike. You might predict I’m going to say one is overpriced and the other is cheap Chinese junk, but I’m not. These motorcycles are different tools intended to meet different needs for different riders. The good news is they’re both fun. A lot of fun, actually.
You might ask: Why just these two motorcycles? Aren’t there other e-bikes out there?
Well, yes and no. But that’s a subject for another blog and I’ll come back to that question later. I included only the City Slicker and the Zero because I had access to both. I have a relationship with CSC (I used to write the CSC blog and I’ve literally been all over the world on their bikes) and my good friend Art Guilfoil owns a Zero dealership (Douglas Motorcycles, in San Bernardino).
Zero has been around for a few years, and the SR is one of their latest models. It’s a refined design, and it is the state of the art in electric motorcycles. To cut to the chase, I was impressed (more on that in a bit).
The CSC City Slicker is new. I first rode one in China during a visit to Zongshen, and I recommended to CSC that they bring the City Slicker to North America. It’s working well; the City Slicker has received tremendous press here in the US and CSC sales of this new electric motorcycle are brisk.
I’m going to compare Slick and Zero from performance, price, and product perspectives. There’s too much going on to cover it all these topics in a single blog entry, so this comparison will be presented in several blogs. This first one is on two aspects of performance: Acceleration and top speed. There are other performance parameters, including range, recharge time, braking, and handling. I’ll cover those in a future blogs.
Acceleration
For starters, if you’re looking for 0-60 or ¼-mile times, read no further. I didn’t do any of that. The City Slicker won’t go 60 mph, and I didn’t take either bike to Irwindale. My comments on acceleration are subjective. With that caveat, let’s dive in to this topic.
I rode the Zero at Douglas Motorcycles in San Bernardino and I was impressed. I like it when a motorcycle accelerates so hard it scares the hell out of me, and the Zero did that. I’ve owned fast bikes before (a Suzuki TL1000S, and a Triumph Daytona and a Speed Triple). Those bikes had a direct connection from their throttles to the gland that releases adrenalin. The Zero, however, is in another league altogether. In the Sport Mode, the SR has a punch in the pants that is downright terrifying. Bottom line: I thought that was very cool. I liked it. A lot.
The City Slicker? The first time you ride one, it has a tendency to feel like it’s going to squirt out from under you, but you get used to it quickly. That’s what happened to me in China. Slick’s acceleration is more manageable. Slick had no problem keeping up with city traffic when the light turned green. It was a little weird accelerating in total silence. I could hear every sound from the cars and other bikes around me. It was different.
They tell me the torque is instantaneous off zero rpm with electric bikes. What that translates into is a punch the instant you twist the throttle. On the City Slicker, it’s there, but it’s not intimidating. It’s maybe a notch into the “wow” range the first time you ride the bike, and then it just becomes part of the experience. On the Zero, it’s simultaneously awesome, exciting, and terrifying. Folks, the Zero is one hard-accelerating motorcycle.
I mentioned the Sport mode on the Zero, so let me get into that now. Both bikes have rider-selectable operating modes. I’m an older guy and I always thought the idea of a “mode” was a silly thing when it first appeared on internal combustion bikes. In fact, a kid at one of the motorcycle shows once visited the CSC booth after spending time with the Ducati people and he wanted to know how many modes the CSC 250cc bikes had. At first, I didn’t know what he was talking about, and then I got it.
“Two,” I said. “On, and Off.”
That was then, and this is now. On electric bikes, these modes are good ideas. You need them to maximize range (the subject of a future blog), and in the case of the Zero, to keep the bike from getting away from you.
Zero has three modes: Eco, Sport, and Custom. The Eco mode dials down the bike’s acceleration and maximizes range. The Custom mode lets you use your smartphone to manage the bike’s power output, and you can dial in whatever you want between the bike’s Eco and Sport settings. The Sport mode is for balls out, no holds barred, raw power. It’s wicked.
Zero advertises that their bike will out-accelerate a Porsche 911. I didn’t have a chance to check that out, but I’ll take their word for it. I tried the Sport mode when I rode the Zero, and it is seriously fast. I was scared I would lose control of the rear wheel (the Zero has ABS but not traction control; they tell me that may change next year). Not much scares me; accelerating on a Zero in the Sport mode did. I like being scared. You probably will, too.
The City Slicker has two modes: Eco and Power. The Eco mode limits the bike’s top end to 36 mph, and it gives the bike a longer range. The Power mode removes the output limit, and lets the bike accelerate up to an indicated 46-47 mph. What’s cool is you can switch between modes on the move. If you’re rolling along at 35 mph in the Eco mode and you flip the right handlebar switch to the Power mode, it’s like kicking in the afterburners. You get an immediate burst of acceleration up to a new top speed of 46.6 mph. It’s cool. It’s not exhilarating or frightening like the Zero, but it’s still cool.
I can tell you that I spent a lot of time riding the City Slicker around town, in the Eco mode, and I never felt like I needed more acceleration or top end. Even with the Eco mode’s 36-mph limit, I had enough for mixing it up in town. And I still had Slick’s Power mode afterburners in reserve.
Top Speed
Zero states that their SR’s top speed is just north of 100 mph (they also say that top speed is a function of riding style and motorcycle configuration, which I took as hedging their bets a little). I didn’t attempt to run the Zero to its top speed; all of my riding on that bike was in urban San Bernardino. I can tell you this: The Zero is one seriously fast motorcycle, and if they say it will do 102 mph, I have no reason to doubt that number.
CSC says the City Slicker will hit 46.6 mph. It will, but it’s an indicated 46-47 mph on the bike’s digital dash, and my testing shows that the speedo is about 10% optimistic. That means the City Slicker’s real top speed is more like 42-43 mph.
The bottom line: From the perspectives of top speed and acceleration, the Zero is the clear winner. The real question, though, is this: Do you need or want that much top end?
You and I already know the answer to the “want” part of the question, so let’s turn to the “need.” Hey, what you think you need is your call. The City Slicker wasn’t engineered to be a drag racer, nor was it designed to run on the freeways. The City Slicker, as the name states, is an urban commuter. The Zero can run on the freeways, the City Slicker cannot. The Zero is faster. If you’re looking to argue that point, you need to look elsewhere.
But the performance the Zero delivers comes with a price. Let me go back to what I mentioned at the start of this blog. The Zero costs $16,990 plus fees and the City Slicker costs $2495 plus fees (and Slick’s fees will be a lot less than the Zero’s). Stated differently, you could buy seven or eight City Slickers for the cost of one Zero. Yeah, the Zero is faster. But wow, the price differential…
And don’t delude yourself into thinking you can see the price differential in the build quality of the two bikes. They are both well made. Fit and finish on both bikes is world class. If you want to argue that the City Slicker is a cheap Chinese piece of junk, you have my permission to demonstrate your ignorance on an Internet forum or in the Disqus comments on any of the many articles recently written on the City Slicker. There are a lot of stupid and uninhibited people posting nonsense on the Internet, and if you want to join them, go for it. But you’d be dead wrong.
What would I buy? It depends on what I was trying to do, and how much money I wanted to spend. If I wanted to be green and I had a commute at city speeds, I’d be all over the City Slicker. If I wanted a cool bike to add to my collection and I didn’t need it to ride cross country, score one for the City Slicker. If I wanted a bike that could run with IC bikes (for shorter distances, anyway; neither of these bikes are all day rides), I’d go for the Zero. But I’d only do that if I had $20K laying around I didn’t need (that’s about what the Zero’s purchase price would be after tax, licensing, registration, and all the rest that goes with buying a bike). The bottom line here? It’s your money and your call. In my opinion, both bikes are a lot of fun. You wouldn’t be making a mistake with either one.
But that price difference…
Dan on an Alta electric motorcycle…
There’s a third streetable electric motorcycle out there, and it’s the Alta. My good buddy Danny, with whom I’ve ridden Baja several times (both of us own CSC RX3 and TT250 motorcycles), recently sent this note to me after he read the ExhaustNotes blogs about the City Slicker and Zero motorcycles…
Joe,
Interesting timing; I took this photo yesterday to send to you, taken before I suited up. This is what I rode:
And what a ride. Mode one would smoke my RX3, and probably the Guzzi. Mode two – it was fun. Mode three – OMG, hold on tight. I didn’t try mode four, two was enough.
I was impressed with the performance. The bike itself was not my type. I have been following Red Shift since their early days. Impressive design and engineering.
Dan
Thanks for the photo and the report, Dan. I’ve got to get a ride on an Alta, too. I know what you mean about the acceleration; it was the same thing I experienced on the Zero. It’s almost too much, although I never thought I would ever say that about any motorcycle.
Folks, I’m headed to Tinfiny Ranch later this morning. Watch for the report!
On the road: The trek to Tinfiny…
It was another broiler-hot day out of Ajo this morning, but it was an easy run…Arizona 85 south to Arizona 86, stay on 86 for about 100 miles, and a right turn on Arizona 386 for the twisty 14-mile climb up to Kitt Peak National Observatory. The La Luz saga continues. Gobi and me, we got some blogging to do. Maybe a video or two. We’ll see. So will you. And for those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, you’ll find out soon enough.
The topic du jour: Kitt Peak National Observatory, a gem of a destination and a seriously cool place. And, it’s a great ride to get there.
Kitt Peak is up on a ridgeline at roughly 6700 feet, about 50 miles southwest of Tucson. On our ride there today, the skies were clear and the visibility was amazing. Once again, it’s best left to the photos to do the talking…
It’s Tucson tonight, and we should make Las Cruces by nightfall tomorrow. I love these road trips. The ride today was awesome, but hey, they all are.
I’m gathering my thoughts on the Zero electric motorcycle. It was a fun day and a fun ride, that day last week at Art’s Douglas Motorcycles dealership. It’s way different than any motorcycle I ever rode, and it’s also way different than CSC’s City Slicker. They’re both good bikes, I loved riding both, and they both have their strengths and weaknesses. The differences are driven by what each company designed their bike to do. Different missions, like we used to say in the Army.
Watch for the Slick vs. Zero blog. It’s coming. I’ve been thinking deep thoughts about both bikes, and sometimes when I think really deep thoughts on any topic, I can’t think for days afterward. I’m in that mode now, so I’m simply enjoying the trek to Tinfiny. La Luz, Gobi, Tinfiny…I know it’s confusing and I’ll explain what it all means soon enough.
Stay tuned!
On the border…
You ask Why. I ask Why not?
Whoa, it’s toasty…as in 112 degrees Fahrenheit. The folks out here are complaining about the humidity, but it feels dry as a bone to me. Certainly less humidity than we’re getting in So Cal, and way, way less than in other parts of the US. The drill today was Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Ajo, and Why, Arizona (Ajo means garlic in Spanish, in case you were wondering, but I didn’t see a single one).
We were right on the border in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, and we opted for the 21-mile dirt road loop into the Ajo Mountains.
After the ride through Organ Pipe, we settled into Ajo for the evening. It’s a cool place, even though it’s still 109 outside.
And that’s it for tonight. I noticed there were a couple of questions and comments on the ebikes (thanks very much for posting those). I’ll do my best to get answers for you.
Zero this, and Zero that…
I had a good look at a Zero motorcycle last week at my good buddy Art’s dealership, Douglas Motorcycles in San Bernardino, California. There’s more info coming, folks, but check out this cool photo of yours truly on an arm-stretching Zero…
My wife took that shot, and I processed it in Photoshop to convert the background to black and white. I like it. And I liked the Zero. It was scary fast. But that’s a story for a future blog. Keep an eye on the ExhaustNotes blog, because that story is coming!
Favored moto forums…
Ah, the motorcycle forums. Truths, half-truths, and outright lies. When I worked for CSC, I used to watch the forums regularly for people who posted about CSC so I could answer honest questions and take on the trolls. After doing that for 10 years, I concluded there are a few mean-spirited people posting stuff on the Internet who don’t have a clue (I wrote an entire chapter about that in 5000 Miles at 8000 RPM). It didn’t take a full 10 years to reach that conclusion, though. It took about 10 minutes.
Having said that, there are three forums I enjoy visiting, and here they are.
ADVRider.com. This is the first forum I ever read. There are more than a few folks there who are full of what drops from the southern end of a northbound horse, but there are a lot more who are knowledgeable and helpful. My screen name on ADVRider is Gatling. If I had it to do over again, I would use my real name, but I chose Gatling several years ago (mostly because I wrote a book about the Gatling gun). My favorite threads are the Shiny Things thread, the Thumpers thread, and the Electric Motorcycles thread.
Chinariders.net. ChinaRiders is a much smaller forum focused on Chinese motorcycles. Yeah, there have been a few yahoos on that forum (as is the case on all forums), but the ChinaRider monitors do a good job and the flakes don’t last long. My screen name on ChinaRiders is CSCDude. I picked that name when I was working for CSC. If I had it to do over, I’d use my own name.
ElectricMotorcycleForum.com. My newest favorite forum is appropriately titled ElectricMotorcycleForum.com. It’s also a small forum, but it’s picking up speed and I like the place. It’s a good source of information on all kinds of things related to electric motorcycles. My screen name on that one is Joe Berk.
If you have a favorite forum and you’d like to suggest it, please include it as a comment to this post. We’d like to know about it.
All spun up…a real hot tamale!
I experienced something recently I had heard and read about in years past, but I had never personally experienced. I’d been wanting a .257 Weatherby No. 1 ever since they became available. To understand what that means if you’re not a single-shot rifle aficionado like I am, I need to start with a bit of background.
Roy Weatherby was a southern California entrepreneur who developed a line of ultra-high-velocity rifle cartridges in the 1940s and beyond. Weatherby built a rifle company around his proprietary cartridges, and they are fine firearms. Roy has gone to his reward, and he was one hell of a man while he was with us. I met Weatherby in the early 1980s and I know of what I speak, but that’s a story for another time.
Next bit of information: Of the several cartridges that Mr. Weatherby developed, his personal favorite was the .257 Weatherby. It’s a very, very fast quarter-bore (a .25-caliber cartridge) that has a huge brass case holding a lot of propellant, which vents all its fury on that little bullet when, as they say, the hammer falls. The cartridge is wicked looking. The thing resembles a hypodermic needle, and if you’re shooter and a reloader like me, you get all gaga over such things. The .257 Weatherby has muzzle velocities approaching 4,000 feet per second. To put that in perspective, consider that the 5.56mm NATO round, the one used in the so-called assault rifles and our US Army M-16, is “only” a 3,100 fps cartridge. The .257 Weatherby is super fast. It’s the fastest .25-caliber cartridge there is. In that caliber, there’s nothing faster.
Next bit of gun info: One of the most desirable and beautiful rifles in the world is the Ruger No. 1. It’s a single-shot rifle, which means you load one round at time. When I hear my gun buddies get their shorts in a knot about the “gubmint” limiting us to 10-round magazines, I have to laugh. That’s nine more than a real rifleman needs. One shot, if you’re doing things right, is all it takes.
Next point…last year, Ruger offered their No. 1 single-shot rifle in a very limited run chambered for the .257 Weatherby cartridge. I love the Ruger No. 1 and I always wanted something in chambered for the .257 Weatherby cartridge. For me, it was a no-brainer. I had to have that rifle, and I finally found one (at a good price, and with nice wood). It’s the one you see in the photo at the top of this blog. It’s awesome. Circassian walnut with nice horizontal streaks, a 28-inch barrel, and chambered for the ultimate round. The stock looks good from both sides, too. Take a look…
The excitement with a new rifle like this (beyond the pride of ownership and the dreams of distant hunting trips) is developing a load that groups tightly. Usually, I can get a rifle to shoot into an inch at 100 yards with the right combination of powder, powder charge, bullet, primer, seating depth, and the other variables in cartridge development. It’s a mini-engineering development program, and finding the right recipe is a big part of the fun. Maybe someday I’ll do a blog on that, too.
So I started with my first load, which consisted of 87 gr Hornady bullets, and varying loads of IMR 4350 propellant (what most folks would call the gunpowder, but we reloaders call it propellant). The rifle was grouping okay (nothing great; I haven’t found the perfect load yet), when I got to the last load to be tested. It was a max load, which means it had the highest propellant charge I was testing that day.
None of the loads showed any pressure signs (like flattened primers or difficulty opening the action). That’s what you watch for, to make sure you don’t create loads with excessive pressure.
Even the max load seemed okay, but when I fired the first shot I saw from the hole it made on the target that it was tumbling. After firing the next four, two more tumbled and, not surprisingly, the group had opened up significantly.
It was a lousy load from an accuracy perspective, but here’s where we get to the “never seen this before” before part of the story.
Here’s what the target looked like…
Now, for the really interesting part. Check out the bullet hole at the 7:00 position…the one at the lower left (the target was mounted on its side).
Here’s a closeup of that bullet hole…
The dark roostertail you see above is the lead spraying out of the bullet’s copper jacket as the bullet disintegrated in flight. Some of the bullets disintegrated sooner and started tumbling before they hit the target. This one was breaking up as it went through the target!
Like I said, I had heard of this phenomenon before, but I never actually experienced it firsthand. The muzzle velocity, according to my reloading manual, was just under 4000 fps. Just for grins, I calculated the bullet rpm at that velocity, and by my reckoning, it works out to something approaching 300,000 rpm. That little puppy was spinning, and between the centrifugal forces the bullets were experiencing at that rpm and the aerodynamic heating at those speeds, they were breaking up in flight. That’s fast!
Interesting stuff, to be sure.
Phase III: Climbing Mt. Baldy
Phase III (pardon the electrical pun) of our City Slicker testing involved riding Slick from my home up to Mt. Baldy Village. It’s a 2,500-foot climb over 9.2 miles, and it’s rough. It’s a challenging climb on a small IC-engined motorcycle, and it’s really, really rough on a bicycle (as I know from personal experience). I knew power consumption would be higher based on our Phase I and II testing (see those results here and here), but the earlier tests did not include steep climbs. Phase III was a fairly steep uphill climb all the way, and then a steep descent all the way down. Here’s the route I took, up and down…
I didn’t know how Slick would do, and I didn’t want to run the bike down more than 50% (you know, to make sure I had the juice to get home). I decided in advance that if the bike hit the 50% energy remaining mark on the way up, I’d turn around and head back.
I need not have worried, though. I sailed up to the Mt. Baldy Lodge (that first photo you see above) with 56% power remaining on the charge indicator. I stopped to take a picture, and then I turned around and rode home. Here’s what it looks like on a miles versus battery charge plot…
As you can see from the above chart, energy consumption on the way down was near zero. I used 43% of the battery’s energy (from 99% to 56%) to make the 9.2-mile, 2500-ft-elevation climb, and then I used only 10% of the battery’s energy (from 56% to 46%) to cover the same distance riding downhill. Cool.
I ran this test in the Eco mode, mostly because I didn’t want to use too much energy on the climb. In the Eco mode on flat ground, the bike tops out at an indicated 37 mph (don’t forget that the speedometer is about 8-10% fast, so actual speed is lower). On the climb, Slick slowed to an indicated 33 to 34 mph on the steepest hills, which is about what my 150cc CSC Mustang could manage.
On the way down the mountain, Slick ran 43-44 mph (still in the Eco mode), and the throttle became meaningless. The bike coasted downhill faster than the motor could drive it. It reminded me of my bicycle down this same stretch. On my bicycle, I topped out at the same speed and pedaling was useless because my Bianchi was already going faster than I could pedal.
Watching Slick’s regeneration function on the dash was cool. The red regen plug (to the left of the battery charge indicator) stayed red for most of the run downhill. I previously wondered if the bike only regenerated at lower speeds; I now know it regens at all speeds when Slick is going faster than the motor is driving it. Just like before, though, I never saw the charge percentage indicator go up (say, from 48% to 49%). It just stayed at a given percentage for a much longer time. I asked the wizards at Zongshen about this, and they confirmed it’s what they would expect.
The knee in the x-y plot at the 56% charge level is where I turned around (at the Mt. Baldy Lodge). It shows that Slick uses way less energy going downhill than it does going uphill. Like they say…duh. The slight changes in the slope of each line (for the uphill section, and then for the downhill section) are due to changes in the grade on Mt. Baldy Road. There were undulations in the road, and that’s why there are minor variances in the slope of the line on both the uphill and downhill portions of the graph.
Once I was home, I put Slick back on the charger for the ride back to CSC. I’m headed out on a road trip next week, and I wanted to return the bike to Steve.
I did the climb up to Mt. Baldy with the lights off. My bike is a preproduction sample, and it’s not wired to keep the lights on. The production City Slickers will have the LED marker lights on all the time(that’s a US requirement). The LEDs will consume a little energy, so the range will be somewhat less for the US bikes than what I’ve been reporting.
To get a feel for what the impact of having the lights on might be, when I returned the bike to CSC I rode there with the headlight and taillight on. This is a more severe test than would be running the bike with only the LED lights (the headlight and taillight consumes more energy than the LEDs). Previously, without the lights on the 16.4-mile ride to CSC from my home took 35% of the battery’s charge. Running the same route today with the headlight and taillight on, I used 42% of the battery’s energy. Note that this is more energy than would be consumed with just the LEDs (but it is representative of energy consumption when riding the bike at night). And, I was hotfooting it a bit. I wanted to stay at around 34-35 mph, but Slick was smelling the barn and I frequently ran faster than that.
So there you have it. Eco mode, Power mode, and a steep climb and descent on the CSC City Slicker. Stay tuned; there’s more coming on this fascinating new electric motorcycle. You’ll see it here first.