The Ideal Electric Motorcycle

I like to read the ExhaustNotes blog. In the aerospace industry, if you liked what your team created too much, we called it drinking your own bath water. The risk in drinking your own bath water was that you lost sight of what was important to the customer and you stopped reviewing your work objectively.  Anyway, every once in a while I’ll read through the blog to see what looks good and what we could maybe do better. And in doing that I realized that old Arjiu and I hadn’t done a dream bike piece recently.

That brings us to today and the dream bike bit du jourThe Ideal Electric Motorcycle. I’m going to define the specs for what I think would be a riotously successful electric motorcycle.  Bear with me…I think this is going to be good, which can sometimes happen even with bath water.

I guess the first order of business is to consider the current crop of ebikes’ weaknesses.  That’s easy.  Limited range, limited top speed, long recharge times, clunky and bulky external chargers (for some bikes), and the biggest one of all (at least to me):  A near complete lack of cool. Yeah, I’m defining the specs for an ebike that would do well in the US, and the lack of cool is a very big deal.  We have to address that. It’s a serious shortfall in all the ebikes I’ve seen.  I mean, nobody visualizes themselves as Steve McQueen jumping a fence in Nazi Germany on an ebike.  Nobody thinks of themselves as Peter Fonda kickstarting a silent ebike to take Nancy Sinatra for a ride.

Remember that old Harley ad? The one that showed a toddler in a Harley T-shirt with the this question at the bottom: When did it start for you? That ad says it all. I know for me, and I suspect for nearly all of you, our fascination with motorcycles originated when we were wee ones and we saw a motorcycle that stopped us in our Buster Brown tracks. You know what I’m talking about. A bike that made us just stop and stare, usually for a long period of time. I have two such recollections: One was a 1950’s era Harley Duo-Glide dresser (with a monstrous V-twin engine, corrugated exhaust headers, and drop-dead-deep-gorgeous paint); the other was a ’64 500cc Triumph twin (white with gold accents, pea-shooter mufflers, Triumph’s “parcel grid” on the gas tank, a matching tach and speedo, and those magnificent, sweeping exhaust headers). Yeah, those bikes defined cool. They were visually arresting things. None of the ebikes currently on the market do that for me. Like my old platoon sergeant used to say, this is something we need to talk about.

Serious cool. Visually arresting. I’m not saying an ebike should look like a Panhead, but a Panhead has a cool factor that no current ebike possesses. We need to address that.  We need to find a way to have an ebike elicit the same kind of irrational, emotional, I-need-this-in-my-life response.

Okay, enough reminiscing. Let’s get to the specs. The way I see it, we need to address weight, size, top end, range, recharging, cost, comfort, and the cool factor. Here we go, boys and girls…

Let’s hit the elephant in the room first, and that’s the range issue. We need more. Nobody has a motorcycle with decent range. The City Slicker, under best case conditions (I’m talking low speeds and summer temperatures) can do about 60 miles, maybe a scosh more, and obtaining the last few miles involves really low speeds and lots of prayer. Zero claims much greater range, but every magazine that’s tested the Zero shoots those claims down with a heartfelt dismissal that goes along the lines of “in your dreams, Zero.” Nope, the range on the current crop of ebikes just isn’t where it needs to be yet. Where is that? Hey, I’m writing the spec. I’d say 250 miles. Put an ebike out there that can go an honest 250 miles at normal speeds, and I’m in. I think that should be doable at a reasonable price (I’ll say more on that in a bit). Yeah, a 250-mile range would make an ebike viable for me.

We want range, and lots of it. If an ebike had a range of 250 miles and a recharge time of 30 minutes, I could ride to Mama Espinoza’s in El Rosario, charge the bike while I was enjoying one of the old gal’s lobster burritos, and make it all the way to Guerrero Negro in a day. Where do I sign?

Next up: Recharging. Look, the bottom line is I don’t want to wait 8 hours to recharge a bike. As long as I’m writing the spec and dreaming out loud, I’d like to see a sub-30-minute recharge time. When I stop at a gas station, it’s about 10 minutes to pull up to the pump, put the bike on the sidestand, get off, take off my gloves, unlock the fuel cap, get out my wallet, put the credit card in the gas pump, enter my zip code, pick the octane level I want, take the nozzle out of the pump, peel back the nozzle’s foreskin so the fuel will flow (hey, we live in Kalifornia), put fuel in the tank, and then reverse the process. Add another rider or maybe another ten riders (if I’m on one of my Baja tours and I’m being my usual hardass self about not wasting time), and a fuel stop grows to maybe 30 minutes. I’m used to that, and that’s what I want in an ebike: Quick replenishment. That’s beyond the current state of the art, but don’t tell me we can’t do it.  The solution is obvious: We need to change the state of the art.

On the recharger, I want it built into the bike, with a simple cord that pulls out of the bike to plug in someplace (kind of like you get on a vacuum cleaner). Give me a 15-foot cord and I’m good to go. I don’t want to screw around with an external power converter, because then I’d have to find a place to carry it on the bike.  Build that thing into the motorcycle.  Zero has the right idea on this one.

I think an 85-mph top speed is good. I know, I know…maybe you’re one of those guys:  Ah need at least a 1000cc and Ah need to go at least a hunnert else they’ll run me down on the freeway.  If that’s you, don’t waste any more time here; go back to posting stupid stuff on Facebook and the other forums. Here’s the deal: I’ve been riding for a few years, and the times I’ve needed to go above 85 mph are few and far between. In fact, I’ve never actually “needed” to go over 85.  Adding top end takes a big bite out of an ebike. I’m willing to give up stupid top end to get more range, shorter recharge times, and less weight. So, 85 mph it is. Give me that in an ebike and I’m a happy camper.

I want a reasonable amount of stowage space so I can do Baja without bungee cords. Some folks look like they’re moving when they go on an overnight motorcycle trip.   I’ve ridden with those guys.  They and their bikes are like the opening Beverly Hillbillies scene with Granny on top of the pickup truck (not that’s there’s anything wrong with being a hillbilly, or a Granny, for that matter). The City Slicker has a cool stowage compartment where the fuel tank would be on a gas bike. Something like that would work just fine for me. I don’t need to change my underwear every day on a motorcycle trip.

The ideal motorcycle (not just an ebike, but any motorcycle, in my opinion) should have a seat height no higher than 30 inches, a weight of 400 lbs or less, and physical dimensions that allow for easy u-turns on two-lane roads. None of this 36-inch seat height, 800-lb silliness.  The ergonomics should be straight standard motorcycle, too. No Ricky Racer, stupidly-low-clip-on, first-two-years-of-chiropractor-visits-are-free seating positions.  And while I’m on doctor references, no gynecological-exam, silly-ass cruiser seating positions, either.  If the designers of my ideal ebike could just get a 2006 KLR 650 and duplicate its handlebar/seat/footpeg relationship, that would be fine.  My KLR had the best seating position of any motorcycle I’ve ever owned.

I’d vote for 17-inch rear and 19-inch front wheels because that combo just flat seems to work for damn near everything. I won’t be jumping any logs with my ideal ebike or trying to fly across soft sand, and that eliminates the need for a 21-inch front wheel. And everybody has all kinds of tire combos for the 17/19 setup. To borrow a phrase, why re-invent the wheel?

I want a plug-and-play bike with BITE. Not as in “bite me,” but as in built-in-test-equipment (like the aerospace industry uses). That would completely eliminate the need for a dealer (come to think of it, it would also eliminate the need for a shop manual). No obscene, inflated dealer freight and setup fees. Nope, I want factory direct. And if anything goes wrong with the bike, it shows me which module I need to remove and replace. Plug and play. I don’t feel the need to fund an on-the-job-training program for a dealer-based, wannabe motorcycle mechanic. BITE me, baby.

I think the cost of such a bike should be about $7,500. That feels about right for what a motorcycle should cost.  Yeah, I know, you probably couldn’t build it for that in America.   Maybe India?  Or China?  Or maybe you could make it in America.  Source the subassemblies wherever you need to, keep the UAW and IAM snouts out of the trough, and assemble the bikes here.  Create 30 to 50 US jobs at an assembly plant, preferably in Texas or New Mexico.  This is doable, folks.  Trust me on this.  I used to run manufacturing facilities before I moved up to blogging.  We can do this.

So there you have it. Do all of the above, and folks would beat a digital path to your online direct sales website. Yep, all of the above, at $7,500. That’s the ticket.

Oh, and one last must have: Electric start.  Peter and Nancy (and the rest of the Wild Angels cast), my apologies in advance, but no kickers on my ideal electric bike.  I know they’re cool, but this is the 21st Century.


Want to read more of our ebike stuff?  Hey, just click here!  It’s our new index page with all the good ebike articles we’ve done here on the blog.

More good stuff.  It seems the Chairman of the Southern California Motorcycle Association, my new good buddy Gonzo, is a big fan of the ExhaustNotes.us site.   We had a nice conversation yesterday, and Gonzo told me he particularly liked our story on the Jack Daniel’s visit (so much so they are running it in their newsletter this month) and our first intro piece on the 2005 Three Flags Classic.

One thing led to another…I’ve been invited to the 2019 Three Flags Classic (boy oh boy, I’m really thinking about that one), and I became an SCMA member.  You should be, too, even if you’re not living here in the Southland because SCMA’s events are international in reach.   You can join right here.

And one last thing:   Want to win a free copy of one of our moto adventure books?  You can get in on the drawing if you sign up for automatic email blog updates (the widget is in the upper right corner if you’re on a laptop, and below this article if you read the blog on a phone).  We’ll never share your email with anyone else!

A Slick post summary…

One of the guys on an ADVRider forum asked for more information on the City Slicker electric motorcycle, so I put together a list of Slick links on the ExhaustNotes blog.  My idea was to include a single place that listed all of the links on the City Slicker covering the testing I’ve done on this bike.

Then I thought…hey, that might be a good thing to post on the blog, too! So, here you go…

An E-bike comparo…Zero and Slick

Climbing Mt. Baldy

Getting my kicks, on Route 66…

Slick Specs

A draining experience…

Slick, two up…

You’ll get a charge out of this…

This is the most comprehensive info available on the new CSC City Slicker anywhere in the world, and there will be more coming!

Slick specs…

I’ve been helping CSC in the last few days compile specifications for the new City Slicker electric motorcycle, and the bike is looking better and better the more I learn about it.  Here’s what’s going up on the CSC site in the near future…

Any questions?  Post them in the comments section, and I’ll see if I can get answers.

A draining experience…

I wrote a City Slicker press release for CSC Motorcycles last week and it lit up the Internet (you can read it here).  The word is out and a lot of people are asking a lot of good questions.  One is: How far will this thing go on a battery charge?

I had a lot of fun this morning getting the answer to that question. I was able to play engineer again. More on that in a bit.

Zongshen quotes two figures for the City Slicker’s range: One is a claimed 62 miles in the Eco mode at 20 mph, and the other is a claimed 37 miles at 37 mph in the Power mode. In the ebike world, range drops dramatically as speed increases. Go faster, don’t go as far. Go slower, go further. Hence the two figures.

Today was Phase I of my testing, and it focused on the City Slicker’s Eco mode.

Eco vs Power mode is controlled from a right-handlebar switch.

Bottom line first: In the Eco mode, I was able to get 55 miles out of the battery, with the dashboard charge indicator showing 6% charge remaining when the bike shut itself off. I think that’s pretty damn good, even though it didn’t meet the Zongshen claim of 62 miles. I’ll explain why in a bit, but first let me tell you how I ran the test, and before I get to that, let me tell you a bit about charging this puppy.

The City Slicker charger.

The bike comes with a charger. It’s a big dude, it plugs into a standard 110 VAC outlet, and it takes about 6 to 8 hours to fully charge the battery.

You can plug the charger into the bike on the bike’s battery access cover…
Or, you can open the access cover and plug the charger directly into the battery.

I guess at this point I should tell you that 6 to 8 hours is the right number for a full battery charge.  There are folks quoting some clown who said it only took 4 hours to charge the battery (uh, that clown would be me, when I stupidly accepted what someone told me without verifying it myself).   My bike’s been on the charger for a little over 3 1/2 hours since I ran the battery all the way down earlier today, and it’s only up to 63%.  6 to 8 hours is the correct answer to this question, folks.

The City Slicker charger has a couple of LEDs on it. One tells you it’s charging and the other tells you the state of the battery charge. If the battery’s not fully charged, that second LED stays red. When it’s fully charged, it turns green.

The green LED means the bike is fully charged.

When you disconnect the charger when the full charge LED light turns green, the bike will indicate a 100% charge on the dash, and it stays that way for a day or two before it starts to drop (if you don’t use the bike). If you leave the charger connected after the LED turns green, it shuts off but it doesn’t keep the battery at 100% until the charger turns itself on again. I think the thing allows the battery to drop to something below 99% before it starts charging again.

I had planned to start my test with a 100% fully charged battery, but it was at 99% on the dash indicator this morning. It was already getting hot here in So Cal and I didn’t want to wait for the battery to get back up to 100%. I started riding with the battery at 99%. Like we used to say in the bomb business: Close enough for government work.

The dashboard battery charge indicator. The red plug is lit when the bike is being charged by the external charger. It will start flashing when the charge level gets down to 30% while you are riding the motorcycle.

On to the test: I recorded miles traveled at each 1% decrease on the battery charge dash indicator. I wanted to simulate a real world City Slicker scenario, and the course I ran was a 2.8 mile loop around my home. Part of it is slightly downhill, parts of it are steep climbs, and there are 6 stop signs. It’s uphill and downhill, with lots of stop and go in the process. I tried to stick to 20 mph the entire time. It was a good city riding simulation, I think.

My fancy data logging system, scotch-taped to the top of the City Slicker luggage compartment. I dropped my pen twice during my 3-hour ride this morning.

When I finished the run (it took a good 3 hours in 100-degree weather), I then plotted the data.  Here’s what it looks like:

City Slicker range test results.  Slick, huh?

My observations and comments follow.

Power consumption as a function of distance traveled was very repeatable. On the uphill portions of the test course, the bike got about 0.4 miles for each 1% of battery charge; on the downhill portions it got about 0.9 to 1.0 miles for each 1% of battery charge.  This was very consistent; after a few laps I could predict when the bike would drop a percent on the charge indicator by house number.

I tried to hold my speed at 20 mph, consistent with the Zongshen prediction for the City Slicker’s range in the Eco mode (62 miles at 20 mph). I had a tendency to speed, though, and I was above 20 mph more than I wanted to be.

When the battery charge indicator (on the bike’s dash) hit 30%, the charge plug indicator (on the dash) started flashing red. The concept is similar to the low fuel light on an internal combustion engine motorcycle. It’s telling you that it’s time to start thinking about topping off.

The bike felt like it had normal power levels until the battery charge indicator hit 20%. Below that point, the bike felt like it needed more “throttle” to maintain 20 mph.

At 16% battery charge, things changed. Responsiveness diminished perceptibly. It was in a “limp home” mode, and it would not go much above 15 mph.

The bike became more efficient in the limp home mode. It was going a little further with each 1% battery charge decrease than it had before.   Thinking about it now, that’s not surprising, but it surprised me when it occurred.

At 6% indicated charge, the motorcycle had traveled 52.3 miles. It then traveled another 2.7 miles to reach a total of 55.0 miles, where the bike shut down completely. The battery charge indicator was still showing a 6% charge level prior to shutdown. I was thinking maybe I’d get to use that last 6%, but somewhere in that 6% indicated charge level range, it was lights out. Zip. Nada. Nothing left.

My earlier GPS speedometer accuracy testing showed that Slick’s speedometer is about 7% to 10% optimistic (the bike’s speedometer shows the speed to be higher than the GPS showed, which is something I’ve also observed on Zongshen’s internal-combustion-engined motorcycles).

I found the opposite to be true for the odometer. I have a measured mile by my house, and when I covered that distance on the City Slicker, the odometer showed 0.9 miles. I traveled approximately another 250 feet after the end of that measured mile before the odo clicked over to 1.0 miles, so I’m estimating the odometer reading to be about 5% low.

Based on all of the above, I was impressed with the City Slicker’s performance. Zongshen claims a 62 mile range in the Eco mode; I was able to ride 55.0 miles before the battery called it a day.  There were several reasons I was slightly under the Zongshen estimated range:

I started with a 99% charge. If I had been at 100%, I would have picked up another 0.4 to 1.0 miles.

As explained above, the odometer registers less than actual mileage. Applying a 5% correction factor, I actually traveled 57.75 miles.

My course had 6 stop signs every 2.8 miles, and I stopped at every one. Accelerating to 20 mph from a dead stop uses more energy than simply riding a constant 20 mph. I stopped and accelerated from 0 to 20 mph 117 times during this test.  If the stops signs hadn’t been there, I would have gone further.

My course was uphill and downhill. I’m guessing that this adversely affected power consumption. If I was on a perfectly flat course, I would have gone further.

I’m a full-figured 198 lbs. With my motorcycle gear on, I’m probably pushing 210 to 215. I’ve been to the Mount (that’s Zongshen, in Chongqing) and I’ve seen the Zongshen test riders; they weigh maybe 130 lbs soaking wet. Fat guys soak up the go juice more quickly. With a lighter rider, Slick would have a longer range.

On the other hand, I didn’t have the bike’s lights on. When we get our US-configuration Slickers, the LED running lights on either side of the headlight will be on all the time. That will drop the range a bit. How much is TBD, but when I find out, I’ll let you know.

My next test will be in the Power mode. I guess I’ll be a Power Commander. Stay tuned.

I’m having fun and I’m learning a lot more about electric bikes.  You might think riding in circles for three hours would be kind of boring, but I enjoyed it.  Folks who saw the bike knew it was something different, which is what I’m getting a lot of every time I ride the City Slicker.  The silent riding experience is kind of cool, too.  It’s a different kind of riding, and it’s fun.  I like the bike.  A lot.

If you have questions about the City Slicker, please post them in the Comments section here on the ExhaustNotes blog.  I’ll do my best to get answers for you.

Slick, two up…

A mid-summer night’s dream, as the saying goes…

So what’s it like riding the new City Slicker?

For starters, you can’t be shy. The bike is a conversation starter. Even people who aren’t into motorcycles recognize it’s something different. Stop at a light and people crossing the street look, then they look again, and then they realize: It’s silent.

“Is that electric?” is always the next question, followed by my affirmative answer, followed by their response:

“Cool!”

Sue and I took the bike out for a ride around the neighborhood. Surprisingly, even at its welterweight 216 lbs, Slick rides well two up. I think the battery life might be marginally shortened a bit two up (the bike is hauling more weight), but I haven’t done anything quantitative yet to confirm that.

Another surprise from our after-hours ride: The headlight does a good job. In fact, I think it does a better job than my RX3. I switched it on and off, accelerating under both scenarios, to see if I could feel a difference in the bike’s response, and I couldn’t.

I’m finding the riding experience is different. The handling is considerably crisper, a natural result of the City Slicker’s light weight and its crisper 12-inch wheels (I’ll write more about the 12-inch wheels and the resulting crisper handling in a future blog). I found I had to concentrate when stopping. The brakes are great, but there’s no brake pedal for the rear wheel (the rear brake is activated by the left handlebar lever).  At more than a few stops, I found my right foot dabbing into thin air, and I chirped the rear tire twice attempting to pull in the “clutch” when rolling to a stop sign. And I found my left foot similarly dabbing up and down at stop signs, trying to find neutral, and then I would remember: There is no neutral, because there is no gearbox. You simply use the brakes to stop, and the “throttle” to go. Scooter lovers will feel right at home on a City Slicker because the controls are identical.

And then there’s this: I found myself frequently looking at the tripmeter and the battery charge indicator, thinking about how much of the charge we had used, how many miles we covered, and then doing the mental math to project the range. There’s more to follow on that, too, folks.

One more nice touch…our dinner stop even had reserved parking.

Stay tuned.

No valet necessary…

You’ll get a charge outta this…

The only City Slicker in America residing in somebody’s garage…

No clutch. No noise. No gears. Best of all, no gas. Basically, no worries. If you can work an iPhone and ride a bicycle, you’re there.

“Whoooeeeeee!” I thought. This is going to be fun.

I’m the only guy in America who has a new CSC City Slicker in his garage.

I’d like to be able to say I have a lot to learn about electric motorcycles, but there’s not a lot to learn.  There’s close to zero maintenance (ooh, did I actually use that word?).  One of my shooting buddies who owns a dealership in a large left-leaning California city (there’s a redundant expression if ever there was one) is dropping his line of electric bikes because there’s no follow-on maintenance.   Follow-on maintenance is an important income stream for a dealership.

“Maybe we sell a tire once in a while,” he said, “but that’s it. Electric bikes just don’t need maintenance.”

So I rode a City Slicker home today. I stopped for a coffee on the way, because Slick was telling me he wanted to be a GS.  “We’ll stop,” I said, echoing Lloyd Bentsen, “but you’re no GS.”

It was cool. I almost wished I had a job again, just so I could make a daily commute. I’ll bet I passed 30 or 40 gas stations on my 17-mile commute, and I was smiling the entire time. Four bucks a gallon? Who cares?

One more time: This is going to be fun.

Like Arjiu and I always say, check back often.