Posted on 07/31/2015 2:08:25 PM PDT by Red Badger
(Photo: Victory Motorcycles, website)
A Minnesota company appears to have beaten Harley-Davidson to the punch by unveiling its first electric street motorcycle.
Medina-based Polaris Industries, makers of Indian and Victory motorcycles, has this week revealed its “Empulse TT” high-performance sport bike, which runs without gas and has a top speed of 110mph.
The Pioneer Press reports that with the Empulse appearing in Victory dealerships by the end of the year, Polaris has secured a key advantage over competitors Harley, whose Project LiveWire motorcycle won’t be brought to market until battery technology has improved enough to allow for longer driving distances.
“We wanted to get in early, and so we are,” Victory Motorcycles product director Gary Gray told the newspaper. “At Polaris, we are pretty proud of our speed to market. We think it gives us a big competitive advantage.”
You can take a closer look at the Empulse TT here.
According to the Business Journal, the bike has a range of around 65 miles for “typical” riding, but those easier on the throttle might be able to get more than 100 miles out of a single charge.
The key to Polaris’s success getting the bike to market so early, Bloomberg reports, was its purchase in January of electric vehicle company Brammo, which provided the battery-powered technology that could be incorporated by Polaris’ Victory designers.
“Brammo is very, very good at electric technology and we are very, very good at motorcycle engineering, so there was a good marriage there,” Polaris VP of motorcycles Steve Menneto told Bloomberg, which says that the full recharging of the Empulse battery will take four hours on a 240-volt outlet, or nine hours on a standard 120-volt plug.
The bike will have a suggested retail price of $19,999, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.
Polaris isn’t resting on its laurels either, as it says it will continue to improve its products in tandem with Oregon-based Brammo.
“The day is coming when you’ll be able to ride 300 miles [on a single battery charge],” energy consultant Mike Cornwell told the Journal Sentinel.
VIDEO AT LINK........................
My old Honda 550 got 40 mpg, and my 1200 got at least 30-35..................
Burned rubber...........and his ass.....................
Gas is 2 bucks a gal here and dropping.
The frackers are making the e-drive proposition a pretty lame one right now.
What good is a motorcycle you can’t hear rev up?
I bought this bike (not this exact one), a BMW R1200GS Adventure. As equipped it gets 50 MPG +/-. At 55 MPH it gets 60 MPG. With a 7.9 gallon tank it goes 350 miles easy. Electric thingamabobs are just not of any interest.
Four hours of charging to drive one hour...they might sell two unless the government steps in.
My 650 nighthawk gets around 45 unless I’m ripping around town.
They raced some Victory electric bikes at the Isle of Man TT this year, racers were able to average over 100mph for a 37 mile lap. I don’t recall if they did more than one lap, though.
I watched the vid. Wherever that was, they sure have a lot of fire extinguishers sitting around.
The only type of electric vehicle I would consider at this point.
Loud pipes save lives...
...
They also annoy a lot of people.
Anyone that wants to go one hundred and ten miles an hour on a motor cycle will eventually remove themselves from the gene pool. Not like they were in the deep end to begin with.
Excellent point. Most people [mistakenly] think motorcycles are loud just to be annoying. Though there are some who overdo it.
“Anyone that wants to go one hundred and ten miles an hour on a motor cycle will eventually remove themselves from the gene pool. Not like they were in the deep end to begin with.”
That one hundred and ten really isn’t all that much anymore. Somehow I’ve managed to survive. There’s people now straddling 325 hp.
It would work well in Southeast Asia where 240 is standard.
Been 160 in a car a bunch and 140 on a few bikes....you wanna live forever?
Of course I was doing this where the road had restricted access and you could see a could miles down the road clearly...
You are more likely to get flat out run over doing 35 by a careless driver than die in a high speed run.
Been riding 37 years.
My Favorite bike was a Buell ST3 but the close second was my KZ 1300 powered by an inline 6 cylinder.
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