Mission Motors tweeted out something interesting just a moment ago, a link to a new website for Mission Motorcycles. Teasing there a photo of the Mission R, it would seem that the electric superbike that does competitive AMA Supersport lap times at Laguna Seca, is finally set to come to production. It seems we won’t know everything about the new Mission Motorcycles project until June 3rd, though we can speculate pretty accurately on what the A&R Bothan spy network has been telling us. Expect to see the Mission R electric superbike in street legal trim, honed even further than when we rode the machine back in August last year.
Stefan Pierer’s acquisition of Husqvarna continues to baffle me. You will note I say Pierer, and not KTM, bought Husqvarna, since the Austrian CEO used Pierer Industrie AG in the transaction as a means to help side-step European antitrust issues. After all, we can’t have Europe’s largest dirt bike manufacturer, nay largest total motorcycle manufacturer, gobbling up even more brands in the two-wheeled world. But, I digress. Developing three road bikes (Husqvarna Nuda 900, Husqvarna Strada 650, & Husqvarna Terra 650), with three more concepts waiting in the wings (Husqvarna Moab, Husqvarna Baja, & Husqvarna E-G0), it is with even more confusion that we learn that Pierer & Co. intend to kill the Husqvarna Nuda project and its other street siblings.
In case you missed the story last week, Kevin Schwantz is preparing to race in this year’s Suzuka 8-Hour endurance race. For the race, Schwantz will be riding on a team formed by Yukio Kagayama, who in addition to having raced in the MotoGP, World Superbike, and British Superbike Championships, is also a previous Suzuka 8-Hour winner with the Suzuki Endurance Race Team (also joining the three-rider team Noriyuki “Nitro” Haga). Releasing a Q&A about his team’s Suzuka 8-Hour entry, Kagayama-san walks us through how the team came together, what equipment the riders will use, and his outlook on the team’s competitiveness.
A single-cylinder hooligan-maker, the KTM 690 Duke is 330 lbs (curbside without fuel) and 67hp of two-wheeled fun, and we hope that the Austrians bring the KTM 690 Duke R our way as well. While we are on the topic of things missing from KTM’s American line-up, a decent supersport is painfully obvious, yet we can’t see the folks at KTM following the paths of other brands. That’s where our friend Luca Bar comes to mind with his latest concept: the KTM RC4. Using the KTM 690 Duke platform and its LC4 engine, Bar has designed a super-single full-fairing sport bike that takes the Austrian company’s “Ready to Race” DNA and applies it to an idea that is not all that disimilar to the Ducati Supermono.
When I sat down with Claudio Domenicali at the Ducati 1199 Panigale R launch, the now-CEO of Ducati Motor Holding was still just the General Manager of the Italian motorcycle company. Four weeks after our interview though, Gabriele del Torchio would leave Ducati for Alitalia; and Domenicali, a 21-year veteran of both the racing and production departments of Ducati, would take his place at the top of Italy’s most prestigious motorcycle brand. After reading our interview from Austin, Texas after the jump, I think you will agree too.
That Yamaha is working on a seamless gearbox is no secret, with Yamaha’s test riders currently racking up the kilometers around tracks in Japan. Recently, however, Spanish magazine SoloMoto published an article suggesting that Yamaha has already been using its new seamless gearbox since the beginning of the season. My own enquiries to check whether Yamaha was using a seamless gearbox or not always received the same answer: no, Yamaha is not using the seamless gearbox. To test this denial, I went out to the side of the track on Friday morning at Jerez to record the bikes as they went by.
After a very public father/son break-up between Paul Teutul Sr. and Paul Teutul Jr., a steroid-ring scandal involving Paul Sr., and finally a bankruptcy proceeding, it appears that Orange County Choppers is the impossible to kill multi-headed hydra of doom that we all knew it was, as the custom chopper shop is once again headed to the small screen and recruiting some talent, on and off the show. Looking for “someone who will work alongside Paul Senior, running the shop and helping build some of the best custom motorcycles in the world,” OCC says it will be back on television with a new show later this month. Please for the love of god, will someone give this man the attention he craves so dearly??! Or, just shoot us in the face.
We love us some concept bikes here at Asphalt & Rubber, and we have featured more than a few pieces of stunning design and imagination on our pages. Though, we can’t remember the last time one of these works of art were brought to us by a legitimate racing team, but that is what we have here with the Team Alstare Superbike Concept. A nod to the former Suzuki team’s return to the World Superbike Championship as the Ducati factory squad with Carlos Checa and Ayrton Badovini, Alstare has enlisted the help of designer Serge Rusak of Rusak Kreaktive Designworks to ink the shape of its futuristic Superbike concept, while Tryptik Studios handled the 3D modeling prowess.
If you didn’t watch Thursday’s pre-event press conference for MotoGP at Jerez, it is worth a viewing right to the end (assuming you have a MotoGP.com account). Building off the news about the NBA’s Jason Collins coming out as gay in a self-written feature in Sport Illustrated, my good colleague David Emmett had the courage to inquire about the culture and acceptance of the MotoGP paddock for homosexual riders. For the sake of accuracy, after the jump is a full transcript of David’s question, as put to riders Cal Crutchlow, Jorge Lorenzo, Marc Marquez, Andrea Dovizioso, Stefan Bradl, and Scott Redding, as well as those riders’ responses to David’s inquiry.
News that Suzuki plans on returning to the MotoGP Championship in 2014 should be old information for dedicated Asphalt & Rubber readers, and the Japanese company’s inline-four race bike was already spotted doing test laps last year by the eager eyes at Cycle World. Well the American print-mag has another set of eyebrow-raising high-quality photos of the 2014 Suzuki GSV-R to mull over from the Motegi race track, along with some technical insights provided by the venerable Kevin Cameron.
Bike sounds like a Tie Fighter. Sweet Video.
That’s what happens when MotoCzysz doesn’t race all the races….. Brammo gets to dominate
Cool video. Maybe Mission Motors will show up?
One thing is certain, it’s not being marketed well. I live a little over an hour from Daytona, “like” the raceway’s facebook page, and this is the first I’ve heard of the Daytona TTXGP round. Check out their website http://www.daytonainternationalspeedway.com/ it’s not even mentioned.
Wow…when even such a strong supporter as you gets cynical..(sees the light) about the electric “revolution”, I guess we know the end is at hand.
I’m not surprised & predicted its demise from the beginning. You see for over 40 years we’ve been hearing about the “rapidly developing battery technology”..but the truth is; it isn’t developing anything.
Look at the blistering sales of Volts & Leafs, a few yuppies making statements of their “enviro cred” & then crickets in the showrooms..even with taxpayer subsidised 5 figure discounts.
Face it..its never gonna happen. Battery technology is a dead end..except for extracting gov’t grants. Attempting to sell them to motorcycle enthusiasts with lifetimes of IC experience is even stupider.
Truth is..NO ONE CARES & few ever did.
Joe, I think it’s important to distinguish between the future electrics in general, and electric motorcycle racing as it is today.
I still believe 100% in electrics being our future, and the technology has made amazing progress in just the few years we have been covering it.
Electric racing though, especially when it comes to TTXGP, has always been a land-grab situation that came far too early in the lifecycle of these vehicles. TTXGP was founded around the idea of making a quick buck, not a sustainable form of competition, and this year’s apathy is the result of that strategy.
Dang, that thing does sound sweet.
Jensen
“Electric racing though, especially when it comes to TTXGP, has always been a land-grab situation that came far too early in the lifecycle of these vehicles.”
I may not always agree with your sentiments, but the above is most concise, accurate assessment of the state of electric racing I have ever read. Bravo for saying it.
M
Fundamentally, there are two types of racing: prototype and production-based. The TTXGP was not in a position, and manufacturers/privateers were not a position, to generate a true prototype series. Consequently, it got out ahead of itself. But now that Lightning will be selling a true race bike / street super-bike, and now that Brammo and Zero are selling really good performance electric street bikes that will make adequate race bikes, there is real opportunity for TTXGP to be interesting and competitive next year with a super-bike class and a production-based class, as riding skill and parameter tinkering will make the difference.
Regarding electric super-bikes, I think that the recent news re Mission is its death-knell for prospects of its street super-bike, and the likelihood is that Motoczysz has proven its point and is now focused on electric drivetrain development and production. Similarly, Chip Yates/Swigz does not seem likely to further compete or produce its bike for sale. Could Munch produce its excellent racebike for sale? Possibly, but at the moment its seems that Lightning has the electric super-bike field to itself.
Regarding production electric bikes, there do not appear to be any immediate challengers to Brammo and Zero. I expect the Brammo Empulse R to be quicker and faster than the Zero S ZF9 (it ought to be, for about $20,000 v. $13,000), and the racing Empulse RR will not have any competition.
While it makes sense for each bike to develop its own niche to dominate in terms of street sales, it also works to the advantage of the racing show if there are enough competitors on similar bikes who will be willing to go to all the various races. Really, it is traveling to the races that is the biggest catch.
Sadly, Jensen you have blinded yourself in your zeal to the reality of electric transportation. If the “state of the art” can’t even engender modest participation let alone interest from the m/c race viewer..its done.
The in-fighting amoung the various electric racing organizations reminds me of vultures around a carcass. They are not the proplem..its the show that stinks.
5 years from now unless these manufacturers find a gov’t subsidized niche (like police or army vehicles) they will be history. Electrics plain & simple lack (sex) appeal & until a new generation of anti-enthusiasts matures(who are being brain-washed as we speak) the current riders will never trade their IC bikes for a tandem Segway, & that won’t happen in time.
Watch
Michael,
Whatever happened to this?:
“I, for one, think Azhar Hussain deserves praise for getting us this far, and making electric motorcycle racing happen. The TTXGP organization may have stumbled, as has this new industry as a whole, but it is far from deserving of a post-mortem.
It is, rather, time to get to work.” – Michael Uhlarik
Whatever happened to the Amarok P1? I didn’t see you out there helping to fill the grid. Where is that a deficiency with the series?
I hope that FIM and TTXGP figure out how to better promote races and encourage competition, but Brammo would race even if it was an empty track and our two riders, and even if Mr. Beeler thinks it is irrelevant. I believe that this is the most pure form of racing happening in the world right now because it has direct impact on real product and technology development (are WSBK and MotoGP bikes actually relevant to production street bikes?) and will influence the outlook for electric vehicles in the future. The attrition rate is high because the technology required to be competitive is developing a break neck pace. Brammo has brought a different configuration of bike to every event this year. We’ll have a new chassis and swingarm combo at Daytona. If you thought Ducati were scrambling to make changes to their bike for VR, you haven’t seen anything compared to what Brammo pulled out by Miller.
If you don’t like the series, then don’t follow it. It’s not that hard since the coverage is pathetic. We’ll keep racing so that we can offer better and better products to our customers in the future.
I think BrammoBrian is right. You cannot write off electric motorcycles b/c they can’t fill a grid in an ill-formulated race league. High performance electric motorcycles have only been around for 5 years or so! Give it a chance for crying out loud.
Ultimately we need cheaper and more energy dense batteries (electrics are heavy!). Given all the money and research be poured into Li batteries, there is a good chance these needs will be met. But time is needed.
Naysayers like JoeKing are old school thinkers, mentally stuck in the 20th century. His type surely complained when computers were first introduced in the 70s, crying that the typewriter is king, ït has no sex appeal”.
So the TTXGP is sucking right now. Does that mean everybody should quit, and stick with the extremely horribly designed ICE? Piston driven internal combustion engines are only practical because of one thing, the energy source. They’re woefully inefficient, wasting massive amounts of energy, requiring expensive, complex and heavy exhaust systems just to deal with all the waste. Hell, just making the pistons move wastes energy.
For those who like to believe otherwise, consider that there’s about 35kWh of energy in one gallon of gasoline. The Brammo Empulse’s battery only stores about 10kWh. Now, how far can your bike go on less than 1/3 of a gallon of gas? Anywhere near that Empulse’s range?
I’m looking forward to when batteries catch up enough to make EVs practical, and it’s going to happen. Another great thing about batteries vs gasoline: Gasoline will always have the same energy density, it’s never going to get any better, whereas batteries are getting better all the time.
Sorry to sound heretical, but as a dyed-in-the-wool advocate of EVs, I actually look at it the other way. I think there may come a time when graphene-based battery/supercapacitors will be sort of close to the energy density of gas (give it another dozen years), and/or batteries can be swapped or recharged in seconds, and in this way electricity can give gas a run for its money. But really, I would love to see a time when gas is only used at the race track: keep the smell and the sound and the machinery for those special occasions. In this way, I feel the same way about gas as I feel about fireworks and airshows: these are the best uses of gunpowder and weaponry — just as spectacle. (Just to be clear, I am far from a pacifist, but I would prefer a world in which bullets and weaponry were not used; just as gas should not be used for environmental and geopolitical and domestic economic reasons.)
Brammo Brian
You seem very upset by my agreement with Jensen’s commentary.
The words that you quote from my op-ed in HellForLeather magazine of more than a year ago indicate my open defence of a clever and difficult effort in the face of many doom sayers, who were out to take a kick at electrification in its infancy. My support for Jensen Beeler’s statement, the one I highlighted, does not contradict those earlier sentiments.
Jensen wrote a summation which is fundamentally correct, and which I believe defines the pressures and poor results of the North American TTXGP as a series. In a nutshell, he said that to organize a satisfying racing series you must first have racers, which requires easily accessible racing motorcycles in the class. But they are not available at a price or performance level that allows for an entertaining racing spectacle, thus placing the cart was before the horse.
This does not mean that I don’t believe in electrification, the TTXGP organization, or Brammo for that matter. There simply aren’t many options for people who want to fill grids other than to dive into the enormous expense and effort of building a conversion (much less a prototype), which means that grids were small as a result. Putting together a reasonably competitive electric racing team and carting it around the west coast of North America cannot be done today without a significant financial investment, which could be raised through race sponsorship, but due to the poor promotional value of the series itself makes sponsorship very difficult.
The second, and far more challenging hurdle is technical knowledge. As you of all people ought to know, it takes professionals with a wide degree of skills and experience to design and manufacture a motorcycle that works reliably and is not dangerous. If the TTXGP field are required to make their own bikes as well as find the resources to race them, as they currently are, the task is almost impossible to even experienced racing team operators. How many of the AMA 600 or Superbike teams leading in the standings could engineer their own motorcycles? I will tell you : perhaps 1 or 2. Again, as Brammo knows fully well, this is not about pulling some parts off a shelf and slapping them into a chassis. And even if it were, that is far more work and risk than most people are willing to make.
You cutting remarks about the P1, our lack of participation and the not so subtle suggestion that I am a hypocrite suggest that you cannot relate to the actual costs and challenges faced by grass roots level electric racing proponents. The Amarok team has followed the series, and indeed every development in electric racing and production and has been a champion of all. I have personally staked my professional reputation by supporting the movement and have spent the better part of three years working towards the P1 project. Unlike Brammo, I do not have $28 million in funds to draw on, or a staff to handle deliveries and accounting. My family, business partners and myself do literally everything, after our day jobs that pay the bills. Even with your funding and resources, you do not have to lecture me about the intensity of preparing a motorcycle for production, or competition. I have been there.
It pleases me that Brammo are the one company taking TTXGP N.A. seriously, applying a lot of resources to racing and self promotion, as it helps make this transitional period easier for everyone. When Amarok does arrive on the circuit in the future, perhaps along side the much awaited Brammo TTXGP spec racer, I hope we can compete together without the barbs.
Michael Uhlarik
Michael,
I was not “very upset” at your comment, just confused by it. Thanks for the clarification and I’m glad to see that you remain supportive of electric motorcycle racing in general. I retract any barb stated or implied. I’m also glad to hear that the P1 is still underway and I’m looking forward to seeing it hit the track soon. Well said about the technical competency required to design, build, and race a vehicle from scratch, much less one with all new technology. The only thing I would add is the logistical competency to get such a machine to every event and have it finish the race, much less win it.
Just to set the record straight, our investors don’t give us money to go racing. We choose to do that ourselves and many of our staff have given up the same nights, weekends, and more in order to be a part of something special. We are now better resourced, but I’ll also remind you that when this company started it was Craig and I in a garage (with me sleeping above it). I get the grass-roots thing. Don’t assume that the grass is greener over here…
I also believe it is important to note that many of the challenges faced by EV racing are also faced by gas vehicle racing. It is the motorcycle racing industry as a whole that is in crisis, and I think EV motorcycle racing (if properly promoted) is a way to attract sponsors outside of the traditional ones that want to take advantage of a story that can permeate beyond just motorcycling blogs and magazines and show up from time-to-time in mainstream media.
Anyhow, glad to know that you haven’t turned to the dark-side and gone negative on us. There are certainly enough haters in this world…
Just to chime in 4 days late.
I think the point we can take away is that everything and everyone in elmoto racing definitely started grass roots, and is pretty much still there. I’m talking teams, companies, organizers, bloggers (ahem), hell have you seen some of the tracks they go to in Europe?
It’s all stupid small, and I am not convinced it’d have been any better if we waited. I think it’d be the same situation only 5,10,15 years later. In the world I am from mechanics are not the brightest bunch. Talented yes, but anyone who looks at me using a multimeter as some sort of voodoo, well . . . Mechanics 10 years from now wouldn’t be any better prepared to build any electric prototype than they are now.
As I talk to myself in my little corner of the internet I like to think I have been able to put together a reasonable picture of what is going on. It looks like a giant catch 22. Everybody needs money, to get that money we need sponsorship, to get sponsorship you need fans, to get fans you needs bikes, and to get bikes you need money. It feels like the only thing everyone can do is their best to help balance all of these things and grow one little part at a time and work their butts off to reach critical mass (which I actually think is a false idea to begin with, but anyway).
It also seems to me everyone takes for granted what we have now-a-days in the way of motorcycle race coverage in general. Like the FIM, Dorna, InFront, WSBK, MotoGP, AMA, and DMG all were just instantly successful and there were tons of magazines and blogs to get your race fix at. I’ve been watching racing for almost 20 years now. I remember things being fairly different back then. But that’s me.
I was at the track Saturday and Sunday, working with Thomas Petsch and his Munch electric racer. If you see a short bald older guy with a salt and pepper beard, wearing a tan cap with a round Munch emblem on it in any of the pictures, that’s me.
I’ve been working with and on gasoline engines for probably 50 years. I also have a pretty good background in electronics. I’m no stranger to motorcycles, there are five in my hangar right now, some of them are pretty exotic.
Electric motorcycles are the future. Gasoline motorcycles are the walking dead and they don’t even know it. Brammo went 171 mph in practice, the Munch wasn’t far behind (Mattias was conserving the batteries). In a few years, battery capacity will be much increased, prices will be down (just like we’ve seen in computers), and the electric bikes will eat their gasoline ancestors for breakfast.
Don’t misunderstand me – I really, really like gasoline powered bikes. There was a wonderfully prepared KZ1000 which sounded great and went really, really fast, there was a very tidy Trident 750 triple, one of the cleanest race bikes I’ve seen in years, and dozens of Ducatis, BSAs, various Triumphs, a couple of KRs and so forth, all good stuff . . . but all obsolete.
In ten years we’ll be looking at gasoline bikes the way we look at steam engines now. Hey, they’re neat, but you don’t actually want to GO anywhere with one, right? Electric bikes are a game-changer, in ten years they’ll be going at speeds you won’t believe, and have useful range as well. Best of all, they are quiet – the KZ1000 blasted around the track roaring its heart out – the Brammo and the Munch were almost as fast and quiet as ghosts – the most noise was the chain! They were so quiet if you didn’t see the start of the race, you wouldn’t know the race was on until they whooshed past you in a flash.
The future isn’t quite here yet, but it is coming fast – may the volts be with you!
I’m tired of the soul argument; it’s a cilhce and lazy way to be overly nostalgic about the recent past. Every engineer and designer creates objects that push boundaries, not hinge on creating a soul. The analog feel of the machines of the past may seem like soul now, but back then it was cutting edge stuff to get you from point A to point B faster or more efficient than the machines that came before. The soulful machines we talk about today were probably seen as souless when when they first came out.Looking forward to 20 years later when we look back on these original e-bikes as having soul as compared to the newer offerings. You know, these bikes may run for 500 miles on a single charge, but man I miss the soul that those old e-bikes had with lithium ion batteris. You really felt alive when you had to watch your range back then. They don’t make them like they used to. Let’s stop the soul slander and bring on the progress.