In a more serious vein:
Duke notes that the Empulse’s motor controller doesn’t deliver full juice right off the line, perhaps for rider safety or conserving battery energy.
Very odd.
"Full juice right off the line" is only going to be a very small battery draw. And the clutch would seem to solve the rider safety issue.
I wonder if what we're seeing here, and along similar lines for the Zero, is the absence of the torque surge we get from an ICE bike.
On an ICE bike, when you rev it up to 6k rpm and dump the clutch, you have a fairly large amount of mechanical inertia from the engine (and sometimes a flywheel). This kinetic energy is transferred via the clutch as it slips, as well as whatever torque the motor produces. Net effect is you get a torque surge as the clutch slips until it locks into place .. typically around 10-20 mph.
On an electric bike you do not get this torque surge (because there is very little rotational energy in an electric motor) - instead you get completely linear torque until whatever point it starts to fall off, typically 40-60 mph. If we've grown accustomed to the torque surge, a lack of it will be interpreted as an initial performance limitation.
MO’s Ed-in-Cheese also poo-pooed the software that wouldn’t allow him to clutch up a wheelie, but he was pleased the code writers enabled the ability to perform a burnout!
So both Wes and Troy (who reviewed the Lightning bike, and also rode the Zero in the PIR TTXGP race) have reported an inability to power wheelie. Wonder what the wheelie shots we've seen are, then? Is the wheelie restriction a pre-release software thing?
