(where I got my nickname - Brammofan will probably recognize the reference).
Ha! You better be wearing your loudspeaker.
I am still worried about the total costs and the fact that there is no dealer in Virginia. How do I get a final price around here? How do I go about regular maintenance? I don't think a regular motorcycle shop will know what to do with it...
Well, there are MANY people looking for answers on the Empulse and Brammo will be handing out those answers, as usual, piece by beautiful piece.
A couple reasons why EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT THE EMPULSE hasn't been revealed yet:
1. Where's the fun in that?
2. It's a prototype. It won't be available as a production model until sometime in 2011. Not sure when. Because it's a prototype, there may be a lot of changes between now and then.
About your maintenance question - Most of the basic maintenance is gone when you compare an I.C.E bike to an electric bike. No valve adjustments. No tuneups. About all you have to do is make sure your tires are properly inflated, lube the chain every 250 miles, check the tension on the chain,... easy stuff. When it comes to bigger things e.g. updates to the dash firmware (still, actually, a little thing) there are a couple ways to deal with this. I was lucky enough to have a Brammo tech visit me because she had family in my city. I could also have fed-ex'd my dash to Brammo, and they would have updated it and fed-ex'd it back.
Brammo is also looking to expand its dealerships beyond Best Buy, so you might end up with one down the street.
Finally, a lot of the motorcycle hardware is no different than an i.c.e. bike (i.e. brakes, shocks) so a basic motorcycle shop might be able to easily handle it.
Stay tuned, oh silent one.