"The Tesla of Motorcycles" claims...

[flar]

I keep seeing articles talking about "the Tesla of motorcycles".  It's kind of annoying when they use it to refer to a bike that doesn't outperform nearly every other bike in a similar class the way that the top of the line Teslas do. But now that the Tesla P85D is down to 3.2 seconds 0-60, new rule - you're not allowed to claim the "Tesla of motorcycles" unless you can at least beat that figure...

[Shinysideup]

I wonder if my Empulse is the Tesla of 0 - 30 mph?

[protomech]

"Tesla of motorcycles" gets thrown around a lot .. I don't think there's anything really close to Tesla in the motorcycle space. I think a large part of that is due to the much smaller motorcycle market in the US.

There are three things Tesla does right IMO, and I don't think there's really a motorcycle equivalent.

1. Tesla ships. Roadster in 2008. Model S in 2012. Cross-country Supercharger network in 2013.
2. Compelling vs similarly-priced gas vehicles. Roadster and especially Model S are winning over non EV enthusiasts. "I like it because it's a great car" not "I like it because it's a great EV".
3. EV drawbacks minimized. Long range, fast charging.

Brammo and Zero are the only bike manufacturers that satisfy #1.

IMO no manufacturer satisfies #2. Brammo maybe comes closest with their fire sale pricing, or perhaps Zero with the FX.

IMO no manufacturer satisfies #3. Brutus, Lightning, Mission are talking about offering high-capacity bikes that would come close. Zero offers the longest range available on a production bike now, but their biggest 2015 bike only has about 60% as much range as the 2008 Roadster. Brammo's 3 kW AC charger is sadly the high-water mark for AC charging in the bike space. No manufacturer is shipping bikes (yet) that can interface well with a quick charge DC network.

[flar]

A #4 that is closely related to your #2 and #3 is that Teslas outperform similarly classed vehicles (often by a wide margin).  The new P85D takes that to extremes (likely only very rare small-run cars like the Veyron will be able to beat them).

My comment was that bikes have long been assumed to nearly always be faster (at least in the 0-60 sense) than cars, even a slow motorcycle compared to a pretty fast car.  To call a motorcycle the "Tesla of motorcycles" when it can't even beat it at a 0-60 game seems a bit over-stated.  There are quite a number of ICE motorcycles that could beat the original Model S's at 0-60 and there are still a few high performance production ICE motorcycles that can even beat the new P85D - so should an EV motorcycle that claims to be following in its footsteps...