Amateur coverage of CES 2020.

[sunchaser]

I was fortunate enough to be able to attend CES this year and thought that I would share some of my experiences from a few of the electric motorcycle manufacturers that I visited.  I'm sure that most or all of the information that I'm including here has already been widely available on the net, but you never know.

Here's a brief description of my impressions of each of the four manufacturers that I spoke to:

cake - Interesting designs, reps at booth were knowledgeable, liked the utility aspect of their Osa model.  As a side note, they had never heard of Brammo.

Damon - I had a conversation with Dominique Kwong the co-founder and CTO of the company.  He was very passionate about Damon and the technology that they have developed.  One of the interesting things that he mentioned was that rather than being just an electric motorcycle company, he also wants Damon to be a mobility platform.  He also said that their product has a higher battery energy density than anything else on the market.

I also tried the virtual reality demonstration that showcased the features of their COPILOT advanced warning system.  In my opinion there is a lot of potential with this technology that could set them apart from the competition.  It was also really interesting to see the bike "SHIFT" with the power adjustable handlebars, footrest, seat and windscreen.  As an added bonus, that they were very familiar with Brammo.

NAWA - They aren't an electric motorcycle manufacturer, but I'm including them due to the fact that they combined an ultracapacitor with batteries in a proof of concept electric motorcycle.  I tried out their interactive demo with the NAWA racer that showed how much more efficient an ultracapacitor is than a battery when recovering the power generated with regenerative braking.  I also had a conversation with Pascal Boulanger, the founder, COO and CTO of the company.  He was very passionate about the new ultracapacitor and battery technology that they had developed.  He wasn't familiar with Brammo, so I showed him a photo of my Enertia.  He said that it was beautiful.  Quite the compliment. 

NIU - I was able to see the RQi electric motorcycle up close along with its removable batteries.  Unfortunately the reps at the booth didn't have a lot of information about the bike other than the fact that it was scheduled to become available in Q2 and that it would be less expensive than the Zero motorcycles.  The two reps that I spoke to had never heard of Brammo.  Lastly, is it just me, or does that logo look a little familiar?

There were several other two-wheeled offerings from various other manufacturers such as Segway and others.  The show is quite large and it's definitely a challenge to try to see everything.

Here are a few photos:






















Here's a PDF that combines all of the literature that I collected:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9pznxqky7rz933p/CES%20-%20Copy.pdf?dl=0

That's about it.  If you have any questions I'll do what I can to answer them. 

Thanks for reading!

[Brammofan]

Great information, thanks for posting. I like the looks of that Damon bike!

[sunchaser]

You're very welcome.  I also liked the Damon bike.  While I was at the booth one of the company reps twisted the throttle on the prototype bike.  It was very obvious that the bike had some serious power.

[Richard230]

Yes, thanks for the report and photos, Sunchaser.  Very interesting.  However, I wonder about the comment from Damon, regarding the energy density of their batteries.  I assume that they bought them on the market and did not manufacture the battery cells themselves.  In which case their batteries would be already on the market and if they really do have a higher energy density then any other battery "on the market", then the statement seems a bit odd.

From what I have heard it is hard to beat Lithium-polymer batteries, as used in model cars and planes, for energy density. But those are not the battery chemistries that you want to use in an electric vehicle, as they are not all that stable.