Pretty Heavy Accusations!!!

[Mithion]

http://www.asphaltandrubber.com/oped/mic-electric-motorcycle-range-estimte/#more-31872

Serious stuff here!

[Gavin]

and two good replies from Proto (yeah for Proto) and Brian from Brammo...

Gavin

[Mithion]

Whatever happened to under promising and over delivering? It almost seems like there are people out there that want to discredit electric vehicle platforms for nefarious purposes. Not to be cynical but I can totally see people that stand to lose money in all the various aspects of the ICE industry doing things to make the implementation of electric vehice platforms as hard as possible.

[Brammofan]

What a load of bunk. It could have been a decent article about the MIC, but, because all of the innuendo, empty accusations, etc., it fails to do much more than embarrass its author.

[Mithion]

It makes you wonder why sparked the obvious anger and reasoning to even write the article.

[EmpulseRider]

Wow, nice response Brammofan... I may have to find another source for "reliable" motorcycle news, not what appears to be conjecture and overall crappy journalism. Also, like Brammobrian mentions, it would be nice if he had actually requested comment from Zero or Brammo on the matter... or even did some basic research.

[protomech]

Probably the same reason that Zero's range specifications piss me off. It is unhelpful at best and misleading at worst for Zero to list only city and "highway commuting range" .. when people are most familiar with EPA city and highway mpg.

The obvious and mistaken assumption that a lot of journalists arrive at is that this is city and highway range .. the fine print explains what the range specification is, but I see it misreported all over the place as pure highway range. And if journalists who are nominally familiar with electric vehicles in general stumble over this, imagine how many consumers would be misled ..

From a consumer’s point of view and understanding, there is no reasonable argument as to why a “highway” mileage rating should rate anything other than pure highway mileage — plain and simple. There should be a range estimate for basic around town riding, and a range estimate that only counts how far an electric motorcycle travels at 65 mph on a freeway. If the consumer wants a mixed-range estimate, they can portion out those two values in a manner consistent with their own personal riding style.

Pretty much.

The big problem with the A&R article is that Jensen is pissed off at Zero's range specifications and has blasted the EV industry as a whole (or more to the point, both Zero and Brammo). While Brammo's range guidance in the past has been .. non-standard and less than useful .. the MIC / SAE (?) range tests they report now are fine. I see little reason for consumer confusion after viewing the specs on Brammo's site.. but I wonder how many people have looked at the Empulse's highway range of 56 miles and compared it to Zero's "highway commuting" range of 63 miles.

[Deadly Silent Ninja]

I think protomech is right. Jensen Beeler did a pretty awful job with the story, probably because he wrote as strict opinion and not as a journalistic report, but there are some issues with the way some companies, namely Zero, report their ranges. We already discussed this here to exhaustion, but this article only show me two things:

1) There is an urgent need for actual journalists covering the motorcycle industry, especially EVs (I have yet to read a real report on EVs. It's all either press releases or opinion articles/reviews). Maybe the problem is that you have lawyers with MBAs writing articles without proper journalism training... 

2) All companies should do at least what Brammo did and report all the knowable ranges for their bikes. Having the 3 figures helps a lot.

[skuzzle]

The MIC range tests should be changed to reflect typical usage, even if the model isn't similar to the EPA model used for cars.  ICE's are more efficient at highway speeds than city speeds, which is the exact opposite of the EV's.  I don't think the EV city numbers should ever be used.  Unfortunately the city numbers seem to pop up as the default everywhere.  For example, the EV TCO calculator (http://www.empulsebuyer.com/tcoCalculator.php) defaults to 121 miles for the Empulse R.  This range also seems to spill over into the battery life.  The battery life is not anywhere near 163350 miles if it needs to be recharged every 50 or so miles (Its still around 80k miles which is more than the life of most motorcycles).

[EmpulseRider]

The MIC range tests should be changed to reflect typical usage, even if the model isn't similar to the EPA model used for cars.  ICE's are more efficient at highway speeds than city speeds, which is the exact opposite of the EV's.  I don't think the EV city numbers should ever be used.  Unfortunately the city numbers seem to pop up as the default everywhere.  For example, the EV TCO calculator (http://www.empulsebuyer.com/tcoCalculator.php) defaults to 121 miles for the Empulse R.  This range also seems to spill over into the battery life.  The battery life is not anywhere near 163350 miles if it needs to be recharged every 50 or so miles (Its still around 80k miles which is more than the life of most motorcycles).

I used the city number because some of the bikes are not highway capable... the tool was designed mainly to compare 2 or more electric bikes relative to one another with the most standardized metric I could find. The battery life numbers have to be inline with the numbers used for city range across all models, otherwise the maths would be wrong.

It also serves to get the message across that the batteries arent nearly as disposable and short lived as people think... even at 1/3 of those numbers.

[Brammofan]

Still lots of activity over on that comment thread, including a couple of posts by Brian.

[Gavin]

I'm kinda surprised that he hasn't acknowledged yet that Brammo did do what he wanted...City, Highway and combined all separate numbers....

Strange?? Is he just ignoring that fact to get site hits???

Gavin

[EmpulseRider]

I'm kinda surprised that he hasn't acknowledged yet that Brammo did do what he wanted...City, Highway and combined all separate numbers....

Strange?? Is he just ignoring that fact to get site hits???

Gavin

That would be like admitting that he made an incorrect assumption... because, thats exactly what he did.