What is EBR's biggest reason for not gaining traction in US market?

That won races.

-jim

 

There is a first for everything.



-jim

 

He may not be in the mood to, but that's not gonna stop him.

 

I read that and I thought "horseshit". Lol

 

so the answer to my specific question is 'yes'. the results make him "great" because the bike was flawed. got it.

i do wonder... if he made a clone of a Japanese Superbike and qualified for WSBK or even had better results, would u still think he was great...

im not bashing the guy or discrediting his work any more than u are. weve agreed that he made poor choices in his design. my contention has always been with the title of "great engineer", a title that other ppl gave to him no doubt. my disagreement is with u thinking that hes a great engineer.

u dont need to get mad and make it personal. im not attacking u or EB. the amount of respect i have for the guy wont change and im not trying to change yours.

 

I certainly didn't mean to bash Erik either. I absolutely love the bike. A few things though. The company can be successful and I'll tell you why. They are assembly only, they never made any of their parts, so those odd forks and brakes and wheels cost way more than the should for no performance gain. And I can almost guarantee if EBR didn't pay for tooling those costs were amortized on speculative volume that didn't happen. With a standard Showa package similar to the Aprilia that I mated, his margins would have been improved simply by buying off the shelf forks, wheels, calipers and so on. This would have probably added 1-2k just in margins per bike. Not to mention no tooling costs for the supplier to make one off parts. Next thing I noticed was his "assembly" line. He had way too much over head. You could have easily been able to support demand with two people in a cell and proper fixtures, line side supply and SOWs for assembly. His problem is he was clueless on actual operations. And if I was his director of sourcing I would have fought tooth and nail to get his engineering team to understand that they designed themselves into a hole. The frame, is actually pretty awesome as that whole chassis is amazing. But little things that can keep margins high and overhead low was not executed. That's why I'm in talks with a possible buyer. With a CI mentality and lean practices you could build enough bikes out of a facility 1/10th of the size they had AND improve performance, broaden customer base and lower your price enough to buy back market share and make money. I would have also developed a broader portfolio of bikes. I'm sure cash flow didn't allow it yet but they needed a smaller bike for urban riders, adventure bike and...... a V4 high end bike.

Just my shitty useless opinion though.

 

That, your MBA from a prominent university and tree fiddy might score you a frappachino at *$.



-jim

 

Que pasa?


We've done this same approach 3x in the last 4 years with 3 different acquisitions. We live it every day and I'm willing to bet a lot of you with trucks have our equipment.


Also, yes a MBA from a prominent university.


If I come off as a dick it's because I'm pissed a US motorcycle company is failing again and with the right leadership they could have had a different outcome. I'm not directing this at you specifically or anyone and meant no disrespect.

 

The "engineering mind" comments come from him taking his "out of the box" ideas and ability to be competitive with them on a stage that is VERY hard to be competitive on. So the answer is yes, his ability to make his ideas/bikes competitive, in spite of their deficiencies, is very impressive.

Would it have been as impressive if he would have taken a 200hp V4 motor, put it in a conventional frame, Ohlins suspension, Brembo braking setup, and some Marchesini wheels? From an engineering standpoint, no.

BUT...it would have been more popular, profitable, marketable, and sustainable.

That is what BMW did. They made their own version of the GSX-R1000, gave it an additional 25hp over all the other Liter bikes, put their ugly headlights on it, and sold a shitload of them.

But part of me thinks he HAD to have known that. I'm sure at some point over his career somebody pointed all of this out to him. Apparently he was more concerned with/excited about making his design competitive, rather than being competitive with the same design as everyone else.

 

Haha. It only happens when I haven't eaten in too long. I get irritable as fuck when my blood sugar starts dropping.

 

His bikes did/do make great street bikes. Engine, frame, brakes, everything as is...they are just fine for the street. The problem is there are better bikes for less money. Perhaps with standard brakes/wheels, and a streamlined assembly process like you mentioned, the price could be dropped $4k per bike. Nobody is going to choose a Buell over a Ducati or Aprilia for the same money.

As far as racing goes, that is another story. The chassis is good, but as witnessed in WSBK, the motor isn't capable of making competitive HP and retaining any level of reliability.

In the few years since EB was in WSBK, more OEMs have evolved their Liter bikes. Now all of them (except Honda) make 190hp to the rear wheel off the showroom floor with nothing but an exhaust, ECU flash, and dyno tune.

You can't put out a bike with unconventional brakes and suspension, with an outdated engine that makes 30-40hp less than the competition, doesn't have components from Ohlins, Brembo, or Marchesini, set a price tag of $18-19k and expect people to buy it.

THAT is why his bikes never took off.

Take his frame, put a conventional front end on it with some Ohlins suspension and Brembo brakes, throw a 190hp V4 in it, to make it lighter give it Magnesium subframe and engine cases, and put a lightweight Li battery in it, then add some Forged Marchesinis, and people will pay $20k for that bike. Make an initial production run of 1000 units (for race homologation) and see what happens.

An American Superbike that comes from the showroom floor weighing less than 400lbs, while putting 190hp to the wheel, and has top notch components, will sell. That is something we could get excited about and rally behind.

 

Ryan... One issue is the misinformation about the capability of these bikes that is propagated by people that haven't ridden or raced one.

My experience is that they are competitive at the level 99% of us will use them. YRMV

 

Your "how many bikes have you designed that got to WSBK" is pretty ad hominem bullshit dude.

Because you didn't do something yourself you can't criticize? Hog wash. Plus... with enough capital backing, anyone can get a bespoke bike into WSBK if they produce enough units for the street. Thats not an accomplishment in and of itself. Attack prolly could get their GP chassis in there if they felt like fucking up their business model and making full bikes now with some ungodly amount of funding.

Making a sportbike with a dual spar or trellis frame, linkage setup shock, and USD forks is not rocket science dude. There are libraries of geometries out there that work to make a jig and copy from. Then it becomes an exercise in chassis flex and rigidity, and a capable power plant. Crighton and the Vyrus guys and Britten and the electric bikes are all trying thing that push boundaries or take a diff approach. Crighton is after lighter power with better momentum dynamics, Vyrus and Britten a complete approach to suspension dynamics. Electric bikes alternative clean power. Suter is putting new tech to 2T's and there are other engine makers out there even going way further with next gen 2T's than that. Putting a liter motor in a frame with off the shelf parts and a few gimmicks is not innovative in my eyes, and when it performs worse, it extra serves no purpose. He was solving problems that didn't exist then not even solving them.

 

My blood sugar must be chronically low all the time!

 

My blood sugar is getting lower by the minute from reading all this...

Someone, somewhere insinuated that EBR wasn't a true manufacturer cause nothing was made in-house.
Well that's how it works.
The OEM designs a part, finds a supplier to make said part using tooling that the OEM paid for and owns.

Very few OEMs actually produce any parts themselves.

I toured the Porsche assembly plant in Zuffenhausen last year and was told that the only part made in-house is the mag crankcase for the GT3.
I would consider Porsche a legit manufacturer...

 

I don't give a damn about what you think is bullshit. For at least the 5th fucking time now, I never agreed with his ideas nor thought they made the most business sense. Nor did I say he was "fixing a problem". I am pretty damn sure EB never said he was "fixing a problem" either. He wanted to see if he could design his own bike from scratch and make it competitive; he did that.

The fact is that what he was able to accomplish is impressive. If you don't agree, I don't give a shit.

He didn't just "put a Liter motor in a frame and toss in some off the shelf parts and gimmicks".

If it is that easy, then why aren't there 1,000 different OEMs out there? Why don't people just make their own bikes? Why aren't there 40 different manufacturers on the grid?

It would have been much easier for him to get a motor from BMW, a chassis from Honda, suspension from Ohlins, wheels from Marchesini, brakes from
Brembo, toss it all together and grid up with a bike just like everyone else's. But he didn't want to do that. He wanted to make his own bike that was different and see if it could be competitive against the Jap and Italian bikes with proven setups, decades of experience, and huge budgets....and it was.

Regardless of what you or anyone else thinks, that is impressive. If you think you can do better, go for it.

 

I chose not to respond to that. To me, it had the hubris inspired "I can do it better because I am a trackday hero and have an MBA and understand supply chains and ..."

The real world is a bitch.

-jim

 

answer to question 2... there are literally TONS of them. you just read WERA every day instead of getting deep into the catacombs of other forums. there are guys casting their own V4 2-stroke cases from scratch in their garages... guys making their own swingarms and frames from scratch... guys making their own fairings from scratch. guys doing their own open-source ECU programming to run if-then conditional dual fuel map tuning on converting 2-strokes to EFI... all types of fantastic stuff out there, you just gotta search it out.

question 1... money, barriers to entry, market demand, niche product.

question 3... mostly question 1's answer, plus lack of large scale sponsorship, lack of large funding source for manufacturing in a niche market (let alone somebody who wants to throw engineering money at a race program). you literally have to find somebody, that makes a ton of money doing or selling something else, that just so happens to love motorcycle racing, to make that happen... as evident by the main subject of this thread himself. there's no money in "just sportbikes", nor is there any money in sportbike racing. you either need to find somebody that owns a company that makes something like: scooters for the Asian and Indian market, and btw, he also loves motorbike racing and wants to throw $20m at it every year with no expected return except some free marketing. OR... you need to find a dude like Bezos or Musk or Buffet that does something totally unrelated to motorcycles (and just happens to love motorcycle racing).

that should have been easily apparent before this thread. racing programs and sponsorship are largely throwing money in the trash unless they directly relate to their technology and product development (F1), or it fits and helps their company image by its nature (Red Bull and doing exciting danger things). you think Marlboro or Shell Oil or Repsol or Monster Cellular NEED racing? you think when XM Radio sponsored their Le Mans car that it generated income for the company? HELL NO. somebody somewhere in those firms just likes racing and sees it as a decent avenue to market their firm. they are losing money on those ventures every time.

 

bikes were/are already competitive. if you have examples of things that work well, then you do something differently, somewhere in your mind there has to be a logical reason. engineers aren't artists, i refuse to believe any of that was "just cause." so the things he did differently, somewhere he thought they may advance the field of motorcycle performance. the brakes, the frame fluids, whatever... no real engineer would do anything like that with the thought of, "this might be worse, but what the hell..."

so when it doesn't do better... what's the point. being different and new and trying new things is great... when it doesn't do better in the real world than the textbook example (Ohlins FGRs with Brembos), then go back to the drawing board perhaps. when you make an engine that's 30whp down on the competition and can't be boosted up without blowing up... go back to the drawing board. this is a performance based industry and you're talking about the MOST performance oriented part of it... racing. if you want to win, you don't do different things that end up being worse than the normal thing.

 

Actually, I am a member of multiple forums. At last check, I was a member of like 12 different forums. I have read lots of threads and seen pictures of "homemade" bike projects. But in the majority of those cases, they are mating a different engine in a different frame, doing a front end swap, or making their own bodywork, etc.

They arent making their own complete bike from scratch that is completely different and new, they are essentially making a "frankenbike", and more importantly, none of them are landing on AMA podiums and making WSBK grids.

But as far as him "fixing the problem", I agree with you. There was no problem that needed to be fixed. Bikes were already good. He wasn't trying to fix anything or improve anything, he was trying to see if he could make his own ideas/designs competitive. I get that.

It wasn't a case of "the Jap and Italian bikes suck, I can make one better". It was a case of "I wonder if I can design a bike that can compete with them".

As far as marketing, profit, popularity, etc., it wasn't a good idea IMO. There are other bikes that are better and cost less. From a business standpoint, it wasn't smart...which is why it failed so many times.

But from an engineering standpoint, and a "personal challenge" standpoint, I totally get it. He wanted to see if he could make a bike that could be competitive. He did. That is impressive and respectable. It wasn't financially smart, but it was impressive.