Electric sportsbike performance

I haven't yet seen any electric sportsbikes (Energica or other), spinning laps at my local track. Anyone seen them being ridden first hand? Performance? Recharging? Still not the time to be looking at these, even for non-race, track-day riders?

 

There's a group that races them in AHRMA. You can't do every session of a track-day with one if track-days are your thing, since charging takes longer than the time between sessions, but people are riding them on the track. For race use, it works OK since there isn't that much track time through the day. 1-2 practicies + 1 race per day. For street usage, I'd say they're ready for prime-time if the range of whichever model you choose fits your needs. Not all the various electric models are the same capabilities though, so you have to really do your research. I know with the Brammo's, they kept getting thermal cut-back because of the heat generated with intense use for many laps. Basically you loose all your power while it cools down.

Summary, good for races, good for street, probably not good for track-days (if you want to ride all the sessions). Perhaps one of the models with a modular battery pack would work and you could pick up spare pack(s) {not cheap} to be charging while riding. The technology is constantly improving, if you wait, something better will come, but that's always true isn't it.

 

Thanks, good feedback on the recharging. I was just taking a closer look at the Lightening LS-218. Which seems to be one of the faster production options. And saw that it can be recharged from the wall in an hour... So as you say, may not be long before something comes along which is quite practical for track day use.

I'm not really considering at this point anyway. Imagine my next bike will be combustion, but the one after that...

 

Electric bikes suck.

 

, IN on page 2!

 

Livengood won't work on them, eh?

 

Nope.

 

I've only seen one, but I don't know what brand/model it is, or who the owner is. I've seen it at a few track days at NCBIKE. All I know is there was a gas-powered generator charging the bike....so yeah...

 

Looks like that LS-218 has 220hp at the rear wheel and weighs about 220kg? Assume at some point, they will be pretty competitive...

 

haha, does defeat the purpose in a lot of ways.

 

Yeah I mean ideally you'd plug it into a power post, but just thought that particular case was a bit ironic lol NCBIKE doesn't have a lot of power around, they get taken up pretty quickly usually. At other tracks I imagine he just plugs it into an outlet somewhere.

 

Don’t care, and won’t care.

They still suck, and will always suck.

 

Gasoline engines suck, especially turbo- or super-charged ones.

That's what causes the intake noise.

 

Remember TT Zero? Yeah they eliminated that from the schedule next year. After all the years they've run it the whole "ebikes are the future" thing proved to be not worth it.

 

You can come ride my Alta anytime. I dare you not to smile.

 

He’s skeered he would like.

 

Even if I did like, they would still suck.

 

Electric bikes don’t come with bad JuJu....so there’s that

 

Goes against the basis of his paycheck.

 

Lol most tracks power grid is garbage and can’t even properly pull wattage to run tire warmers... no freaking way in hell would fast charging a battery PLUS tire warmers on any shore power at any track on the east coast would that work..... a decent size generator is what you ultimately what you would need imo