So
Honda is getting into the electric motorcycle biz huh? Well, now we know what
they plan to do with all the engineering talent suddenly available from their now
defunct F1 & AMA
efforts.
Not exactly. Honda faces the same hurdles everyone else does:
range and recharge
times.
I spent some time with an outfit made electric scooters and
motorcycles. It was a real geeky operation making scooters and souped-up jobs
custom-built to customers' needs, desires and checkbooks. Once or twice a
year someone with sacks of money would come in and say something along the
lines of "Take my GSX-R and make it
electric." We would, but we'd invariably face the same challenges everyone else
building EVs faces: range and recharge times.
Yeah, we could build an
electric GSX-R that would out haul Valentino Rossi - for about
seven to 10 miles. Then you'd stop. And then you'd have to plug it in for six or
eight or 10 hours. The bike was cool, but not very practical. You couldn't take the
thing up some canyon road on your way out of town to Palm Springs for a three
day weekend. These will be the same limitations that Honda will face, but in a
couple of not so noticeable ways, electric motorcycles play to Honda's
strengths.
For one, bikes are easy. They're small, light and easy to
work on. You can fab up and try things on two or three test mules in an
afternoon, and that's an order of magnitude or so harder with cars. For another,
Honda is a bike company. Yeah, I know, tell that to Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost and Ron Dennis, but it started out primarily as a
bike company (OK, go back far enough and it started out as a piston ring
company, but still...) then morphed into a car company. What Honda learns from
making an Ebike over the next two years can, hopefully, migrate to
cars.
Honda confirms working with bikes is favorable on a number of
levels.
"History shows that motorcycles remain strong in a difficult
market environment and have always supported Honda in difficult times," says
CEO Takeo Fukui.
"People showed renewed interest in the value of motorcycles which consume
less fuel for commuting purposes as well as for their easy-to-own/easy-to-use
efficiency."
Good point, Takeo. That's another thing bikes got going
for them: They're cheap.
Pound for pound and dollar for dollar
motorcycles are the best bet for enthusiast fun. Not for me, of course, because I
am comically and frighteningly uncoordinated and that's never a good thing on
a motorcycle. But you get my point.
Think of what Honda is doing as a
real world proof of concept scheme. Make an electric motorcycle. Make it work.
Make it work better. Then import the technology into a car. Repeat the
process.
What could go wrong?
Photo:
Honda.