Electric bike I don't like.

[TheRamJam]

What is this pile of nonsense! An Electric bike!

0 - 60 in 4 secs. Looks as if it'll fall apart in 4 seconds!



http://www.firebox.com/product/3556/...Saietta-R-Bike

[andrewsmith]

okay who sneezed?

That is vile!

[Sid Squid]

There was one of those, perhaps not quite identical styling - but close, at the Soho meet a few months back. I spent an interesting half hour chatting to the chap that was riding it, the one we saw there was a pre-production prototype but it certainly appears to show promise.

The styling is errrrmm... individual. I have no certainty but I suspect this is a deliberate attempt to emphasise the distinction between this and present vehicles.

[Geodude]

Does it turn into one of these?



I sort of like it but maybe because it does look a bit like a destroyer droid i would give one a try though.

[TheRamJam]

100 mile range is not an awful yet. Probably some 16 hour recharge or something ridiculous like that. So that 2 hour bike ride as turned into a 2 day bike ride! Does it come with free AA cover so you don't get stranded.

I am all for electric bikes and new technology but I dont think battery power is the way to go!

Yeah saw this at the MCN show at the beginning of the year. Didn't like it then either!

[Sid Squid]

Originally Posted by TheRamJam

100 mile range is not an awful yet. Probably some 16 hour recharge or something ridiculous like that. So that 2 hour bike ride as turned into a 2 day bike ride! Does it come with free AA cover so you don't get stranded.

Depends on what you use your bike for, if you only commute on it - like many people do - you probably don't do a hundred miles a day, you may not do a hundred miles in a week, lots of people don't do that much. Even if you commute the whole hundred miles a day you don't have to wait 'til it's flat to recharge it, so you'd add a bit of charge during the day or at home while you're either working or sleeping. What proportion of people always do more than a hundred miles at a time and then need to do it again instantly? No, I don't know either, but I doubt that it's a majority and this bike clearly isn't for them, but for lots and lots of us its range capabilities would not be a compromise in day to day use.

We have a happy situation right now where you can put lots of energy into your bike in just a few minutes - it isn't going to last and it that's not negotiable. It may be economic reasons that make petrol effectively unavailable or it may just plain run out, whatever happens electricity is the way biking is going.

Originally Posted by Stenno

Yeah saw this at the MCN show at the beginning of the year. Didn't like it then either!

Styling wise I can't say I'm a fan either, but that's an irrelevance - look past what the styling is to possibly why the styling is. Electric bikes have very different technology to the ones we have now, effectively the form of bikes we have now is decided in a significant part for us by how the oily whirly bits work, electric bikes probably won't have gearboxes, the Saietta doesn't and it has its motor at the front of the, (very long for good suspension action), swingarm. That alone may not be significant but it tells us something important - things don't need to be the shape they are now - there are designs that are presently not possible or practical, but new forms of power might free up design avenues as yet unexplored.

Biking is going to be different in the future, and it will be altered in the greater part by changes that are forced upon us either by economic or practical circumstances, there isn't any argument about that - the only thing to disagree over is when.
The Saietta is an early and likely flawed exercise in a new direction for motorcycling, but it's just the beginning.

Personally I can't wait, I'm really looking forward to it.

[Jayneflakes]

Originally Posted by Sid Squid

Biking is going to be different in the future, and it will be altered in the greater part by changes that are forced upon us either by economic or practical circumstances, there isn't any argument about that - the only thing to disagree over is when.
The Saietta is an early and likely flawed exercise in a new direction for motorcycling, but it's just the beginning.

Personally I can't wait, I'm really looking forward to it.

I love your attitude here and all I can add is jolly well said. The truth is that petrol will become uneconomical before it runs out, we can all look forwards to rising fuel costs, how long will it be until petrol is over the £2/L mark? It will come and that day is not really so far off.

The electric motor can be a fantastically powerful thing, but the big problem is going to be batteries. I understand that production of Lithium will soon be outstripped by demand. What ever way we look at it, our energy greedy society is facing a tough future.

I like many others though will mourn the passing of the petrol age.

FUGGLY!!!

Hydrogen fuel cells maybe? A better longterm bet than batteries

[TamSV]

Batteries don't have to be a problem if we treat them like fuel and get over wanting to own them.

So, as you're getting to your 100 mile limit - pull into a (wind powered ) fuelling station and swap your old batteries for fully charged equivalents. Your old ones go on charge and get sold to someone else the following day.

Battery range only matters if we insist on keeping "our" batteries.

We just need a winner to emerge and become the standard battery/fuel cell.