Wheel-E Podcast: Swimming electric motorcycle, Trek e-bike, more

Wheel-E Podcast: Swimming electric motorcycle, Trek e-bike, more

And we’re live welcome back everybody to a new episode of the wheelie podcast I’m your host Mike ATL and I’m joined Again by Electric Seth wi how’s it going Seth I’m good awesome and we’ve got another pile of interesting electric bike electric motorcycle and more stories this week uh we’re going to cover

Everything from new ebikes from Tre and 630 to uh some interesting political updates on an ebike bill go grow got a new electric scooter uh some sad news out of Sweden about cake motorcycles I just got a new electric Harley and Seth has put some serious time on electric snowboard that he’s

Going to update us on so where are we going to start this week Seth all right uh 630 launches the electric bike trike trike everyone says they actually want yeah so every time I write an article about an electric trike there’s all these like armchair Automotive Engineers

That come out of the woodwork to be like well actually if you put the two wheels up front it’d be so much more stable and technically yes that is correct but that almost never happens in the ebike world because it’s just a lot more complicated and a lot more costly to design dual

Front wheels with the steering and everything but a an ebik company called 630 has gone and done it they’ve made not only a reverse trike or a tadpole trike with the two wheels up front but they’ve also made it a folding design and on top of that it is uh even a

Tilting trike so not only is it more stable with two wheels up front but it actually leans into the turns so you turn more like a traditional um and that’s really sort of the beauty of this system is that you’ve got the increased stability of the two front wheels and the normal leaning

Sensation so you don’t feel like you’re getting thrown off of the thing in the turns um they are very small wheels I think it’s 16inch up front and then a 20-inch wheel in the back but the other nice advantage of going with the reverse strike or the tadpole trike design is

That instead of typically having a front-wheel drive trike you’ve now got a rear wheeel drive trike because they can put that 750 watt Hub motor in the rear wheel and that’s where it looks like on this design most of the weight is going to be because the seat is so far back if

You’re watching the YouTube video here with us as opposed to listening you’ll see we’re watching a video of someone test riding this and it actually looks like a a Prett nice and comfortable setup as far as electric trikes go it’s it’s not even that big you know e trikes

Are often big and bulky but this one looks only slightly larger than a typical ebike uh even in its unfolded state you know not even talking about how small it gets when it’s folded so it’s really neat to see 630 come out with this uh tadpull trike for a fairly

Reasonable price I believe it’s priced at $1,999 so you know 2,000 bucks for one of these that’s about a $500 premium over the typical $1,500 electric trikes that we see like uh the electric XP trike and like the rad trike that’s now on sale but you do have that tadpole

Design which everybody seems to want so now the question is now that this thing exists is everyone who says well I’d rather have two wheels up front than I actually buy the thing yeah so I think we saw a tadpole trike at one of the uh bike shows

Probably at uh eurobike that I’m thinking um and I remember getting on it and I remember thinking you know one of the main one of the reasons people get trikes because they feel really stable like when you when you’re not moving you can kind of just sit on it and chill but

I remember the the tadpole trike that we tried there um would actually just kind of fall over if you lean to the left it would kind of just lean and you kind of fall and that’s great for riding you can can ride it more like a two- bike but

It’s not great for people who have you know Mobility or balance issues and it kind of like you know if that’s an issue why even go with three wheels you know like I don’t know if she’s going to try it uh we’re watching the YouTube still

Um but it seems like see how that just kind of Falls over if you’re like falling one way or the other I mean does that kind of negate the the three-wheel capability I mean I would me personally I would much rather ride this thing than

A uh two wheels in the back so does this also this flexibility also kind of eliminate the the main advantage of you know where trikes are you know kind of important for people who you know don’t have great balance or don’t trust uh themselves to you know balance a bike

What yeah that’s a that’s a good point um you know one of the things that’s nice about typical trikes that are not leaning is that you never have to put your feet down and so here you’re right you know when she leans real far at a

Stop the thing gets a little unwieldy I wonder if there’s a way to I almost thought you were playing the video In Reverse there for a second she was backing up um I wonder if there’s a way to lock the Leaning maybe has a reverse though it looks like she might be there

Yeah it looks like it does that’s um that’s actually a really nice feature I’m gonna talk about that when we get to the live wire because my new uh $177,000 motorcycle does not have her first which is very frustrating but um and this $2,000 trike does but yeah I I wonder if

There’s a way to lock that leaning because that would solve that issue because yeah especially if like an automatic lock where if you’re not moving at all it would just lock into you know trike mode I guess or or three-wheel mode and then once once you’re you start rolling then it then it

Kind of loosens up what do you think oh that would be beautiful yeah I wasn’t even thinking automatic even just like you know switch but yeah if it could just do it on its own like now you’re talking of course that’s it’s not going to be a $2,000 trike anymore but is this

A $2,000 trike yeah they’re um they’re taking pre-orders on it now it’s not uh I don’t think it’s going to be shipping soon but uh it’s priced at1 199.99 that’s awesome and um I I remember so this one looks a little bit different the one that we’re seeing um on the kind

Of press images versus the one we saw in the video um there’s no uh back to the to the seat in the the video um do we know what the default configuration is going to be or is it a removable back to the seat um that’s probably an upgrade

Seat I know um electric also does like an upgrade option so you can get that um seat back I found that when I’ve ridden trikes like this it it seems nice but I end up not really using it because I’m sitting forward like I would on a normal

Bike you know like when you’re on a bike you’re just not used to having a back rest so uh it seems nice but I feel like I don’t even lean into it yeah but you’re also not probably the target market for a trike that’s maybe uh the

Folks that are like the back I don’t know uh yeah cool well i’ like I like to see more of these are they going to send us one to to review or hopefully yeah I’m actually working on a review of their um Rickshaw trike which is two

Wheels in the back but has a big bench where you can theoretically put two people but I’ve had like five people so far oh jeez maybe the next trke after this one will be this uh leaning tadpole triack interesting all right let’s move on this one’s great uh treu unveils the

New Marlin plus ebike pushing Bosch mid drives to new affordability yeah I knew you were going to like this one Seth so uh this is tre’s newest electric mountain bike it’s based off their very popular Marlin um acoustic mountain bike um this time it comes with a Bosch

Electric motor though uh which is a big deal because Bosch vid drives they’re seen as you know one of the the top tier uh electric mountain bike drives on the market and they’re not cheap you know these bikes generally cost four or $5,000 from um you know Big Bike Shop

Brands like this and so um what we’re seeing now is tx’s probably lowest priced mid Drive uh ebike that we’ve seen so far uh I think it’s 2700 $ is the starting price though you can get a few other nicer bits and pieces on it that’s going to um ratchet the price up

By like a thousand bucks but to start a treade Bosch powered mid Drive electric mountain bike at $2,700 is a big deal now we have seen treack bikes for for Less Tre electric uh bikes but they’re Hub motor bikes so um you know having a brand name like BOS on here at this

Price is pretty nuts now it’s it’s not a big battery you know it’s their 400 watt hour uh I think it’s the compact tube battery so you can’t even take it out um and it’s not a powerful motor it’s their sort of entry level uh motor that’s got

Uh I forget if it’s 60 newon meters uh of torque I have to double check on that one but it’s you know it’s not their their Ultra powerful uh climb any Hill type of Motors it’s their active line plus which is acceptable you know you’re

Still going to be putting in uh your own honest pedaling but it will take you most places and so there are some you know I don’t want to say Corners cut here because it still looks like a very good bike but um you know it’s not going

To have the biggest batteries it’s not going to have the the highest power and it’s not going to have the nicest drivetrain but it is coming from TX so you know that it’s going to use all good parts and most importantly you’re going to have service and support from track

And be able to go to local uh bike shops to get it serviced which for a lot of people is probably the deciding factor if you’re buying an expensive electric mountain bike you don’t want to be stuck with where am I going to get this thing serviced

Uh oh and now I see the 50 Newt meter torque number there so you know modest not not anything crazy but but still um certainly fine power uh but yeah Seth I can see this as being like right up your alley yeah I mean the the market kind of

Needs something like this I think um you know people want to get into electric mountain bikes but they don’t trust um kind of the new brands coming out of China or you know the ones that are basically just made up um they trust Trek but they also you know they don’t

Want to spend I don’t know I I think $55,000 is kind of like the starting point for typical Trek mountain bikes um and truck has made like uh bike ebikes priced at this price point before and I think even with BOS up but like I feel

Like The Verve they had a Verve for 2600 but that’s kind of like a you know a hybrid street bike or whatever um so I you know I think this is a a great like uh starting point for a uh trk high quality e- mountain bike although like

Did they give specs on that that that suspension Fork looks looks a little bit um low lowend um yeah I don’t recall which Fork it is I mean a lot of these parts are going to be a bit lower shelf but you know tre’s not going to put garbage on

Here right right well I mean it’s that’s what’s great about the Tre brand is like you know you’re getting good stuff all around even you know their lowest cost which know admittedly is you know you can get a e- mountain bike for half the price but it’s going to be much worse

Off and of course like having a a Bosch drivetrain is like you know I I kind of feel like that that’s like a $2,000 starting point right there like you you know you add a Bosch drivetrain you’re you’re adding $22,000 to the the cost of the bike it also looks like they have

Big um uh breake uh stuff up front which is good um um I I I remember you said the uh the batter is non- removable um is that even by like a bike shop like in you know five years that can it be removed like uh that way or is

It just not like user removable or whatever right I think it’s it’s still serviceable um a lot of those batteries you can remove uh after taking either the motor out or if they’re not mid drives often you take the um the pedals out and slide it out past the bottom

Bracket but I think this is the compact tube that isn’t you know removable for charging okay and it you know this might also be a good way for you know mountain bikers to kind of ease into um electric mountain bikes so you’re a mountain biker maybe you’re you know my age 50

And uh you’re like H I’m need some help on those Hills a little bit this is a good way to like dip your toes into the the e- mountain bike world without like you know fully fully going ebike you can keep your uh your your downhill bike as

Well so I I love to see this yeah this is exciting for the industry I think all right let’s move forward Congress finally agrees on electric bike bill but not the one everyone wanted that’s typical yeah of course this is not the uh ebike act which was working

Its way pretty well through Congress to provide a federal incentive for ebike purchases Instead This is a new bill that is designed to give the um uh consumer product safety commission a mandate to regulate uh electric bike batteries in the US because right now they can only create um voluntary

Standards not something that’s you know enforcable and so um the the idea behind this bill is to give them the authority to say like these are the standards that ebikes imported into the US need to to meet to ensure that these batteries are safe and this relates to something we’ve

Covered a decent amount that there’s been an uptick in fires caused by lithium ion batteries from electric bikes and electric scooters and other micr Mobility devices I think it is important to keep this in perspective that you know we’re talking about uh even in New York um cases of like I

Think it was 17 deaths last year which each one is a tragedy but you know this is there are many many more deaths on the subway for example so you know the while this is a problem it’s important to keep it in perspective but in this

Case this is all about uh both parties of Congress seeming to come together on one of the few times that at least I’ve seen any bipartisan action in the last year or two and uh so in that way I think this is a good thing and that you

Know we all want ebikes to be safer um even for people that don’t ride ebikes you know if you’ve got someone living in the apartment beneath you and they’re charging their bike you want to make sure that their bike is safe because that affects you so

I would call this generally a good thing uh I hope that the uh regulations that that may come out of this if this bill actually passes are not overly heavy-handed you know we want to make sure that we don’t stifle El like Innovation and you know sort of uh limit

Smaller companies that that don’t have the um uh you know Financial coffers to be able to keep up with some of this this increased burden regulation but of course it is very important to ensure safety here so in general I think this is a great thing and if this is what it

Takes to finally get some bipartisan support then you know perhaps it’s just one more feather and ebikes caps yeah uh you know what’s actually kind of interesting to me as well is that if the if there is a battery um uh standardization kind of uh byproduct

From this you know if if uh if there’s like a hey you know you need to have this this and this for the batteries the ebbi companies might be like oh crap we don’t you know we don’t have enough time to to make up something like that let’s

Just get a off-the-shelf solution here and maybe a couple big companies you know figure it out and make a a compatible bike battery and lo and behold all the bike batteries are the same and you can take one B bike battery from another and like all of a sudden

You’ve got it kind of a standard I you know that would be a really great byproduct of something like this yeah that that sounds beautiful I I hope that’s you’re too jaded possible yeah yeah really um I mean it’s it’s not you know impossible I think that that that

Is absolutely plausible in that you’re right you know if if companies have to sort of go back to the drawing board and start figuring out new Solutions and there’s only a couple big battery suppliers that say like list listen we already got this worked out then maybe

Companies are finally sort of forced to coales around one or just a couple designs um I’ll keep my fingers crossed for that I don’t know if I bet on you’re not put money on it though no I’m afraid not unfortunately all right well hopefully it makes it through all right let’s move forward

Gogoro launches New Pulse electric scooter as highest performance model yet this one’s exciting um this is a totally new design for goo if you’re familiar with the company’s scooters they’ve always been very you know like bubbly cute rounded um just that like very sort of like fun Asian design

And this new scooter not only is it higher performance but it takes a totally new design it’s very angular it’s very sharp edges and it’s got a lot of new technology um one of the standout features is the higher power so it’s got um a 9 kilowatt motor and uh it’s been

Sort of like wink wink hinted to me from some people inside the company that there’s a chance that in the future that motor could do more power right now it’s it’s limited to 9 kilowatts which is plenty for an electric scooter uh it’s unclear what the top speed is but it’s

Significantly more power than the um goo scooters that have done in the like 55 to 60 m per hour range so you know it’s probably going to do at least 60 if not a good bit higher than that certainly highway speeds um but they’ve also got a new cooling system the scooters have

Always been liquid cooled up until now but now they’re using both a combination of liquid and forced air to create uh not only a higher power scooter but also a more efficient scooter than they’ve had in the past so that they can use those same batteries in a higher power

Motor and still get uh that good range of course goor is famous for those swappable batteries which is what really makes them Stand Out is having this sort of de facto International battery swapping standard um and then the uh last two sort of like really cool Tech

Features here one is this massive screen I think it’s like a 10-in screen on this thing that has a lot of different different um impacts it’s going to do like turn by term navigation you’re going to have lots of different customization for your screen it’s basically like a an automotive level um

Display but put onto a scooter which we’ve never really seen before the second big uh Innovation here is the headlight which again is almost like Automotive level uh it’s made out of I think 13 different segments and they’re not all on at the same time but they uh

Alternate depending on your speed your lean angle and things like that so that as you’re going faster it’s Shining Light further out ahead of you so you can you know have higher reaction time when you’re leaning into turns the more you lean the more it’s turning on like

The outer edge lights to sort of lead you into the turn and let you see further around uh coming obstacles that sort of thing so uh it’s really interesting in how it works that it doesn’t have any moving parts and yet it kind of like moves the light around

Depending on the riding conditions and how you’re riding so uh just like a lot of really cool innovations that we haven’t seen from goo yet put into this new scooter to make it just a lot more high performance a lot higher Tech and kind of pushing the company in this new

Uh more sort of aggressive design language um obviously you know they’re still producing their their other scooters still a lot of like cute bubbly round go Gro scooters out there but this is definitely one to watch as it rolls out yeah I I think this is awesome and

Definitely the way to go uh especially the you know the theoretical Highway component and of course like it’s not in the US yet but we would love to see these things here um we did see that the goo in the Americas now which is South America right yes they’re going into I

Think Colombia and shoot there’s another country I forget there’s somewhere else in South America so they’re definitely expanding into the Americas which is a big deal because they have not yet been um west of like Israel I think I mean they were in Germany for a little while as part of a

A scooter share program uh Coupe I think but um they’ve basically only been in Asia so far so to even come to South America is a big deal and maybe it means North America’s Next who really knows I would love to see New York I think New

York would be perfect for this kind of situation um abely but uh you know back to this particular uh vehicle um how do they I mean obviously they’ve had the batteries around for a long time they’ve been for the you know mediocre speed um uh scooters how do they get so much

Power out of the same batteries I mean I you you mentioned the the you know forc air cooling does do they take like electricity from both batteries at the same time and also does that like diminish the you know the range I mean I’m I’m sure it does if you’re going

Much faster does this store like more batteries how did what’s the like the idea there yeah so I think it’s still twoo batteries like most of their scooters uh and it does use the same batteries but they’ve designed these batteries really well from the outset I mean this battery design has been around

For uh I think like eight years now and so um I think they’ve basically overbuilt them to give them the opportunity to expand into higher power uh machines like this the other thing is that their whole battery swapping system is very intelligent in that when someone goes up to these swapping stations it

Knows what not only what vehicle they have to sort of like give them the the better battery for them so you know if they have this pulse that it’s probably going to give them the newer fresher batteries but also the individual Rider knows how they ride so like interesting

If it’s like a grandma that she just doesn’t really give a lot of throttle off it and she’s like very easy on it it’ll sort of give her the like older weaker batteries that you know are still okay but they’re not going to um have as

Much power as the newer battery kind of thing so they’ve got a really well worked out system there and the pulse takes two batteries like every other goo yeah yeah and they do um run in parallel uh so you know it’s drawing from both of

Them at the same time okay yeah I mean I guess that that is like the the two batteries at want idea all right uh let’s move on braking Electric Motorcycle Company cake quietly files for bankruptcy that was a bummer yeah this is uh really sad to see because cake has always been a

Fascinating company to watch they’ve got their own design language it’s very unique it’s very Scandinavian and while I don’t know that I would personally ride one I’ve always loved that they existed and I led seeing them because it’s just like seeing this cool you know engineering design rolling

Down the road but unfortunately the company um while nearing the end of a uh Capital funding raise one of their investors backed out and they didn’t have time to find the remaining funds and they were forced to file for bankruptcy uh last week I believe which

Is just a really sad day for the industry um it has been a tough last year or so um for the motorcycle and bicycling Industries we just haven’t seen you know the the huge sales coming out of the pandemic years keep up in in 20123 the way they did in 2021 and and

2022 so this unfortunate looks like it’s going to be another casualty of the current financial situation it’s it’s hard to say what happens here I mean bankruptcy is designed to protect a company to help Shield it from some of its debt in in a way that can potentially help it survive

It’s unclear if that’s what’s going to happen here um you know the other sort of big bankruptcy we saw recently was vanm and in that case it sort of worked the way it was intended to um the company was able to find a new buyer and

Is going to come back in some form with um McLaren’s scooter company as sort of the new owner so maybe this isn’t the end for cake you know maybe this is uh just a a bump in the the motorcycle road here but it’s it’s hard to say for sure

What’s what’s going to happen and you know the prospects never look good when you when you get to this step unfortunately yeah it’s always a little bit scary because uh you know cake was so unique in their designs um and you know I think the broader problem like

They’re there’s been a lot of problems in the the the ebike industry um of late and I think the broader problem is the interest rates on Capital uh used to be close to zero and now uh you know you can’t just throw money around anymore um without paying like significant um

Interest rates on it so you know I think all the all the brands without like you know really strong um you know some profitability or some you know some like and and in sight kind of of debt um are in a little bit of you know a little bit of

Peril um but it would be nice to see K come out of this the other side or or maybe you know some bigger company Picks Them Up I know that they’ve had um some tie-ups with the automotive company postar which is also or you know Volvo

And and postar uh Sweden based I wonder if that’s a possible you know obviously they’re owned by gy or mostly owned by gy I wonder if that’s a possible buyer of uh you know a um bankrupted cake yeah that would be fascinating actually um I see here there’s like a

Bunch of you know us and and Swedish uh investors involved do we know what the uh you know the market cap I guess of of cake is these days I have just no idea no it wasn’t public so I’m not sure that those figures are are going to be out

There okay yeah I mean I guess it’s anybody’s guess at this point like there’s different different levels put on it well I hope they uh return to uh solvency or whatever and and uh become a a player in the in the business again absolutely all right uh watch this

Electric motorcycle ride battery deep through a California through California flood waters this one’s kind of wild it’s not the first time we’ve seen uh electric motorcycles get a bit wet um and you know we’ve all seen videos of Teslas just about floating driving you know super deep through water um but

This really illustrates one of the advantages of electric vehicles and in this case electric motorcycles is that they can be essentially entirely sealed they don’t have an air breathing engine like internal combustion engine motorcycles and that means that uh as long as the components are sufficiently waterproofed there’s almost

No limit to the amount of water they can ride in as long as the bike can stay up in this case we’ve got uh the motorcycle essentially completely submerging its battery under these Waters and riding around just fine the battery and almost everything on the bike is IP67 rated on

This uh rivet Anthem motorcycle and that means that you know you could take the battery and throw it in the shallow end of pool uh like three feet deep and it’ll sit there for an hour no problem I mean that’s the minimum for the rating it’ll probably last a lot longer but you

Could you know submerge your battery fish it out pop it in the motorcycle and just continue riding I was talking to the founder of the company about this when I saw this video what he told me is that basically everything on the bike with the exception of the display is

IP67 rated meaning it could be submerged the display and its connectors are ip65 which I think is uh protected against um uh water jets from every angle so you know you could ride it and rain and stuff but you can’t necessarily submerge it and so what he said is I asked him

Does that mean you could basically ride this thing in water up to the handlebars and he said yeah and you can even ride it in higher water you just might lose your display so uh you know there’s there’s basically no limit to how wet you can get this thing which is kind of

Fun to see now it’s not very practical especially in like raging flood waters because you don’t really want to ride through that stuff you get swept away very easily and this case this is very like still water in the flooded loading dock area but uh so you know we’re not

Recommending riding through flood water but it is kind of a new demonstration that just shows how easy it is uh ibe easy isn’t the right word but you know how how well waterproofed motor cycles can be created yeah so this would be great for uh Florida where it floods

Like every few months so you could just have the in your garage while the water is up to the uh the wheel wheel wells yeah this is your hurricane bike yeah this is your hurricane bike guys um that’s super cool uh does this thing float like uh I can’t imagine I mean the

Bik so I asked him about that yeah like with with all the air volume in the tires and he said there’s still like good traction um he said they wanted to do a video with like a snorable gear and stuff like see how deep they could get

This thing and still ride it but it seems like it’s uh it weighs enough I think it’s like 280 pounds if I’m not mistaken so even with all that tire volume it seems to still ride pretty well interesting I wonder if they could get like some floaties to put on the

Side and and keep it like wheel high so like the the wheel was kind of turning and you could kind of turn it into a uh jet ski kind of thing you can get some like big dirt bike tires almost like paddle tires just have like a big Paddle Wheel

Yeah yeah they’re missing a huge market I’ll bring that up with them all right uh and and speaking of weird situations uh I finally got the review out um of the S rusher Ripple electric snowboard um this thing was absurd from the from the beginning um I

Uh so so just a little bit of background um the Sy rusher Ripple is a snowboard with a hole cut in the back of it with a big hub wheel uh with a kind of a snowmobile uh Traction in the wheel um it weighs 33 lb which is about uh 30 lb

More than a typical snowboard I maybe maybe I mean a typical snowboard is you know 5 10 pounds so I mean it’s just like a super heavy uh uh in the back snowboard which is important because like when you’re riding it it totally changes you know

The use case of it um it’s not just the um the Hub motor that makes it heavy it it also has a you know waterproof controller um if you’re watching the Youtube video um that’s the controller um and then it doesn’t have the battery so you’re talking about another I don’t

Know 10 15 lbs in a backpack with a wire attached so not not super simple and easy as you would kind of hope but um you know it it the thing I keep coming back to is this is the first one and it works um you know it the I can you know

Glide across across the snow and more importantly uh my son who weighs about half of what I weigh uh can actually use it in in a ton of different types of snow um for me it the snow had to be perfect um it has to be very firm but

Also very slippery uh for him he was kind of doing stuff and powder and and you know other other types of snow so um you know my weight and you know I typically have a much bigger snowboard um made it a little bit harder to get

You know pushed off and then also harder to uh you know maneuver the the thing because um you know you typically maneuver a snowboard by you know like carving and this thing just it like it’s hard to carve it’s hard enough to steer let alone carve um so my son who’s a competitive

Snowboarder um uh found it pretty easy um so you know when you take a look at this thing um it kind of reminds you of a snowboard but it’s also Al a bit like a electric skateboard or you know snowmobile electric skateboard and of course that motor is

Kind of a um a scooter motor a powerful one it’s 3 kilowatt so specs wise uh 3 Kow motor in the back which is crazy um the battery is I think 650 uh uh wat hours the um it it says it can go 30 miles and 30 miles per hour uh

Probably not at the same time uh so you know all pretty interesting specs from this you know firstof its kind vehicle um you know obviously you know it’s got a barrel controller it definitely felt like this was put together with parts from um you know ebikes and scooters and

And stuff like that so um yeah the I actually got a there’s a little demonstration it has a uh kind of ebike sorry an uh electric skateboard controller which makes sense in this kind of scenario because um it’s you know it kind of feels like an electric

Skateboard when you push it forward it obviously accelerates the wheel but when you push backwards it doesn’t go into reverse it actually breaks and like I said before um it doesn’t operate like a snowboard it’s hard to like turn sideways and stop uh so that break is

Actually pretty nice to have because uh you know once you you get going fast and you want to slow down it’s not easy to swing the back around and and slow down so having that Brak uh slows you down but it kind of turns it into a different

Type of vehicle so uh for those watching here’s a a video of me accelerating on very thin but slippery snow um and you can tell it’s it’s losing a little traction I think a traction control module in there would really do a lot of benefit um and then I cut it obviously

Before I fell over but um uh this is uh some example of me kind of crusty powdery snow um where you’ll see um it spins quite a bit before it actually gets traction and then um once it finally gets traction after you know I’m pushing

It a little bit um it it moves but it’s it it it’s all or nothing so you know this is something that I think s rusher can kind of uh work on a a little bit um and you know we we know Sy rusher does

Um ebikes that we like so I I kind of feel like this is like one of those garage toys maybe one of the founders or one of the You Know Chief technical people is a snowboarder and was like like every other snowboarder like hey what if we put a electric wheel on the

Back of a snowboard what would happen definitely a version one thing but you can see there my son’s having a a blast on it so um you know I I think there’s something here uh I just don’t think this is going to be for a lot of people

What’s your what’s your take there Micah yeah I mean look the the first days of electric bikes were like real rough right I mean it was like almost the the early days of motorcycles where it was like a weed whacker engine on a bike kind of thing so this has very

Early ebike days Vibes but we’ve come a long way since then so I could see maybe 10 years from now there’s much nicer much less bulky ways to drive an electric snowboard and it really becomes like a just an augment thing as opposed to this massive powerhouse on the on the

Back of a snowboard you know maybe it is something you can actually carve with and it’s just there to help you get back up the hill kind of thing um or maybe they’re like clipon units that like you ride up to the top of the hill and you

Pop it off and you you know ride back down and maybe like the ski park has them as like you know they’re owned by the ski park you don’t have to remember to grab yours of top again kind of thing like and they’re all just sitting in a

Charg charging dock or something yeah so like there’s I’m sure there’s potential here like you said this is very much like V1 early days kind of thing which you know as an engineer excites me everything starts in in the early days yeah yeah I agree and I I you know like

Kudos to cyrusher for like actually putting this thing out like when I first saw it I was like oh this is probably just a marketing Ploy and you know they’ll make a few of them and you’ll take them to some ski hills and get some you know publicity and you know put some

Links to their ebikes in there and and you know that’s that’s the play but they’re actually you know selling this and I think you know for a certain segment this will be a fun toy to play with I know my son certainly wants to take it to school and show his friends

Um so you know I I think there’s a something here um but and there’s you know there’s so much more stuff to do to to improve it I was actually thinking like you know like a onewheel design with like you put the wheel between the legs

And that might be that might be the the play there and and maybe you know you put it in neutral when you’re going down a hill so you don’t have to remove it or if you remove it you know you have to fill fill in that hole somehow so you’re

Not you know pulling up um snow and so lot of lot of uh scenarios there um yeah absolutely feel like you need to sit down with the S rusher people on like a notepad and be like listen guys we got to talk there’s a lot to go on here yeah

And I feel like they probably know like you know they’re using it too they probably know what version two uh needs to have or some of the things version two needs to have so you know my my feedback to them is like keep at it like keep pulling strings make it lighter

Make it uh you know use like you don’t need 3 Kow of power one kilowatt would probably be enough you don’t really need to go too far you like uphill too hard because like the power always is more than the um the snow and then of course

A traction control thing would be nice as well um so yeah anyway I think I think there’s something here should we move on to comments um if you are watching live and we see that there’s dozens of us uh go ahead and give us a comment and uh we’ll get into to the

Comments here which are pretty small we uh we skipped over one though my uh my live live store oh we skipped over the live R oh my gosh sorry all good all good you gotta you gotta I know you just didn’t want to follow the Live Wire

That’s why no no I was I uh I H was so excited about the S rush I just blew into that the last minut Edition this just got posted like right before the podcast I bought Harley’s new electric motorcycle delivery was a hot mess but it’s still awesome yeah so I’ve been

Super excited about this one um I’ve been on the fence about which electric motorcycle to get I’ve been wanting to buy one as my like you know everyday rider for in the US for a while um and it was uh I’ve said before it was really coming down to either the rivet Anthem

Or the Livewire um delmare I went with the delmare just because to me having that like added benefit of local dealers as well as twice the battery size um was you know a big big part to me part of me kind of wishes I just get the

The rivet also but maybe that’s down the road but anyways it came time for delivery of this bike and it was just it was a wild process now I think other people have had much better delivery experiences in mine but mine was a sight to be seen so I have an appointment I

Head down to uh the Live Wire uh store in Sunrise Florida it’s like 30 miles away from where I stay in Florida the Live Wire store separate from the Harley store or is it part of the Harley store that’s a great question uh until I went

To pick it up I assumed it was separate once I got there I realized it’s just the local Harley-Davidson dealer um and I guess they have like you know a second you know suweet to on the mailing address is Live Wire which is fine you know like they they work together Live

Wire was spun out of Harley uh so I get there I walk in like hey I’m here to pick up my uh my live wire and they’re like cool who are you and you’re what theya what’s a Livewire exactly yeah and so um like no one knew who I was no one

Knew there was going to be a delivery that day they didn’t even think they had my motorcycle there which it had supposed to have been been shipped there like five weeks prior and so um you know everyone’s very confused I text my Couple live bar contacts and they’re

Like you know they all get working real quick and suddenly um the the Harley-Davidson dealership people find my bike it’s upstairs and they’re like long term storage um and so I think like all right great now things are going to go well but after they how did they get

It upstairs like do they bring it down the stairway there’s a a special elevator for motorcycles yeah um so uh so once they find it it turns out it’s got zero% charge which I don’t know how long it was sitting like that but that’s that’s a big problem because I have to

Ride at home so um also not great for the battery is it to let it yeah yeah absolutely I’m going to have to follow up on that but uh so but like that’s a that’s a future mic problem the first mic problem is uh getting this bike out

Of here so they put it on like a you know 120 volt charger on the wall there that’s what we’re looking at here in the service center uh it’s a 10 and a half kilowatt hour battery so you’re looking like an 8 Hour charge that way um not

Ideal and so uh it was funny because they don’t have a level two charger for like the old Harley’s I mean I I feel like a lot of Harley’s stations even had like level three like a yes fast Chargers so uh interesting note there so

They don’t have a level two there um one of the employees so they were all super nice they’re all like trying to be very helpful because they’re like as surprised as I am so one of them’s like oh well let’s like plug it into the um

The level three charger we have and like I couldn’t even explain to them yet that it can’t DC fast charge before someone else was like oh yeah we had that decommissioned so they apparently they ripped out their DC fast charger at the the Sunrise Florida uh Harley-Davidson the

So they had like a ceremony when they ripped it out they’re like screw these electric things yeah so um it was it was a bit of a a cluster fudge there um but eventually I got like 15% or so into the uh battery I looked on the on plug share

And like a quarter mile down the road was a charge Point Station so I was like perfect like you I only need like 3% battery to get there so charged it for like an hour rode down to charge Point um got the battery up to 40% and then I

Was like all right let’s head home it was like a 30 mile ride home uh you got it to what percent to go 30 mile got up to like 40% using the level two charger um okay but then on the way home I had to stop uh to have a meeting with

You actually said we had a zoom for an electric thing and I’m riding to another charging station I’m GNA charge out on the way like to stop and have the zoom call but now I see that not only is the battery getting really low I’m not sure

If I’m going to make it but also my phone battery is down to like 6% and I have to use the GPS which is like not super great for for your phone battery and I need my phone to like activate that charger when I get there so it’s

Like do I ride fast to get there and still have my phone battery to be able to charge it I ride slower and you know but if I ride too fast I won’t have any motorcycle battery so I like just had to like balance it right in the middle of

That cach 22 I rolled in with 8% uh motorcycle battery and like 6% battery so ended up being fine I was able to charge got up to like 50% while we were in a zoom meeting and then rode the west of rest of the way home on

Eventful so just like a total mess of a delivery but the bike itself is incredible I’m in love with the thing it’s got um I think it’s like 70 kilow got a double check 0o to 60 in in 3.1 seconds so it’s just crazy fast um 10

And a half kilowatt hours that gives me like 113 miles of City range only had it for a day so you know I don’t have a lot of uh range testing on it yet but you know for for City needs like I’m never going to need to go more than 113 miles

And this is really sort of a um higher end of the commuter motorcycles this is not something you’re gonna be touring on that sort of thing so yeah my my next question was are you gonna be able to take it from one side of Florida to the

Other theoretically yes but um I got to go a bit more Northern because that uh southern route across Alligator Alley there’s I think one charger in the middle and it’s a DC fast charger so ah yeah one day there will be more level two Chargers but to do it now

I would have to it really doesn’t make sense to have a level two charger there in the middle of the unless there’s like a tourist you know like you know buy smokes from Native American reservation or something generally yes I’d agree with you but the cool thing about

Electric motorcycles is that a level two charger is almost like a fast charger for a motorcycle right like if I stop for lunch I can get you know like 60 to 80% of my battery charged on a level two yeah but I mean how many people are on electric motorcycles Crossing

Alligator Alley I can’t imagine it’s a big Market I think just me okay I mean there has to be there has to be like you know a an outlet a you know Neema 1450 Outlet somewhere between between the two I mean I was doing research on doing uh

Going to the top of Alaska and I you know I found like this airport and I called them and I was like hey you know can I talk to your electrician about uh and that you the electrician was also the the phone call operator and also

Like the guy who ran the airport and he was like yeah we have we have a couple of those so I was like oh cool we could we could ride a uh a truck you know from but turns out 10 other people had already done it so we never did it

Anyway uh yeah so you could probably find a a level two um outlet and bring and bring a charger and how much power can you get out of those um I mean a level two will do 40 amps at 240 so uh you know close to 10 kilowatts think

It’s 32 amps is 7.2 kilowatts I think it’s 9.6 kilowatts is 40 amps out of the Nema 1450 yeah out of the Nema 1450 and I think that’s more than this bike can pull I think it pulls 5 and a half kilowatts if I’m not mistaken oh yeah so

You would be fine yeah that’s like more than I would me that’s interesting I have to look into that I have ridden across Florida on electric bicycle and I basically just like charged at you know restaurants I can stop for lunch and sit on the porch and like have my batteries

Under the table but that doesn’t quite work as well for a motorcycle no and also like you know I’m a little bit surprised that uh Harley doesn’t have a level three charger on this and it’s not because it doesn’t need to charge that fast it’s just because it’s you know

Level three is DC which is the battery you know you don’t have to have an inverter or Rectifier whatever um you just basically tell the thing hey um I want whatever you know wattage and current or current and amperage that the battery charges that and theoretically

The thing should provide it um yeah I wonder if it was either cost or cooling I mean they made the decision for one reason or the other or maybe they just kept it out as like another reason to upgrade to the live wire one which is

Like 7,000 more and does have DC fast charging I mean I know you’ve only had this for 24 hours but how does it feel from you know like after riding it are you kind of tired is it the riding position comfortable that’s something that you would do for hours on end or is

It kind of more of a you know quick quick trips to here and there so it’s absolutely comfort if anything I’m much more comfortable on this one than the Live Wire One um because this one I’m definitely more upright now it’s not a cruiser at all but it’s got more of like

An upright Roadster feel to me whereas the Live Wire one because its battery is so long and it’s got that really long motor uh the reach is really far so you’re like leaning out over what feels like a really long gas tank kind of

Thing on the top of it and so I’m much more comfortable in this one and that’s actually why I bought it was because September of two I did the the first press ride actually for this motorcycle and like right after I got off it I was

Like man that just felt amazing sign me up whenever orders open so uh to me it just it feels great um and you could certainly ride it for much longer than the batteries would less now at City speeds you know if you’re doing 30 miles an hour that’s like four or five hours

Of of riding so you know you’re rarely going to go that that far or that long but uh for me it just feels great it’s it’s it’s nice that that has the power that you know even if you’re in a city and the light turns green you can just

Like rock it off but it’s still you know manageable in a city it’s not a big massive bike that’s out of place there or is uncomfortable to ride in a city yeah I really like the look of it um do does that um the those fins on the side

Does that cool the battery or cool the motor is that the point there yeah they’re um I mean it’s it’s still liquid cooled so you know there’s probably a little bit of pass of air cooling but um those are like heat sink fins from the side of the battery there on the side

That’s cool yeah I like everything about this I wish uh you know we’ve talked about this before that you could take a motorcycle test on an electric bike and not have to worry about you know Switching gears and clutches and stuff like that um this this one is

Particularly tempting I think it would be great to be you know for a firsttime rider do have we made any progress on the taking a test on an electric motorcycle yet I haven’t heard of any places that you can um but I feel like it’s got to be around the corner I’ve

Saying that for like a few years now I mean there’s so many electric motorcycles out now like it can’t be that far away and uh are there any storage options for this I I saw the the uh pack there I think that’s for the charger oh yeah that’s just me resting

The the little box for the charger there get um you know like tail boxes stuff like that for sure I feel like it would ruin the lines of this one so I don’t really intend to put a tailbox on it but um you can certainly add all

Sorts of things I mean Harley’s are probably some of the most customized uh bikes of you know any any type of motorcycle brand out there so I’m sure they’re going to have a thousand different options that that you can add on there and that’s how the dealerships make a lot of their money

Too is from all those accessories well I mean this technically isn’t a Harley so maybe that’s a little bit more complicated yeah that’s of the interesting thing here here is that like weird interplay between Livewire and Harley which is part of what led to all that confusion of my delivery but it’s

You know got got its ups and downs as well yeah I mean have they been vocal about like hey this is you know this is the temporary plan for like a couple years then we’re going to have our own shops like not in the same building as

Harley or is this always going to be like a you know left side of the building right side of the building kind of situation well I don’t know they they do have um you know Livewire experience centers that are just uh Live Wire it kind of looks like an Apple Store almost for

Motorcycles um but I think that for a while now you know they’re really going to rely on the established Harley-Davidson Network because it’s just such a huge advantage over any other company even zero that’s been building bikes for 15 years still has you know limited uh physical footprint and they’re basically using other

Motorcycle dealers uh to carry zero so you know when you have that huge advantage of hundreds of Harley dealerships I can’t imagine them not wanting to continue to use them and it just you know it’s it’s part of this sort of um lifewire trying to have its

Cake and eat it too you know they want to appear like this young Scrappy startup you know but they’re still kind of like living out of their parents house in a way yeah I I I really like it what’s what’s again the price on this um so this one

Is the launch edition so it was 17 a half thousand but the non- launch edition is 15 and a half and what is that extra $2,000 bu you uh purple color really with the uh with the cool Stripes yeah and uh it’s one of a hundred so it’s individually numbered um

And you get either this or there was a gray sort of tiger striped color way but um to me the Indigo was just like so much cooler so yeah it’s basically the uh it’s basically the color way and the fact that it’s got um an individual number on the side mine’s 84

But um to me like also I see this as maybe one day a collector item I mean all of these go down in value for you know a long time before they eventually go up if they do but maybe because it’s one of a hundred units then it becomes

Something special and we saw these in Europe uh do we know how they’re doing out there as well like is have they been delivered yet or I don’t think they’ve started deliveries yet in Europe um it’s only fair recently that they’ve been on the road in the US so I don’t think

Europe’s had their dbar deliveries yet okay and I well I think we saw it like in the back of a truck or something like it was like a prop for an electric car or something like that oh at the uh yeah was it I think Ford’s IIA stand saw one

Yeah but yeah that was just like a you know a show piece yeah that was cool though uh it’s a great looking bike um reasonably priced I think uh maybe not you know the launch edition but um I think this could be a popular bike I

Hope they uh you know they put some marketing muscle behind it most important question um does it pull chicks like were there any ladies who are ponying up to the uh check this thing out or is it or is it too early to tell so when I rolled a bag into the

Neighborhood a lot of the neighbors were very interested to come out and look at it I think all of the chicks so to speak were married but you know that that’s their isue in their retirement home area of Florida uh they were young just married you know spoken for okay that’s good

That’s good uh you know you don’t want any broken hips or anything uh on the back of this I’ll tell you though um I’ve I’ve picked up more girls on scooters than motorcycles so oh really yeah don’t uh don’t hate on electric scooters either okay all right good to know good to

Know all right and we should probably end it on that all right well thank you everyone for tuning in for this week’s episode of the wheie podcast we’ll be back in another two weeks with another whole pile of stories we’ll see you next time everyone

This week on Electrek’s Wheel-E podcast, we discuss the most popular news stories from the world of electric bikes and other nontraditional electric vehicles. This time, that includes new e-bike launches from Trek and Sixthreezero, a potential e-bike regulation bill in Congress, a new Gogoro electric scooter, CAKE’s bankruptcy, e-motorcycles going for a swim, and more.

Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the Wheel-E podcast today:

00:30 Sixthreezero launches the electric trike everyone says they actually want
07:40 Trek unveils new Marlin+ e-bike pushing Bosch mid-drives to new affordability
13:20 Congress finally agrees on electric bike bill – but not the one everyone wanted
17:15 Gogoro launches new Pulse electric scooter as highest performance model yet
23:20 Breaking: Electric motorcycle company CAKE quietly files for bankruptcy
27:30 Review: Cyrusher Ripple electric snowboard actually works! (mostly)
35:00 Watch this electric motorcycle ride battery deep through California flood waters