Are Electric Motorcycles Even Viable?
One of the stories that caught my eye earlier this week was the fact that cake electric motorcycles super modern and unusual looking I think they filed for bankruptcy I think they were looking for more funding basically because they’re in startup mode where they need these rounds of funding to keep going and they
Didn’t find it so they filed for bankruptcy and it’s a kind of interesting one mate because it it’s got me questioning are electric bikes even viable for companies to produce at the moment it seems like they were operating at a loss I think zero operate at a loss
As well also if you look at things like Livewire when Harley launched that it didn’t really go that well and they spun it out into a separate brand and kind of put it to the side I mean what is it why is it just people aren’t buying them or
Has to be yeah I mean to be fair I’m going to go into this as a completely ignorant audience member to business I don’t know the final workings of business but it must just be that they’re not getting the same sort of demand at the moment which is why I think with
Cars or just electric companies in general I think they’re at their strongest position when they are partnered with an already established brand and then it’s you know you can take a risk on an offshoot rather than just a complete startup which is obviously quite hard to build something
Up from from zero I think it must just be that there’s just not the demand for bikes as there is for cars because you do see loads of electric cars on the on the road but just I very rarely see you know it’s quite a novelty when you’re
Riding past you go oh oh electric bike and you actually see one in the wild somebody yeah you don’t see them very often at all yeah it’s a fair point and also they got to be super R&D intensive at the moment even though they’re kind of simple aren’t they
Electric bikes just a battery and a and a motor slapped into a motorcycle chassis it’s not rocket science no so when’s yours coming out all no it is I’m sure yeah that’s what I’m doing with the SV oh I see right yeah it no it must be fairly expensive
To get started and then it just doesn’t seems like the sales volumes are there at the moment but I think it’s a real shame for cake because um I W past their stand at ikma this year and it looked really impressive they’ve just got all manner of weird and wonderful looking
Bikes true the more utilitarian Urban type things yeah but recently they came out with the buck I think it’s called which is more like a dirt bike and jewelry bike type thing M but in their typical silver and minimal scandy style in and I was like wow that looks pretty
Smart they’re very unique looking for me it really comes down it just does not make any logical sense to go for the electric bike at the moment I think a lot of people who are riding bikes unless you live in one of these highrises where you’ve got somewhere to
Plug it in overnight you can’t really leave outside your house it’s not like you can Street park it and still charge it it’s the way you’re going to charge the thing and they cost more if you look at cake as great as they are and I did
Do a bit of research cuz I was like maybe that would work for my commuting into London they’re like twice the price of an equivalent sort of speed power capacity kind of motorcycle when I look at I could get a husk Vana 401 or I can
Get a cake for twice the price it just doesn’t make any sense for me so maybe there’s that do you know what I feel a bit sad about as well yeah naturally the price is going to be a big factor we were saying this last week with the Honda announcement they’re going to
Build more and more electric bikes by was it 2035 they had loads of goals for how many they’re going to produce and how profitable they’ll be how many they’ll sell uh we saw with Kawasaki when we went to motorcycle live they had two electrics two hybrids is it now yeah
Yeah and it feels like the as you say the big guns can come in now and possibly afford to develop them and yet sell them at a more reasonable price point and so all these companies like K and zero who have to get rounds of funding and they can’t afford to sell
The bikes at a comparable cost to a normal petrol bike they kind of falling by the wayside as these big companies just sweep in and do it their way and maybe that’s a bit of a shame because we had some cool and interesting stuff from the likes of cake and zero to some
Extent I wouldn’t say they was you know quite as stylistically impressive or interesting as the cakes but yeah may maybe it’s going to go more mainstream and we’ll just get electric versions of cb125 now for eight grand or something like that probably that’s effectively what Kawasaki have announced isn’t it Z
E1 and the ninja E1 or whatever it’s called
Watch the full episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XWUFxyg3YU
Rob https://www.youtube.com/@motobob and Tim https://www.youtube.com/@RarefiedRoad discuss their thoughts on CAKE filing for bankruptcy and what this means for the electric motorcycle market.
