mobility

Electric Motorcycle With One Wheel launched

by Arun Prakash from https://www.rushlane.com Electric Motorcycle With One Wheel – Launched By Chinese Online Sales Giant Alibaba For USD 1,850 This electric motorcycle on a single wheel from Alibaba can attain a top speed of 48 kmph. In case motorcycles aren’t your cup of tea because they feel too safe for you then the upcoming example will surely be of interest to you. Chinese conglomerate Alibaba is known to develop some weird and out-of-the-world vehicles that run on battery. Recently, they revealed an electric motorcycle that rolls on a single wheel. Sounds strange right when you think from the perspective of its dynamics. However, it seems to function properly without any hiccups. From the looks of it, this one-wheeled motorcycle seems a working equivalent of an electric unicycle with an un-functional equivalent of a small naked sports bike. Features & Specifications The body is built on a conventional Steel Trellis frame and also gets a faux fuel tank. The designer needs to be commended sheerly for his/her efforts. From a certain angle and distance, this bike also resembles a certain Ducati. However, all is not well, as things start to get tight and nervy when the rider decides to hop on board and cruise it on roads. The first notable mention is that this thing measures only 40 kg and hence, ride stability might not be its strongest suit. However, it does provide the rider with great agility. It receives 2 kW of power which offers a top speed of 30 mph (48 km/h). The batteries are located at a place where one would find a battery at a conventional electric motorcycle. The electric unicycle is powered by an electric motor paid with a 1.36 kWh of battery made by Panasonic. The manufacturer claims a single-charge range of around […]

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Harley-Davidson Announces First Chief Electric Vehicle Officer

Harley-Davidson, Inc. today announces the appointment of Ryan Morrissey as Chief Electric Vehicle Officer (CEVO). Effective April 1, Morrissey will join Harley-Davidson with over two decades of experience in disruptive technologies and the development of new business ventures. As a consultant at Bain & Company, he served most recently as a Senior Partner and head of the Automotive & Mobility practice in the Americas. In this role, he led the development of growth, adjacency and M&A strategies for OEMs, tech providers, and retailers specific to the long-range transition to electric vehicles and autonomous fleets. He has worked extensively with leading global OEMs in powersports, heavy equipment and automotive on developing digital channels, EV product strategy and software-based services. As part of Bain’s work with financial investors, he has advised many leading investment firms on acquisitions in mobility. Morrissey began his career at Lutron Electronics, as the U.S. sales lead for their first generation of software-based control systems for energy management. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Lafayette College and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. “Ryan has extensive experience with leading OEMs, working on building businesses to develop, commercialize and support electric vehicles. I’m excited to have him join the team to help us lead in electric,” said Jochen Zeitz, chairman, president and CEO, Harley-Davidson. “As we announced in February as part of The Hardwire, we’ll be talking more about our electric strategy later in the year.” Harley-Davidson recently unveiled The Hardwire, its 2021-2025 strategic plan, with a dedicated focus on electric, targeting long-term profitable growth and shareholder value and aiming to enhance its position as the most desirable motorcycle brand in the world.

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Car and Motorcycle Companies Now Making Electric Bikes

by Roy Furchgott from https://www.nytimes.com They see branding opportunities as the pandemic and a desire by cities to curb traffic propel e-bike sales to new heights. The transportation industry has seen the future, and the future is 1895. That was the year Ogden Bolton Jr. of Canton, Ohio, was awarded U.S. Patent 552,271 for an “electrical bicycle.” A century and change later, electric bikes have gained new currency as car and motorcycle companies like Ducati, Harley-Davidson, Jeep, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and Yamaha have horned into the market with their own designs. While the pandemic has accelerated bike sales, the overriding attraction is that cities worldwide are beginning to restrict motor traffic. These companies are betting that e-bikes are the urban vehicles of tomorrow — or at least vehicles for good publicity today. “In the past 12 to 18 months, you have seen a lot of new brands come into the market,” said Andrew Engelmann, an e-bike sales and marketing manager at Yamaha, which has been in the electric bike business since 1993 and claims sales of two million worldwide. “We in the U.S. have not seen this new energy toward cycling since Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France.” Credit the coronavirus pandemic, which has ignited bike sales of all stripes, but none so much as e-bikes. While retail unit sales of bicycles from January to October last year were up 46 percent from a year earlier, electric bikes were up 140 percent. Measured in dollars, regular bikes were up 67 percent and e-bikes 158 percent — so don’t expect a discount. Those numbers, from the market researchers at NPD, do not include online-only retailers such as Rad Power Bikes, so sales may actually be higher still. Ogden Bolton aside, there is a historical connection between bicycles and motorcycles. Many early

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E-bikes that look like motorcycles take another hit in Canada

by Maryse Zeidler from https://www.cbc.ca Appellant’s lawyer says his client relied on Motorino XMr for affordable transportation The British Columbia Court of Appeal has upheld a B.C. Supreme Court ruling that e-bikes designed to look and function more like mopeds or scooters do not meet the province’s definition of a motor-assisted cycle and therefore require a driver’s licence, registration and insurance. The case was brought forward by Ali Ghadban, who was issued a ticket in Surrey, B.C., in 2018 for riding his Motorino XMr without a driver’s licence and insurance. He said he wasn’t able to obtain them from the provincial insurer, ICBC. Two of the three Appeal Court justices assigned to the case agreed with the B.C. Supreme Court judge’s decision from May 2020 that found although the Motorino XMr is outfitted with pedals, limited power and a maximum speed of 32 km/h, it doesn’t qualify as a motor-assisted cycle because it’s not designed to be operated primarily by human power. At the heart of the issue are the XMr’s small pedals, which Court of Appeal Justice Harvey M. Groberman agreed would do little to propel the nearly 115-kilogram bike. Groberman said the XMr is designed to almost exclusively operate as a low-powered electric motorcycle, or as “a very heavy, impractical bicycle.” Although the XMr meets many of the technical requirements of a motor-assisted cycle as defined in B.C.’s Motor Vehicle Act, Groberman wrote, it doesn’t do so in practice. “If a piece of legislation defines ‘cat’ as ‘a small four-legged furry mammal that purrs,’ we would not expect that definition to include a dog fitted with a loudspeaker that plays a purring sound,” he said. Affordable, environmentally friendly Lawyer Dan Griffiths, who represented Ghadban in the case, said his client is a man of modest financial means who

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Players dominating Electric Bike Market

by Joe D’Allegro from https://www.cnbc.com Harley Davidson and Honda are among the dominant motorcycle makers with big plans in electric bikes. Harley also recently announced that it is spinning off a nascent electric bicycle business. Uber is among the top investors in electric scooter company Lime, which just posted its first quarterly profit, while competitor Bird is reportedly planning to soon go public via a SPAC. NIU Technologies, which makes smart scooters, has seen its share price soar. Tesla reached a $500 billion market valuation this week, a sign of its dominance in the electric vehicle market. But Elon Musk has shown no real interest in one growing EV segment: battery-powered scooters and motorcycles. An accident he suffered as a youth on a motorbike — nearly fatal, Musk has said — turned him off two-wheelers, for now. But the manufacturing of battery powered bikes is growing and consolidating, which means it’s likely to produce one or more dominant players in the years to come. The electric motorcycle and scooter market reached $30 billion in 2019, according to a June 2020 report by Preeti Wadhwani and Prasenjit Saha from the research company Global Market Insights (GMI). They estimated that the market — which includes everything from large motorcycles meant for interstate cruising to tiny stand-up scooters as used by Lime and Bird — will grow more than 4% annually for the next few years and hit $40 billion in 2026. Concerns over vehicular emissions, increasing consumer awareness about air pollution, and increasing investments by government authorities in the development of EV charging infrastructure are all expected to keep the market growing. Another factor boosting electric bike prospects is the continued improvement in batteries. E-bikes, scooters and motorcycles Electric motorcycles and scooters are still relatively pricey, and none yet matches the range

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Inflatable Electric Motorcycle, Manual Wheelchair

by Elena Gorgan from https://www.autoevolution.com Imagine a situation in which you can customize your dream vehicle based on your preferred position of riding. Then, imagine being able to further customize that vehicle and have it easily managed, carried and stored, without having to worry about storage or whether you’re strong enough to carry it. A POIMO would be just right for what you’re looking. POIMO stands for “POrtable and Inflatable MObility,” a concept by Mercari R4D. The first iteration of the POIMO was unveiled earlier this year and now designers, in collaboration with the Kawahara and Niiyama labs from the University of Tokyo, have come up with the second model. It’s the customizable inflatable vehicle mentioned above, and it could be either an electric motorcycle or a manual wheelchair. The idea is to create a means of transportation that would be easy to carry and put together, offer none of the downsides of having a solid frame related to parking or storage, and still be as efficient. Being customizable from a single picture of the rider’s posture would also be a plus, one that fixed-framed vehicles won’t have. Designers say that everything on the bike would be made of the same inflatable material, even the wheels. That may be the case with the manual wheelchair, but we assume an electric motorcycle would require at least some components not made from fabric, no matter how durable it was. Riding on inflatable wheels also seems a strange proposition for a motorcycle, but the designers promise you won’t feel the difference between this one and the real thing. In theory. Let’s not even get into how safe this would be in traffic. That balloon material will absorb shocks and bumps alright, but it will still be like sailing on an inflatable swan into

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The MonoRacer 130E Fully Enclosed Motorcycle Aims to Redefine Personal Mobility

by Elena Gorgan from https://www.autoevolution.com The idea of making something that would be halfway between a bicycle or motorcycle and a car is not new; after all, the advantages of such a vehicle would be many for a large segment of the market. In the Czech Republic, inventor, fabricator and full-time pilot Arnold Wagner has been making one such vehicle since the late ‘80s. Since 2009, with a new partner, he launched the PERAVES CZ company, and they’ve been putting out these cabin-motorcycles dubbed MonoRacer since then. They probably haven’t sold more than a couple of hundred of them (90 of which were made before the 2009 partnership), but that could change as early as this month. As it turns out, PERAVES CZ has made an electric version of the MonoRacer, called the MonoRacer 130E, and it is now in the process of receiving EU-certification. The MonoRacer 130E is an electric motorcycle with a fully enclosed cabin, of the kind Lightning Motorcycles is also working on over in the U.S. It carries two passenger in tandem, and handles slower speeds and stops with help from two extendable outrigger wheels. So, instead of the rider having to stretch out and place his legs on the ground, which is now impossible because of the cabin, he simply presses the button and the wheels comes out. Another button immediately brings the wheels back up. This e-bike boasts a top speed of 240 kph (150 mph) and a range of 400 km (248.5 miles), according to the company. In addition to having room for a second passenger, it also has a 120-liter (4.2-cubic-foot) baggage compartment. Driving it takes some learning, as Arnold explains in the first video available at the bottom of the page, but he is available for lessons. Everything about the 130E

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Segway: Two-Wheeled Personal Transporter Ends Production

by Elena Gorgan from https://www.autoevolution.com It’s a sad day for electric two-wheelers: the iconic and often-derided personal transporter Segway, a true pioneer in urban mobility, has come to the end of life. The factory producing the PT will shut down permanently on July 15, 2020. When it was teased back in 2001, Segway was said to come to replace the car. It would be, they said, what the car was for the horse and buggy, an invention more revolutionizing than the computer itself. The Segway, a two-wheeled personal transporter (they called it human transporter, HT, back then), was more than just a product; it was, in very simple terms, the future. In many ways, Segway, with its self-balancing technology and versatile functionality, was a trailblazer. It never got to be as popular and commercially successful as inventor Dean Kamen thought (hoped?) it would be, but it was a revolutionary product. It’s now time to pour one out for the Segway PT, because it’s curtain call. The Bedford, New Hampshire factory that produces it will shut down permanently on July 15, 2020, Fast Company reports. Production on the PT comes to an end, and there are no immediate plans to ever revive the product in another form. That said, the decision is hardly surprising. For all the new ground the PT broke in terms of urban mobility, it could never attain wide appeal with the public for a very simple reason: it was – and is – too expensive. A PT still costs as much as a used motorcycle, and it only gets a top speed of 12.5 mph (20 kph) and a range of 31 miles (68 km). Considering it boasted a 10 mph (16 kph) top speed back in 2001, it’s hardly made any progress in this regard. Judy

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Triumph Trekker GT Is the First e-Bike Designed by the Maker of the Rocket 3

by Daniel Patrascu from https://www.autoevolution.com For years two-wheeled electro mobility has been creeping up toward the light at the end of its tunnel until it finally exploded into our world with dozens of startups throwing all sorts of weird designs at us. And a clear sign electric bikes are here to stay is how attentive established motorcycle makers started being to the segment. Harley-Davidson made no secret of its plans to expand into the e-bike segment ever since the LiveWire was unwrapped and new bikes were announced. But now it’s time for a response from across the ocean, with shots coming from Triumph Motorcycles. The company behind the motorcycle with the largest engine currently available on the market, the Rocket 3, is officially joining the e-mobility party with a brand new e-bike it calls Trekker GT. “In a business originating with bicycles, and world-famous for making motorcycles for 118 years, Triumph is now entering the e-bicycle market with the ‘Trekker GT’: a stunning new bicycle that incorporates Triumph’s everlasting passion for performance and riding fun,” the company said in a statement. “The Trekker GT, the first e-cycle designed by Triumph, combines performance engineering with the latest iteration of Shimano’s battery technology and drive train, offering customers the best in style, comfort, quality and finish.” The bike is light, it’s nimble, and it should make quite an impression. At 2.88 kg (6.3 lbs), it is made of a hydro-formed aluminum frame that integrates the 504Wh battery and the Shimano Steps electric motor. The battery, aided by the pedal-assist system, can help power the bike along for as much as 150 km (93 miles) while making use of the 60 Nm of torque available. Design-wise, there’s nothing really spectacular about the Trekker except perhaps for the Matt Silver Ice and Matt Jet

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How Hamba motorcycles are empowering women in Zimbabwe

by Faith Ikade from http://venturesafrica.com/ Mobility for Africa is empowering women in rural Zimbabwe with new electric powered motorcycles that can be used as a source of income generation. The electric motorbikes known as “Hamba” gives women the opportunity to transport and sell their goods, while saving time and effort usually spent walking to pick up household goods for their families around the district of Wedza. Shantha Bloemen, Mobility for Africa Director said the initiative is centred on women, following research done by the organization which shows that men always get priority on transport. “These are women that never thought they would drive anything. The whole intent was to focus on where the burden is greatest, but also the lowest rural women are on the lowest peg of the pyramid,” she said. Assembled in Zimbabwe’s capital city of Harare with parts made in China, Hamba is powered by a solar-charged lithium-ion battery and can travel up to around 60 miles per ride. Mobility for Africa is now in the second phase of the pilot project before it can go commercial. The project was an adaptation to a similar bike used in China and was an important tool used to reduce poverty in the country. Several households and women could use the bike to transport items from their farm to a local market. Hamba will be sold for $1,500 USD and changing the batteries at a solar-powered station costs between 50 cents and $1. However, Mobility for Africa is currently leasing the bikes to groups of up to five women for the equivalent of $15 a month, thereby making it affordable for poor women in Zimbabwe. Women in Zimbabwe can now carry farm produce to markets further away from home, offer transportation services to villagers and use the motorcycle for domestic

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