Went back down today and arrived as the checkered flag was being waved, this team did 1015 laps and depending on the rider and other things the laps were about 1:15. I'm fairly sure this is the owner/top guy at the company About the time of the finish: Seems the swingarm let go. Here is a close up of the broken shock Seems most were pleased, but at least 1 was unhappy with the fork seals blowing and other issues, and of course there was the broken swing arm... but these things will happen at any race I suppose. I asked if they were sending out a survey to the owners/riders of the bikes for feedback and they said they might bring it up in a meeting... One of the people indicated that this was going to be an annual event. The good news is the batteries were getting about the same number of laps per charge as they did the previous afternoon, maybe 15 minutes, so they had not degraded.
She is no longer with the company, my hunch is she is a great person, esp since you were the one that mentioned her name. I learned much about Zero motorcycles and got strong impressions about their product & company.... Maybe I'll say more in a private forum unrelated to cafe husky.
Yep - thought these looked a lot more like electric bicycles than motorcycles, this is a blurb from the Zero website:
I really liked the pic of the dog with the tongue handing out. Good write up. Nothing beats 24hours of riding to test stuff. Seems like battery technology is advancing very fast. I bet they double the performance every 18 months for the next 10 years. Its interesting the bicycle biz is driving this. Interesting but not surprising if ya know about Mtn. bike technology evolution. You saw a bit of history Dean. Very cool.
Hard to tell with sun glasses but didn't he do an interview with Jay Leno? http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/video/video_player.shtml?vid=658441
I have had a guy contact me about doing a demo ride in SoCal. Honestly after Dean's review I would raise this question strictly as relates to myself.... with only an average of 15 minutes of ride time, with my physical size, weight etc.... coupled with weaker??? strength of the bike itself it doesn't really seem viable yet....at least not for a guy of my size.... maybe a dude that weighs about 145, maybe 5' 6" tall could crank out about 20 serious minutes on a track . Somehow I was expecting something that could last at least an hour or two, enough to at least let you do a serious eco friendly Mt Bike loop in any of the local mountains. That being said, I am still very impressed with the progress they have made. Cool report Dean. I like the dog shots T
Think the owner of the place might be 5' 5"... good point, don't think many (if any) of the riders were big. Definitely almost all were under 6' and not 'big' - good of you to catch that. F=MA. For you, on a track, I'd forget about it at this time - probably forever compared to gas. For slow trail riding for an hour using the limited power modes it should be no problem. Limited power on those is still faster than many gas powered bikes are ridden esp on tight trails. Thing is I've been in an electric car when it ran out of juice and it was NOT fun, can't just call AAA and have them pour in a gallon of electricity. Keep in mind these bikes were pushed hard, very hard. It was pretty brutal on the batteries and I was impressed. In the video link with Leno the guy did say fairly accurately the amount of time (1/2 of 45 minutes?) - which makes me feel better about the bikes and the companies owner. It would be good to have that description on their website though.
Cool report Dean. It is cool to see the progress electric bikes are making. It would have been cool if they would have let in a few of their competitors bikes as well. Someone else said this, and I agree, the zero seems to be more for the mountain bike oriented crowd, where the quantya seems to be for the moto crowd. It would have been interesting to see how the two compared side to side in the same event.
Based on my experience at the track and meeting some of the management... they may not have thought of that. Send them an email and suggest it. It is supposed to be an annual event from now on.
No offence, but the Zero is based on a mountain bike and the Quantya is based on a real long travel motorcycles... as in a Husqvarna!
Yeah, I think if i were to go buy one tomorrow it would be the quantya. and slap some red plastics on it.
