We’ve seen motorcycle manufacturers, such as Ducati and KTM, get into the bicycle business with Ebikes. Some established Ebike manufacturers are going the opposite direction … creating electric motorcycles that their loyal customers can move up to.
Super73 is an established Ebike company that has announced its first electric motorcycle, the C1X (pictured). Super73’s approach was to aim at a reduced size and weight for its first motorcycle, employing 15″ wheels and a minimalist design. The motor is integrated with the swingarm.
Super73 says the C1X should be shipped to customers in the winter of 2023 at a price TBA. We don’t have a lot of details for the prototype pictured, but Super73 promises a top speed of more than 75 mph, a battery range of up to 100 miles, and the ability to charge the battery to 80% in one hour.
I’d get one perfect for a 15 mile commute in the city. No oil changes, tune ups, just tires, brakes and suspension. Get and extra battery and you’re set for about 25k miles. Less than $0.01/mile sign me up.
Not interested in any road bike with a rear tyre narrower than 6 inches.
Yes, that’s what she said.
75mph top speed. 100 miles full charge. ~$7k. zero SRS won’t take you much further and for the price this thing is King in the cities. Gonna need an M1. They’ll also have financing. Perfect for work commutes up to 80 miles out and nothing else will look like it. My reservation is in.
You do understand that highway miles are typically half of the stated range? That means this bike has a 50 mile max range unless you’re running all those miles through town (stop and go). Now consider that you are strongly advised not to charge past 80% nor deplete past 20% so that gives you a 30 mile real-life highway commute range. You then need to assume your work has a level 2 fast charger otherwise you’ll probably need a full work day to recharge your bike from an outlet.
I think Todd is probably right. Electric motos suffer range loss at highway speeds. They’re just an aerodynamic mess. The highway capability of this is probably limited to a few exits down the highway from one area in suburbia to another. Besides, I can’t see doing too many 80 mile stints on that seat.
And with the lack of get-up-and-go at higher speeds, you probably don’t want to spend too much time on the highway anyway. Not to mention no wind protection. Still, this is obviously not a highway mile eater. It’s an electric Grom, and it looks quite cool to me.
How do you know it will be ~$7K? Is that a guess, or have you seen that published somewhere? Just curious.
With their claims of “up to” 100 miles of range, that bike would need a battery upward of 7 kWh I should think. $7K seems like a tough price point to meet considering that.
I hope you enjoy yours, and I’m sure you will… As long as your commute isn’t anywhere near 80 miles.
I think that you guys are overlooking the fact that there are people who live IN cities. I lived in Paris for three years, in the 16th not far from Trocadéro. It was not my thing. But it is for a whole lot of people. If you had a place where you could charge this thing, I didn’t have power in my garage, you could use it to get around town all you want and never have a range problem. If you clocked a hundred miles of riding around in Paris in one day you would shoot yourself so you never did it again. The whole place is nine mile east to west and six miles north to south. People live there for months at a time and consider going all the way across town a fairly long journey.
Personally, my second favorite thing to do in Paris was leave. My favorite thing to do there is never return. My wife doesn’t see things that way. She goes there every year to cook Thanksgiving dinner for her friends. She started doing that when she lived there in the nineties.
It’s not overlooked, just not a very good use case for an EV. If you find a spot to park that is more than a two hour limit or less than two blocks from your apartment, you need to make sure you have enough reserve capacity to make it to one of the few functioning charge stations on the other side of the city. Most people I know that live in the city have bicycles because they are much easier to carry up the two flights of stairs to their flat.
I guess if I was sentenced to live in Paris again and wanted something like this, I would want something with an easily removed battery so I could bring it in and charge it. That’s what I did with my street bike. I’d pull the battery and put it on a tender in the bathroom.
Moving back there would be a dark fricken day.
I think it would sell if they replace that big 73 logo with a photo decal of a big v-twin.
Where does one ride this?
From charging station to charging station.
Anywhere one would ride any other commuter motorcycle or scooter.
Thanks to the God of motorcycles i have experienced the age of the internal combustion engine with its oil and petrol and fumes and noise.In twenty years or less they”ll be saying “Those were the days…”
Amen.
I’m glad I lived at a time when gas was cheap, cars were noisy and and you could actually figure out how to fix them without a computer or a trip to the dealer. Those days are rapidly disappearing. I have to say, I did my share of turning hydrocarbons into horsepower and make no apologies for it!
As a dirt biker I lived through a time when I would go to the local dealers and see new innovations almost every year in the seventies and eighties to seeing what was the pinicle for Honda in the mid to late nineties before they went to aluminum frames. Then I saw all but one Japanese manufacturer stop making dirt bikes altogether in favor of fake four stroke dirt bike replicas. Right now even KTM is struggling through the infancy of two stroke fuel injection, something I will skip.
The came Alta and the viable electric dirt bike only to be killed by Harley Davidson, a company that went from not existing in my universe to being my life long enemy by doing so. Now comes Stark Future.
Indeed.
Street bikes had a similar evolution during about the same time and are now, in my opinion, going through a bit of a navel gazing period. Road racing really evolved, flourished in the nineties and all but died the fake four stroke death as well. Now you have to really be a fan and dig hard to find out what’s going on in the AMA or WSB scene. In the nineties you need look no further that right here to see regular coverage.
So now we watch electric bikes struggle through their infancy. I probably won’t live to see how they grow up. Batteries seem to be headed for a few breakthroughs and things are bound to change radically as they do.
I’m glad I got to experience 2-strokes before they were phased out.
Once you use an Ev for a few months, the thought of pouring liquid in a tank just to burn it off , starts to seem nuts. I don’t like kale or anything, but it starts to happen. Plus, EVs are a sh*t ton of fun.
Ha! Anything without a manual transmission is not nearly as fun as one with one.
It’ll be 10 grand, wait and see. I just tried to buy one of the cheapest Zero’s(FX) and by the time they add all the crap and tax, it was 15k, the DSR 14.4 was 20K. My point is, a bike with real capacity if you’d call it that is super expensive, I love e motorcycles but have given up on them ever being affordable, maybe, just maybe, the Japanese brands will do something but unlikely. Batteries are just too expensive and they’re never going to get cheaper.
I went to their website, and couldn’t see detailed specs, such as battery capacity in kWh, only “range”. If I remember correctly, didn’t Elon break below the $100 per kWh barrier some years ago? So, if this bike had a battery capacity of 6-7 kWh (as does one of the Zero models I looked at), it’s not the battery cost that’s making electric motorcycles so expensive relative to their ICE counterparts.
I would also think it shouldn’t cost that much more to manufacture (source, actually) an electric motor and controller than an ICE engine, including fuel system, exhaust, etc. (in fact, proponents of electric vehicles often tout simplicity being one of their main attributes vs ICE). So the only reason I can think of that e-motorcycles are so grossly uncompetitive on price, is “economy of scale”. If Honda can sell a CFL300 for $5200, one would think they could make a comparable e-bike at or near the same price point. Am I wrong?
The individual cells that make up the battery packs (assuming they use industry standard) are probably around $100 per kWh, but the battery packs themselves – which need to be designed for a particular application and then assembled – certainly won’t be that cheap, especially at the quantities a bike like this will be produced at.
Plus, that’s just cost to produce. There is going to be margin from the supplier to the OEM and then more margin before it gets to us. Zero, for example, charges the consumer about $700 per kWh (more if you buy a standalone battery.) That is roughly 40% of the MSRP of the 7.2 kWh line of bikes they produce, or more than a Grom to look at it another way. Established OEMs of pedal assist e-mountain bikes charge the consumer between $1200 and $2000 per kWh. Batteries are still very expensive for the end user.
Batteries are never going to get cheaper? I’d take that bet.
Never get cheaper? Never ever ever? I’d say with all the stuff going on right now, they’re the most expensive they’ll ever be – it’s all gravy from here.
How much
Remember the Triumph Scrambler video with the stunt guy riding the heck out of it, and in the end got the pretty girl to go out with him ? NOT this cartoon version.
Ernie Vigil.
The city dwellers who buy it better like the styling or price. Something that rolls on 15s and goes 75mph with a hub motor isn’t going to make a lot of friends otherwise.
Most of the people living in cities already pass the crazy test. So you never know.
Looks bigger than a Grom and many mod those to hit that kind of speed. Fast scooters have smaller wheels, too.
This also has a chain, not a hub motor.
I guess you’re right. I have to wonder about the 15 inch wheels. The thing looks like they could easily have gone with 17s and opened the door to more tire choices.
I’ll be interested to hear more about the choices made when they’re ready to talk. I have to tip my hat to them for coming up with something unique. I didn’t really “get” the Grom when it came around (look at what it’s stablemate, the PCX150 can do) but they’ve become popular.
I could never understand why people not sentanced to city lifr would buy something that struggled at highway speeds.
Then I moved to New Hampshire about five years ago. You have to seek out and find roads here that have speed limits over 40mph. What the Netherlands is to bicycles NH is to small displacement bikes, but mostly Harleys.
So many people told me that Harleys would make more sense to me as I got older. But as I age I find the opposite to be true. I can’t help but expect those guys to make their bike stink so they can offend another sense. There is a tuner shop near by and all the roads around here have burnout marks that are as long as half a mile. I suppose that is how they are making a stink.
Too bad it looks like something that Lego made.
Having difficulty getting a read on the size of this thing. The photo with the man sitting on it makes it look full size but the description had me thinking it was somewhere near a From’s size.
Here’s hoping this comes in at a lower price than most e-motos. Their e-bikes are pretty economical relative to that industry. If this were affordable the it would be the bike Zero hoped to be.
It has 15-inch wheels, which is strange, so I can’t imagine it is that much bigger than a Grom.
Plus, it will be much easier to go to the dark side when you need new tires.
Looks like this would be a lot of fun around a go-cart or autocross track. I think quiet electric vehicles along these lines could make urban/suburban racetracks much more feasible.
Very reminiscent of my kid’s Play Mobile toys. Hope it goes better than it looks and has reasonable price point.