When you think of Can-Am, you undoubtedly think of the popular three-wheelers that have been in production for quite some time. You may not know that Can-Am also has a motorcycle history, and that it is returning to the production of motorcycles.
Those motorcycles will be electric, and include both a roadster and adventure models. Prototypes are pictured here courtesy of Can-Am.
The roadster model will be known as the Pulse, while the adventure bike is known as the Origin.
Can-Am faces the same challenge every other motorcycle manufacturer faces when it comes to electric models. That problem is range due to the fact that motorcycles cannot carry anywhere near the battery capacity of automobiles.
Patent drawings reveal Can-Am’s approach to this issue with the electric motor mounted in the swingarm – near the pivot point to reduce the negative impact on unsprung weight. This allows the main frame area to be devoted to battery cells and associated cooling.
We expect to see several electric motorcycle production models revealed later this year … certainly from Kawasaki, for instance. 2024 might be the year the industry pivots away from ICE to electrics.
We have no additional details on the specifications for these Can-Am models, but you can expect each of these bikes to show up in dealers next year.
To get the range, electric bikes need a 2 or 3 speed gearbox. Surely with the torque numbers they can tolerate a long final drive ratio.
An electric vehicle that won’t spontaneously burst into flames would be great. But that is still far off in the future. So, not for me, thank you.
GM EV1.
Any number of Toyotas…and Nissans?
I’ve not heard of Zeros or Surrons going poof. Or Lucid. Or Polestar.
Livewire?
Technically may be brilliant bikes, but couldn’t be uglier even if they wanted to…
A surprising number of frothing tinfoil hatters here, I’m surprised. Must be Boomers, the younger generations are more open to change.
While it’s not surprising to have some booger machine manfully square up to his Apall phone and attempt to throw the boomers under the bus.
I think that I should remind you Jim that it isn’t just some of the boomers who find it fashionable to come off as heavily indoctrinated wild eyed weirdos. That’s rapidly becoming quite multi-generational.
So next time you stare at your last diaper box, which now holds an old joy stick game controller, with fond memories. Just remember that there are boomers like me who bought an electric motorcycle four years ago and has been souping it up ever since. Actually I’m thinking of buying a new model right now. I already have a list of mods for it too. Another dirt bike. I got no use for an electric street bike as yet.
A high-tech Boomer? Bravo sir!
Don’t forget a bunch of us boomers built the Internet.
which one of you guys designed the SR-71?
An EV, for me? NEVER!!!
Remember, if the Federal Government has to mandate something, in a free-market, it is already a dud.
The Powers-That-Be are all invested, in EV’s, so, of course, they must push them, onto us.
It’ll be a cold day in hell when I buy a ‘lectric bike. Which is paradoxical when you think about the motivation behind them…
I am looking at relatively inexpensive electric motorcycles for a 5-20 mile commute (depending on where I’m going). Not a whole lot of choice available right now. Ryvid Anthem (soon), CSC RX1E. That’s about it here in the U.S. Unless someone knows something I don’t.
Didja know that SoCal’s own “Salton Sea” is loaded, and I mean LOADED with Cobalt?? That place is gonna loook mighty different soon…https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2023/05/28/exp-salton-sea-lithium-valerio-pkg-052808asg1-cnn-business.cnn
Lithium, not Cobalt. It is sad how life altering Cobalt is to mine.
Yes, it’s awful how much of it is used in the processing of oil. And making tool steel and permanent magnets. Oh, and pasture top-dressing, as well as in electroplating for those shiny, shiny Harley parts.
And Cobalt Chrome artificial joints in knees and hips.
The salton sea area is loaded with lithium but it’s underground. The pitch is that the heated pools of brine underneath the area (which have the lithium) will power the whole process. They’ll extract the minerals and pump the wastewater back down there. What they gloss over is how corrosive that brine is. They know how to run this in theory but must still figure out how to deal with the corrosive properties of the material when processing at an industrial scale. If they do get production to the levels they hope to, batteries will get much less expensive here in the US. May be a while yet.
Same for fresh water from sea water desalination plants.
Super concentrated brine that kills every bit of sea grass and kelp for miles around.
The claim by the salton sea lithium mining projects is that they’ll reinject the processed brine back into the place they pulled it from. Who knows what that’ll do in the long run. It’s coming from pretty far down.
Corrosive brine: Making fresh water from sea water, that’s a proven way to kill sea grass and kelp beds when the brine gets dumped out in an ocean outfall. Out of sight, but not forgotten by the marine life.
I’m all for electric vehicles, but battery energy density is going to have to increase quite a bit before electric street bikes make sense outside of city use. Hopefully that comes soon with solid state batteries on the horizon. Until then, I don’t understand why manufacturers would invest the money to engineer a motorcycle around a battery that is incompatible with the motorcycle’s function (why build an adventure tourer around a lithium ion battery that will never provide the range necessary for adventure touring?)
Usage determines range.
Adventure/tourers, particularly small-to-medium-sized ones, often work well as commuters. I am currently in a rural part of the northeast where many of the residential roads are not paved and the nearest retail is just over ten miles away. Current electric range handles that fine.
When “versatile commuter” is perceived to sell bikes, marketing departments will make that a segment.
Most adventure touring bikes aren’t used for that purpose any more than 4xR SUV’s are used for off road. It’s a style people like. These bikes are commuters.
If people bought the best vehicles for their practical use cases he automotive and motorcycle landscapes would look very different, more like Europe (smaller cars and scooters).
Just about all the observations and objections here are valid, regarding pure electric motorcycles. I still would like to own one, for local rides, and the pleasure of performance unlike any ICE motorcycle. I’m talking, low servicing requirements, smooth and quite torque from the rolling start and a jet like whizzing until empty – zzzzz kaput.
Now, many here own several bikes at once, what is the big deal about one unique motorcycle from the gas and chain lube ones ?
Hybrid vehicles are the only practical improvement for automobiles and trucks, as recently shown by a LOT of e-cars sitting on dealer lots while hybrids are selling well. As for motorcycles, too much stuff in a hybrid, to lug around. Even aircraft are going hybrid in an increasing amount of design effort.
i think i read honda is working on some moto hybrid patents
For all of the complexity in doing so, Kawasaki is slated to be showing a production model hybrid motorbike in November, no?
As long as there will be gasoline coming out of the pumps at the service station, there is No way I will consider electric.. Government is thrusting this crap down our throats regardless of the pushback from the masses and unfortunately we will have to accept defeat. It will take a few years but it will happen..
The gov’ts of the world can TRY to jam EVs down our throats, but that is not working out well… turns out the capitalists still expect to be paid. EV’s are taking up lot space and co$tly inventory slots all over the US. Over 90 days supply (92,000 units) sitting on the lots with no orders to fill.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/we-have-turned-away-inventory-us-ev-market-struggles-cars-pile-dealer-lots
Apparently few US buyers are willing to suffer the “nuanced lifestyle change” required to tolerate using an EV as their main vehicle. And ever fewer can afford a “second car” of equal or greater cost than their primary ICE vehicle.
There will be some attempt to force us all into using fleet-owned autonomous E-vehicles, but where are they going to park them when not in use? Right now, we car owners bear the cost of storing our vehicles when we are not driving them, we often have to pay for parking in downtown areas for work, entertainment venues or shopping. So where will all the auto-EVs go at night when most of the population is asleep? Can’t be charging ready for the morning rush hour if parked on the streets, especially in urban areas.
Little things the EV/autonomous promoters don’t want anyone to notice need to be addressed BEFORE they eliminate ICEs from individual ownership.
Remember, “you will own nothing, rent everything which will be delivered to your door by a drone (including your clothes) and you will be happy”. They just left off the “or else”.
To paraphrase Rev. Niemoller, First they came for my ICE vehicle…
you know how they are going to do it ? $400 a barrel oil
ZeroHedge finds a couple of dealerships that over ordered ev’s and the sky is falling? This is the literal definition of “fake news”.
Q2 was another record for sales volume, almost 50% above Q2 last year and growth is expected to be strong through 2028. That is what you’ll find if you look at unbiased reporting.
the standard for sales is days on the lot, not a zerohedge or article or some dude on the net, apparently ev sales are slowing according to this metric, in response manufacturers lower prices and sales should pick up
It’s important to consider what days on lot and slowing are being measured against which is two straight years of unprecedented demand and supply constraint.
Once all cars are autonomous, it is very likely (in my opinion) that motorcycles will be outlawed. And it is only a matter of time before all cars and trucks are autonomous. Get in, punch in a destination, take a nap.
My goal is to be the last fuel-powered motorcyclist on the road.
but…in an e-bike…electricity is fuel…..
I agree. There will come a time when operating a vehicle on public roads will be viewed as anti-social, uncouth, and dangerous, and then a time when doing so is flat out illegal.
Totally agree. Once autonomous cars are figured out properly, they will be orders of magnitude safer than letting our easily distracted meat-brains pilot 2 tons of steel down a road.
Slave labor is being used in Africa for cobalt mining and lithium. OPEN PIT mines with up to 15k slaves doing the dirty work for all of the GREEN phucktards that push this bullcrap! It will work great for all the 15 minute smart cities and restrictions on travel for all but the ruling class elite! Welcome to the New World Economic disorder!
Cobalt has been used in large amounts for decades for desulpherizing petroleum fuels (its #1 use until recently). Nobody seemed concerned or even aware of Central Africa’s labor practices before EV’s became popular. It’s use is being phased out of battery production but it’ll certainly still be used for fuel desulpherization.
Lithium mostly comes from an evaporation process. The top-3 producers by share are Australia (46.9%), Chile (30%) and China (14.6%). The only African nation that produces it in a meaningful amount is Zimbabwe (0.6%).
Yawn!!!
What CanAm appears to have done is a styling exercise to make these bikes’ battery/motor package look as much like an ICE engine as possible. Or just a practicality move so all their existing production frame jigs still work?
The “drive sprocket NEAR the swingarm pivot” idea is not new by any means, so if belt tension was a major issue all chain/belt drive bikes would have the swingarm pivot run through the centre of the drive sprocket.
Battery tech needs to take a BIG step, equivalent to that which got us to this point vs. the batteries used in the first electric vehicles. I remember when our milkman (yes, I am that told) was forced to convert to a battery-powered truck which stranded him routinely in our semi-rural neighbourhood when the weather was too hot, too cold or too much snow.
We may get to nearly 100% electric vehicles one day, but the current or practically envisioned tech is no way ready for mass use.
To say nothing about the woefully inadequate electricity production levels as EVERYTHING from home heating to cooking goes electric, let alone converting all that to wind/solar. And then there’s the 20th-century transmission grid which can barely keep up now. Got a few $trillions lying around to fix all that?
I won’t live that long, and neither will most readers of any age.
I have a 125 pound electric dirt bike that I souped up, to double its power. It’s small light and fast, so in the right woods, like Akeley, MN, you can really get ‘er done.
But you have to run a lot of air in the spindly little tires ot they WILL go flat. And I have had to push the thing out of the woods a few times when the battery died.
I wouldn’t consider an electric street bike unless I was sentenced to live in some urban cesspool and wanted a grocery getter.
As far as these bikes go. I question the design. If I were to shop BRP for a motorcycle part I’d get a nice Rotax for an old school dirt track bike. Those are awesome.
post a picture of it in paul’s hand.
That would be hilarious. But the local constables may have a another opinion. It not that the thing is too heavy. But I have yet to see anyone put so much as a bicycle on there.
You can have some fun with Paul. But the locals frown on anything that resembles a lack of respect.
The locals might not like that. There is a giant fiberglass walleye up the road in Nevis. Putting the little guy in the walleye’s mouth would be rather humorous too.
Really Can Am history of three wheelers? Can Am actually had the highest performance two stroke dirt bikes on the planet in the early 70’s. Today those same dirt bikes are prized collectables. Fast forward through time and just past the motortricycle era to today. I rode the HD Live Wire and was stunned how good it really was excluding the rebound dampening on the rear suspension needing attention it work very well. With a range of 75-100 miles it would be a decent sport bike for the local twisties or a run to the beach and back. Shortfall is apparent if touring is more than a passing thought, but not impossible either.
The new Can Am is intriguing, mono swing arm, belt final, motor in the swing arm ( Eric Buell are you in bed with BRP?) and hopefully quality build. The adv version could be a useful tool within a certain radius of home. Silent to the point of being stealthy is a bonus at times. Charge times will be the final determining factor. Looking forward to it test ride.
I’ll just wait for solid state batteries.
Correct answer.
If they can figure out how to give me at least a 150 mile range and recharge in 5 minutes, I’ll consider one.
In the meantime, how about incorporating that enclosed belt drive to a real ADV bike?
E-Bikes are still not worthy of my money. The cost of their batteries, the pitiful travel distance afforded by the batteries, the time to charge and the attitude of the collective of the freaks loudly espousing electric vehicles as their personal Jeebus and da Earf as their godless Goddess makes me despise their lies all the more. Making batteries ain’t free. It isn’t even cheap and it cost dat dere Earf a lot more than an EIC.
So-called “green tech” is not environmentally friendly but the green-weenies don’t give an airborne intercourse as they tend ro live in the moment of their egocentric orgasms, i.e., virtue-signalling. FTN.
Unless ET or Baby Yoda/Grogu have decided to give mankind the keys to this pUniverse of powah (read: leapfrog current DC Tech to a far more usable set of solutions that are key to making E-vehicles into E-Tickets I say keep working on a real solution and not something that is little more than “As Seen On TV!”
And no, this does not make me anti-electric. I am just not buying into it at this point in time because it is not nearly effective enough for the real world we all live in.
ORT
Gee ORT, why don’t you tell us how you really feel. EV’s are a developing industry, if you will, no doubt advancements will come. Taking a little ride in the Wayback Machine shows how all emerging technologies took time to progress, all the while fending off detractors. One thing is for certain, sucking up all the crude we can, and squeezing it from rocks, is finite. There will be a time when access to more becomes out of reach, nonexistent, or too expensive. Best to work on what’s next early than to be complacent.
E-anything is farging garbage.
So you’re using a mechanical computer?
When a Ford F-150 electric truck towing a trailer can only go SEVENTY miles before recharging, that is unmitigated horse manure. They should never have brought this stuff to market. And sales of EVs are shrinking. People are wising up to the fact that they are not ready to replace IC vehicles. And that autonomous crap? Not in my garage. I purposely still drive a manual transmission car and will keep it for the rest of my life.
I think you might be overestimating the distances that trucks like F-150’s are usually driven for utility and towing. Long drives/hauls are huge profit eaters. I am imagining all sorts of businesses (lawn services, plummers, painters, contractors, etc.) champing at the bit to get rid of their fuel and engine/transmission maintenance bills with electric trucks and vans.
“it is not nearly effective enough for the real world we all live in. ”
EV is already effective enough for the world that the majority of us live in (80% of Americans live in urban areas), even if some of us present use cases that E-Bikes aren’t as suitable for. These bikes don’t pretend to be long range touring solutions, they’re stylized commuters. If they manage 70+ miles of range, they’ll do very well for most of the early adopters who buy them. When you can charge at home, range anxiety dissolves because you can wake up with a full battery every day.
And they are also already much “greener” than any fuel burning bike. Even if you charged this with 100% coal fired electricity, you’re still much cleaner than burning fuel on the bike due to all of the gained efficiency of mass produced power and electric efficiency of the bike itself. The smaller the battery, the faster the vehicle becomes a carbon saver.
Thank you ORT, for articulating what I and many others are feeling. This mad charge (pun intended) to electric vehicles is fraught with perils, misrepresentations, and outright lies that E-proponents and most media willfully spin with alarming regularity.
Personally, I really like the idea of battery/electric motorcycles. But so far, I haven’t been impressed by the reality of battery/electric motorcycles. Can CanAm change that? We shall see.
If their solution is that I need to stay within a 45 mile radius of home for a day’s ride…sigh. But, but, that could be fixed by putting an extra 100 lbs. of batteries onboard, for an extra five or ten grand…sigh. But, but, you’d be getting the same performance for twice the initial purchase price…sigh. Good Luck, CanAm, you’re gonna need it.
The company to also watch is Ducati. They admitted that they are working the data from thier MotoGP racing electric bikes in the MotoE series to produce products for sale within the coming year or so
I like the idea of having the propulsion drive (motor and reduction gears) in the forward section of the swing arm where it will have a minimal effect on unsprung weight – but it is still unsprung weight – and a single sided swingarm usually have a negative impact on unsprung weight as well. So this design choice gets the double whammy. But electric motorcycles aren’t about ultimate performance so the buyers of these machines care little about such things. What they do are about is range-per-charge, and this design choice maximizes the number of available storage cells. I’d say it’s a good trade-off…and a single sided swingarm always looks cool.
I wish this version of CanAm the best of luck…the one I remember from the 70’s had some significant issues adjusting to becoming a production-line company.
This strategy might also be for modularity of the power unit. Also results in an enclosed, presumably maintenance free final drive, also a plus.
A true advantage is that the drive belt maintains constant tension regardless of swingarm position.
Does the design technically make these scooter more than motorcycle?
The mechanical attributes (unified motor/swing arm & no manual shifting) make a good case for it but the form factor doesn’t meet the standard of step through + foot boards. If they’re priced reasonably enough they should find use with similar riders.