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Think back. To your first kiss. To the first kiss that didn’t originate from an aunt who swooped upon you as a falcon upon its prey. I remember mine. It was snowing. I was shivering, as much from the cold as from the titillation of CW’s hand sliding over my wrist and her fingers interlacing with mine. CW pulled me tight, arched up on her toes, and kissed me. Then she laughed, brushed snow from my face, put her warm mouth to my ear, and whispered “now softly this time.”
That kiss was a seminal moment in a lifetime. But was that kiss good? No. I puckered up as if I was about to play the trombone. New things are strange things. We can’t be expected to understand or fully grasp what we’ve never faced.
When I redid the plumbing in our house, I’d planned on using copper pipe because that’s what I knew. I was insistent upon it. Plastic plumbing, I told a plumber friend, was “inelegant.” He laughed. “When your Jeep eventually dies, will you buy a horse and buggy?” he asked. Plastic plumbing is cheaper, faster, is less susceptible to wear and bends around corners. It’s the better way. I railed against it because of ignorance.
In contributing to this site, the surest way to inflame its readership is to write anything that isn’t a categorical dismissal of electricity as a power source for motorcycles. In the comments section, respondents cleave into two groups. Those who will hang onto their KLRs until they’re pried out of their cold, dead hands, and, opposing them, those who believe electrification is a savior from on high. Drowned out in the vociferous responses from the for and against brigade is anyone who’d simply like to learn more about what our future holds.
If you, or I, are indeed motorcycle enthusiasts, then wouldn’t it be natural that we have some degree of interest about what’s coming next? When I write “what our future holds” I’m not casting a vote to the yeah or nay. Motorcycle manufacturers—all of them—are investing in electric propulsion systems. Before we devolve into a shouting match, shouldn’t we at least try to be open minded enough to learn?
Because motorcycles aren’t dangerous enough for me, next spring I’ve registered for a driving course for my hydroplane racing license. The only boat I’ve ever driven was an aluminum fishing boat with a 9.9 horsepower outboard. When I step out of the hydroplane early next June, will I be able to give a definitive verdict on the setup and handling of the craft? It could handle like a dream or be a disaster that teeters on the verge of catching too much air and blowing over backward. Without experience, I’m without a reference point for an opinion.
This parallels our predicament with electric motorcycles. How can we categorically dismiss them when most of us have never ridden one? I rode an electric KTM half the distance of a football pitch—and that’s my entire history with electric motorcycles.
The debate over electric bikes is two-pronged. On the one side are issues of range and infrastructure. Electric motorcycles, today, do not have a range that works for many riding scenarios. And, of course, how the electricity is generated that will charge an electric motorcycle is paramount. Burning coal to charge your Zero means it really isn’t a true zero in terms of emissions. These are not trivial matters. They’re essential elements of the electrification debate. But it’s the second aspect to electric motorcycles that I find most perplexing—the question of soul.
We are creatures of our experience. I know internal combustion engines. I set desmodromic valves. I shim crankshafts. I love the howl of an Italian V-twin or V-four at redline. Electric motors, in my experience, power string-trimmers and sump pumps and washing machines. The key words here are in my experience.
If you exposed an alien, or remote tribesmen (or my late mother) to an internal combustion engine, they’d be unable to distinguish—if you asked them which engine had more soul—between a 3 horsepower Briggs and Stratton and the 300-horsepower mill in a MotoGP bike. Why? They don’t have any points of reference. To the trio listed above, engines are lumps that make noise. Our appreciation of all things depends on experience and context.
I think back on my first exposure to things I now deem essential: I thought espresso tasted like liquid cigarette smoke, single-malt like paint thinner, and wine like grape juice gone bad. But then, over time, my unrefined palette became refined—I learned how to distinguish between good and bad.
Look at the language we use to describe motorcycles. A narrow-angle V-twin we think of as quintessentially American, a 90-degree twin as Italian, and a parallel-twin, once upon a time, as British. But an engine doesn’t have a passport, speak the native tongue, or represent the culture of a country in any way. It’s up to humans to imbue these characteristics onto the machinery. And it’s our human involvement with internal combustion that makes all the difference. My lack of an emotional connection with electric propulsion is because I’m without reference points.
And then I reached out to motorcycle designer Michael Uhlarik. Michael designed and built his own electric race bike and drives an electric VW Golf. He also owns an old Ducati 900SS and an older VW Bus—Michael is a man with one foot in each camp. “Electric motors,” he said, like internal combustion engines, “derive character from resonance.” And resonance—vibration—is what defines an engine’s “character.”
But, I said to Michael, aren’t all electric motors the same? Michael, whose guilty pleasure is the Chrysler Cordoba in his driveway, used this analogy: the 360 cubic-inch V8 in his car is distinct in character from a 350 cubic-inch small block Chevrolet V8. Yet the architecture of each engine is virtually identical, and yet, as Michael said, they’re different because of the “…hundreds of variables in construction, packaging, and material choice.”
Electric motors, said Michael, have, like internal combustion engines, an infinite number of variables. Such as the number of copper windings, bearing size and number, and the size and design of any and all ancillary components. And each choice made by a manufacturer means a different resonance. It’s conceivably possible (if not wholly desirable) to make an electric motor vibrate like an ironhead Sportster. And once you factor in the software component, said Michael, electric motors will have the opportunity to have more variation than internal combustion engines. Yes, more.
Naturally, most electric vehicles will sound and feel the same. Toyota and Hyundai know its customer base for its entry-level models don’t place a premium on engine characteristics—and that’s the same for gas and electric. But sophisticated brands that understand the need for product differentiation will exploit every opportunity to make their electric motors theirs. And it’s important to remember where we are in the arc of electric propulsion: the beginning. I’m fairly sure Ducati, who, as of next season will supply bikes to MotoGP’s electric class, will make sure their motor isn’t the equivalent of the what you’d find in a Prius. Ditto for Harley-Davidson and KTM and MV Agusta.
Accepting that electric motorcycles can be as charismatic as gasoline-fuelled motorcycles isn’t an easy stretch for the mind. I’m nearing 60, have a trio of old Ducatis, a straight-six Jeep and an air-cooled VW bus. I get it. But in 100 years, motorcyclists will look back and wonder what all the fuss was over gas-burning motorcycles, in the way we look back on steam-powered cars as long-lost primitive oddities. It’ll happen. History tells us it will.
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