Maggie Dean: The year was 2023. 23. 23. 23. 23. Wait, okay, so this year, the year was this year during the, oh, so treacherous month of me. Dude, that's like last month. We're, we're going back in time to last month. How do you expect me to emphasize that? What it feels like? It was just last month in May. Seriously treacherous. It's mid-spring, moving into summer. That's the weather riders look forward to. All right, so last month we had so much material that we stopped early, which means this month we've got new old stock to discuss journey with T R O. As we look back on Piper's post Peria distress.

Travis: So I'm, Renee wants a new, a different bike.

Piper: Well, hold on. Do you wanna hear my stories? I have stories, yeah. Yes. Tell the story. Okay. A couple stories. One last week I tried to break my hand triumph uphill backwards into the garage, which triumph his, uh, street twin. And I like so smart. I kicked the kickstand down in case I felt like it was gonna tip over. But I just, the problem is, is that I tipped it over on the wrong side. Oh no. And so I smashed the um, bar end. Into my left hand and my left hand smashed into the gate or the, you know, the wooden fence. And I heard this big, horrible crack, which I thought was just all the bones in my fingers breaking first time I cried my whole life. Really? No, I cry all the time, but I don't cry because of pain very often. I'm pretty, I have a pretty high threshold for pain. It's not broken, it's just severely, um, sprained. So that was on Wednesday. On Thursday, I get this really beautifully written email from Kathy Rim who you know is, helps run M S F. And they told me that, um, the 12th candidate for the writer, coach, trainer Prep had dropped out and I was next in line. And so would I like to join their writer, coach trainer prep in June. Very cool. Side note, when Tim was in high school, the, the person who was nominated for prom king I think like got dismissed or something. And so then Tim, my super nerdy husband, became the shoe in prom king. And I think, uh, he was very honored by this, but at the same time was sort of like, oh,

Travis: like what about you? You are my second choice.

Piper: I was, I was, yeah, I was the second, I was the second choice. But then she followed it up with like, you know, there were 32 candidates and so, you know, if you can't do it, we'll find somebody else. Cuz I, you know, I was like, well, so haha funny story is I might have broken my hand. Uh, do I need this hand for the rider coach trainer prep, or should I just cut it off? She's like, you don't need it. So anyways,

Travis: in June on a, uh, Honda Ctx, D C T

Piper: on a B M W and 1000 rr.

Robin: I like you.

Travis: Wait, wait. Where's Wait, where's this bike coming from? Whose bike is this?

Piper: I don't know, but have you seen it? Have you seen the 2023? It

Robin: is. Oh yeah. Mm, yeah. We we're familiar. No, I haven't

Tim: seen it yet.

Travis: You gotta Google search that. Just the words make my

Robin: back hurt. It's, it's, it's found it's way. Had a conversation before.

Travis: That's a problem. I, I posted a link there of the M 1000 rr, which has a ridiculous front wing on it. Like, like in car four, one size front wing.

Tim: They're, uh, rating it up to 13.8 pounds of downward force, even while leaning 205 horsepower.

Robin: pounds piss off. I know.

Tim: Dear God. That's awesome. That is

Robin: awesome. What's the entry fee for that?

Tim: Oh, 28. That's it. Nope, sorry. 32, 33. That sounds more appropriate. $3,000. Yeah. As shown on the uh, is, uh,

Travis: 38. I figure it would be like 60. Yeah. That's

Piper: cheap. Yeah, I mean that's why I told you that's the next bike.

Tim: That's

Travis: nuts. So anyway, what is the next bike? Let's, we're gonna talk about next bikes.

Piper: Okay. So I was thinking about a Triumph scrambler 1200

Travis: x 80. That's a cool looking. Yeah.

Piper: With it's 89

Travis: horsepower. It's the torque you gotta get on the torque wagon.

Piper: I don't, I just don't listen. I actually, I, um, I tried out one of those Ducati. Monstrous things. Monster. A Monster Multi. Oh, the Monster. Multi Multistrada. Multi-Strat,

Travis: multi-Strat Multistrada, gene Supreme.

Piper: It was fine, but it, it's not anything I want to put in my garage. I don't know. I don't like those big windshield things. I feel like I'm in a condo. Civic.

Tim: Yeah. I'm with you. I, I tend to prefer the, the little naked bikes. Yeah. I've got the, one of the little, uh, little fly screen. Just enough to take a little of the pressure 2023e06-002: off

Travis: the chest. Yeah. I, I can never get clean air on my helmet with the windscreen, except for the one time I rode an eighties gold wing and then there was no air. Um, but otherwise I can never get, so like, I just, I've tried so many different, um, so many different, uh, windscreens for my NC 700 and they all just like hurt my head after a while. So I just run the stock one all the way down. It's like, it's just every time it's just like, and it gets to me. So, okay. So you want something, do you want that vintage that Is it that vintage sort of paired down Look you're

Robin: going for, hold on, look. What's your current flock? What's everything you got right now? What's the garage full of? How many bikes? What are they?

Piper: I don't wanna talk about it cuz I just got rid of basically everything

Robin: that I own. Okay. Well, okay, so then what's in there then? What tools are in the shed?

Piper: I had a monkey. I just sold my A peria

Robin: or a You really did. It's gone. Gone. Oh, Uhhuh.

Tim: Wow. Okay.

Piper: Okay. I don't wanna talk about it. Okay. It was like a really, like, as it was driving, like out of my garage and down the hill, I like felt my heart sink into my cha. It was like the worst breakup ever. I, I went and got like a, like an I love you forever. A Prolia tattoo on my arm and like, You know what I mean? I cut my hair and I, um, I've been, I've been listening to sad songs for days. Okay. So right now I have, um, triumph Street Twins, and, uh, it's about as fun as, um, like a go-kart.

Travis: Go-karts are fun.

Piper: Like a, like a golf

Travis: cart. Oh, they're also fun. You just gotta, you know, ride them with reckless abandon. Well,

Piper: yes. I can't do that. So I thought cut rid of everything. All I have right now is the, the, the street brand

Robin: have considered the 7 65 Street Triple

Piper: R. No. But then did I tell you that I went and, um, test rode some, uh, an Indian Chiton? Is that the big one?

Travis: That's the big home. That's the big air cooled one.

Piper: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And like a, like a really good motorcycle rider coach. I, um, test rode it kind of on the fly. I didn't have all of my appropriate gear and so I was. I had everything minus my boots and I wore these like sneaker ish looking things, so cruiser,

Travis: cruiser

Piper: gear and I burned the shit outta my ankle. And so, and then I parked it and I was like, not my bike. This is not, see

Travis: it bit me. A big aircooled V way going from RSV four to a big aircooled twin. Yeah. No.

Robin: What guys, what about the

Travis: ft r I test rode a chief ton. They had like the test ride truck and I did a chief ton and a scout. And the scout motors is way better.

Piper: I'm just gonna say this only because I know that my friend who, um, I'm gonna talk about doesn't listen to this podcast, but the FTR reminds me of this particular person who is, um, money poor, money rich, and people poor. Is that a good way 2023e06-002: to

Robin: say it? Um, yes, that is a good way to put it. Yeah, I know what you mean,

Piper: right? Yep. No friends. He's hoity-toity. He like has this gigantic house that only three people live in. His wife hates him, his kids don't like him. So when I think F t r I think like, um, divorce in the works.

Robin: Let's not, so let's not go. Yeah.

Tim: Yeah. That doesn't sound good.

Piper: So as you can see, my, I don't, I don't have any, any flipping clue. I, I talking about and scramblers and,

Travis: yeah. Yeah. You're all over the place. So do you want that more coming off of like a sport bike? Do you hand, do you want, do you want like a paired down, like naked, classic kind of style? Like is like a, for appearances? Is that what you want?

Piper: I do love that scrambler. I, I, I've always loved the look of the triumph, like

Travis: love. Yeah. The scrambler 1200. Love that. Yeah. Yep. Love looks good. Yeah. What about the BMW scrambler, the R nine T scrambler? I don't know.

Tim: Are those still being

Travis: made? I thought so.

Piper: I'm still heartbroken over my poor choices in life when it comes to that. Prolia. I think it was a, I think it was, it was not the right

Robin: choice. It, it's a, this is a little bit of a learning experience. So like I'd never, I never sold my bandit until I bought its replacement, until the bandit suffered in the garage looking at what was taking its place. I did not kick it to the curb. And I actually know who bought it too, which is a big deal. But like, I, I couldn't sell the bike that I was like, this is still everything I've ever put into anything until I got the bike where I was like, yep, that's what I want. You know 2023e06-002: what

Piper: I mean? Yeah. Have you ever done anything that's like really selfish? Ooh, that's pretty daily. Um, that's like really, really selfish and uh, and then you feel like, kind of like bad about it. Every time that you do that thing, that was selfish. Mm. For example, I currently own two homes, not because I want to, but because one is on the market and one is the one we're living

Robin: in. Those aren't motorcycles.

Piper: Okay. Yeah. Anyway, so Uhhuh, and so now I'm, I, I have two mortgages, two businesses, five children, an exchange student, and a partridge and a pear tree. And so then I was like, you

Robin: know what? When I, when I say like, make sure you buy a new bike before you sell the old one, you're like, I gotta buy a new B business before I sell the other business. Like, that's a whole different that you're working on a level that I have no, no understanding of. That's, that's heavy. That's

Piper: awesome. Yeah. So I was sort of like, you know what? I can't keep being selfish about this. Like the family has gotta come before my need for really expensive, super fast, really sexy, delicious, like mm-hmm. Gorgeous. So many horsepower.

Robin: So. Well, let me describe to you how, how much of a debate this can be for. Like Travis, Tim and myself, we ride very similar posture bikes. They're actually very, very similar in a lot of ways now. Bob's fared and I'm mostly upright. Uh, Tim is pretty upright and Travis is quite upright. Yeah. All these bikes have a very similar posture. And yet Travis gets on my bike, he's like, Nope, nope. Elope. Nope. Never. I get Hunt's bike. I'm like, what am I riding a freaking antelope? And, and you know, so the sensitivity range is very unique to you. We found our bikes. Tim's freaking scr is xsr. That's what I said. I

Tim: was said xsr.

Travis: The SCR is the cruiser scrambler. Don't

Tim: correct me. Yeah. That thing is, don't make front of my accent

Robin: abomination. Awesome. Right? And he found his machine. You know? Yeah. For now, Tim Swabs,

Travis: no, mine. Machines often. Mine's, mine's still kind of, I love it, but it's still kind of appliance. I'm not in love with it.

Piper: I love the triumph. It's, I, I have such like a soft spot in my heart for that thing. It made me such a solid writer. Um, out right, out right, right from the start. It was like, it was the best, which triumph for me. It was like the, the street twin. It was like the best. And that's why I haven't gotten rid of it. Cuz it's sort of like the baby. It's the, it's the thing that, that really sparked my love for, for writing. And so, um, I don't mind hopping on that thing. And, and, but it's slow and it, I can never, you know, like the power is not there when I want it to be. Sometimes I feel like when your skill levels out, um, perform your motorcycle's capabilities, you can actually get yourself into some trouble. When your bike can't do the

Robin: things, that's one of the things that you would probably get chastised for in

Travis: that. Well, when you flow yourself into a corner and you're expecting certain braking performance and certain handling performance and it's not there, it can be a problem.

Robin: Yeah, but it's always the rider. It's never the

Piper: bike. Oh no, I I'm not saying that it would be the bike. I'm saying, um,

Travis: there's gonna be a level of disappointment that you can't do the thing you know you can want to do.

Piper: Well, it would definitely be, it would definitely be me. But it would, um, what about the needed to do things that it

Travis: can't do? So I just linked you the motor. Good CV 100 men Mandela. Oh

Robin: yeah. So this is why it's also funny is that I know, I know that you're gonna need to get the bike that you just speaks to you. Right. And you're talking to us while you're, you're looking through some of this stuff. That is so, that is

Travis: a, it's a very Robin Dini bike.

Robin: It is a gorgeous machine, but so like, I can't believe Travis selected that because honestly in the, the part of the gag about the, the sensitivity between Tim's profile to my profile, to Travis's profile and how intrinsically like no, mine, I'm gonna say like you should get a standard posture sport bike with luggage and a fairing. And Travis is gonna be like, you should get something that's super comfortable that you can actually outride Robin on if you throw yourself into the corners hard enough. And then Tim's gonna be like, I don't know, I'm going up over this hill. And you know, all of us are gonna be like, get that thing, but there's gonna be the bike that you're just like, Nope, I, that's me right there. That is all me. And maybe it wasn't an RSV four, whatever it is, I hope to see it go to a racetrack. That would be fun. You've got to do

Travis: this. Here's my question too. Have you ridden the scrambler 12?

Piper: I have. I did. I, I test wrote a bunch of triumphs last summer. Um, but that's when I was really like, had my heart pretty set on a. On a, you know, on a Prolia. I was, I had already decided. I don't even know why I went in Tero. I mean, cuz that's fun. But I, I think I was trying to convince myself out of it. Yeah. But I mean, some of the other points that I made about the reasons I got rid of the bike are still true. Like, I still have kids who are freaked out about me being on a race bike, a bike that can go 200 miles per hour. And I still have a neighbor who complains endlessly about me starting my bike at five 30 in the morning and letting it warm up because, you know, her bedroom is right next to my garage. I, and so I'm having to push my motorcycle up a hill, let it coast down, you know, a quarter mile to the bottom of the, it's like, though it's just not practical for my current

Robin: situation. That's fine. I mean, not to, I'm not, you don't need validation. I guess what I'm just saying is I heard you. I get it. I, I, it's hard to be optimistic and think like there's no problems. Only solutions. Whatever you decide to go with, if it ends up with an aftermarket exhaust that you'd love the sound of because it shakes your teeth apart, you can probably come up with a solution for that in your garage, like a venting structure and a fan. You can start it in the garage with, you know, eggshell foam things happening and then idle your way down

Travis: the driveway safely, where just anytime your neighbor talks to you go, what? Huh?

Piper: Bye. You want these people to be your friends so that when a bear is trying to break into your home, they're, they're, you know, banging their pans together next door to scare it away. You don't wanna piss off your neighbors in small mountain towns. You know what I'm talking about? No. Yeah. So, and listen, maybe I'm just giving you lots of excuses cuz I'm still trying to convince myself that it was the right move.

Travis: Well, I think it was the right move there. You wouldn't have done it if it wasn't the right move.

Piper: Thank you. Mm-hmm. See, Robin, was that so hard? Say what Travis said,

Robin: I'm not running this. You, you said, Hey, you know what? Your podcast needs me. And then all of a sudden you're here and you're kicking ass and you're running this, you're steering this shit. I'm sorry. Yeah, no,

Travis: that's, we needed it. No, cuz I was, yeah, I kind of wanted to pick your brain too about that cuz it was like you said you wanted this, this, the scrambler and was, it's like, is it the looks? Is it the style? Is it the, and now maybe you're not sure. You just, you just like that, that one, I

Piper: like the scrambler because it's, it feels like, it just, it feels like a straight twin. Just with a little bit more power and a little bit more off-road capability. Maybe with a different seat. It can go further than 200 miles without my butt hurting.

Travis: Um, well, yeah, that is the, I mean, so what about like the other, like T one 20 based? So, you know, the Bonneville or the um, the ton. Those are

Robin: heavy. Um,

Piper: it's not too much different than what I've got right now.

Robin: What about the, what is the round Headlight Street Triple, what's that called? So the street trip, the 7 65 Street Triple R Maggie rides the 6 75 Street Triple R, which has the Daytona engine on it. So it's got the sport tuned engine. Okay. It's an upright posture with dual seventeens. We like them. We think they're cool. It's got the Bugeyes. Oh, the

Travis: rr The street Triple RR With the one with the little bikini fairing.

Robin: That's cool. That's not what I was talking about. That's a great

Piper: bike. You're talking about the one that looks like bugeyes in the front?

Robin: Yes. That's what we have. Like the old one. Well, that's the 6 75. The 7 65 has bugeyes with an eyelash. However, there is a, the, it's called the, that's the Trident. Trident, thank you. It's the It's the same motor. Yeah,

Tim: that's the

Robin: 60. It's a six 60.

Travis: Okay. They, they're like entry level bike.

Robin: Well, damn.

Tim: Which I've

Robin: heard good things about. The best advice I ever got was from Don Beon. Go sit on a lot of bikes. That was the best advice ever. Don Beon another coach, he was like, go sit on a shit ton of bikes and you'll, you'll find your way to what you like.

Piper: I just need a sugar daddy so that I can have all the bikes I sit on. You got two

Robin: houses and 15 businesses. Who the fuck

Piper: accepting, accepting applications? You know what I mean? I just, I just want all the bikes all the time.

Robin: Yeah. Well you brought up that freaking M 1000. Tim, what, what do you got, man? You're the, you're probably the wisest of the, you're the wisest

Tim: guy in here. Oh goodness. Well, you know, I'm always going about like, you gotta do comfort and you gotta like, like what are the job you're trying to do? It's like, do you wanna do gravel roads? Do you wanna do actual trail? No

Piper: trail. There's some gravel roads every

Tim: once in a while. So it's like, the scrambler is lovely for that. It really is. It's, you know, got enough suspension that if you hit a washboard road, you are not gonna get your teeth rattled. Where like, even the xsr I've got right now has not got quite enough suspension to suck up a serious washboard. But, you know, goodness knows when I had the, uh, the DRC or the Africa twin, you know, I'd, I could hit washboard at 80 miles an hour and be totally composed. But yeah. Um, and being in the mountains, you probably do want the larger motor capacity cuz it's not fun to be winding out a bike just to get up that mountain road you

Travis: have to go up every time. I did just fine on my six 50 single, going at 11,000 feet. Yes. Yeah. I mean, I couldn't go faster than 50 through the hairpins anyway. True.

Tim: Yeah. You know, and it's, it's silly because like one of the bikes that I do regret selling was my little, uh, CBX 500. Yes. It was a fantastic little bike. Once I got it kind of situated for

Robin: me, you and I forged a friendship through that machine, man. Oh yeah, yeah. We were like,

Tim: how are you even here? Like,

Robin: chasing me down and where is everybody else? Yeah.

Tim: It was, it was a funny bike that was like insanely forgiving that you could, you know, come into a corner too fucking hot, grab the brakes, drop two gears and just fucking dump the clutch and it would behave. Yeah. So it was, it was a, it was a good bike Honda and just smooth as butter all the

Robin: time. Is that a hornet or is that the CB 1000 you

Travis: got there, Trav. So the two links I posted, one was this, it's actually the CB six 50 R. So, uh, that's like 90 horsepower. It's like, it's basically a, it's basically a CBR R motor. Yeah. Um, oh, I like that. So you have to, you have to wind it, it like revs to like 11,000, 12,000 rpm. Um, and then the other one is the Z 900 Rs, which,

Robin: that's a pig, that's a fat bike.

Travis: Uh, but I mean, at a, it's based off the Z 900, which is a pretty sporty. Is lighter than the lighter than the ninja. Lighter than the Z 1000 was, it's lighter than the Z eight 800 was Yeah, it's a trellis frame. It's a stressed member. I mean, it's an inline four, so it's gonna be heavier than like a twin, but it's, uh, you know, near enough thousand CCC inline four. Uh, let me get horsepower numbers from you. I like

Robin: that it has a, it has like a spoke mag, I think that looks really cool. It's a mag, but it looks kind of Z 900.

Tim: That's 125 for the

Robin: horsepower. Yeah. That's the same as the Beamer. Um, yeah. I'm 128 horsepower. That's like, that's, that's smoking. Yeah. I want her to get the go. Like I said, there's a lot of self involvement with this. We're all being greedy about this. Like

Travis: Yeah, it's like 60, 60 pound feet of torque with a super flat torque curve and Yeah. You know, I like that

Piper: BMW that you pulled up,

Travis: Travis. The scrambler, the nine, the R nine Ts? Yeah. Yep.

Tim: With

Travis: with the tractor motor. Yeah. That's the, that's the oil. Cool. Is it?

Tim: Yeah.

Robin: Yeah, I think so. Well, they, they make it, they make an R 1200 r. It's, so it's my bike. It, it make an R 1250 R now. So it's an, it's my bike. It's the naked version of my, my R 1200 Rs. It's

Travis: the R 1200. So according to mild motorcycle specs, uh, the R 19 scramblers peak output is 110 with 86 pound feet of torque. That's pretty good.

Robin: Probably red lines around seven or eight.

Travis: Yeah, I mean, it's a big twin.

Robin: It's really accessible and easy to work on. Yeah. The parts are paying the butt. They're expensive, but they last, I mean, I've got 90,000 miles on mine. Yeah,

Travis: well, especially too, like the, I think those, the R 19 is, you know, it's the older motor. It's the, it's the oil cooled motor. So the parts point are, have been around for a long time and they're super

Robin: durable. Piper, you gotta look on your face. Yep. You gotta look going right now. What's on your mind? Where are you at with almost rambling? We're all buying, we're bike shopping. I've

Piper: actually been looking all these bikes to eat, so I've been just, you know, I've been like,

Travis: it's good.

Piper: It's good. Yeah. It's good. I just, I have all of these needs, you know what I mean? Like, I want to take a cross country bike thing tour with like, I just want bags everywhere and like a, like a, like a suitcase. And so I need like a, a big ass honking. Yeah. You know, and then I wanna go on some dirt roads, but I don't want to go on the trail thing. And then I want to like, go on a racetrack. So I just need like a transformer motorcycle where it just like push a button. Yes. And it, and it

Travis: changes so that you need three bikes. You need if anybody, bikes, anybody said that idea

Piper: for me? If anyone steal that idea. Im, I'm trademarking this idea right now.

Robin: Fine. Well there, there is one bike that does do that. What is it? I don't remember. It came out like in oh eight or something and it had self-adjusting. You had to be parked for it, but it would go for being a standard posture to a full support posture. It didn't make it. They failed. Darn it. Yeah.

Piper: Um,

Travis: well, it's like get something like a bmw, K 1200 RS for touring. What about the

Robin: F 800? F 800 gt? I'll find one more, more pictures on the way. Keep talking.

Travis: Yeah. I don't know. I mean the 12 hundreds way faster. More powerful. I'm more fun. It

Piper: is. I'm not sure if I'm a BMW GS 1200 type of, no,

Travis: not Gs. No. K A K A K A K12 bike. Rs it's

Robin: sport bike. Yeah. It's a really

Travis: good looking machine's. It's a sport. It's a sport touring bike. I'm

Piper: gonna look at it. It's, and

Robin: what is TL rx where your sport touring motorbike

Travis: fix. But the thing is, is that this is like a late nineties, early two thousands bike, so you can get them cheap. Because then you need to also get something you can do track days with. So you need to get, you know, uh, an SV six 50 or a Ninja 400 and then you need your like around town runner that you can do dirt roads on scrambler 1200 SCRAM out the street twin. That

Robin: could work. That could totally work. Hey uh,

Travis: so Piper, I'm trying to keep it cheap. We're trying to keep it cheap. That's the thing is the scrambler 12 hundreds, that's your 800

Robin: gt. Not, and it comes with factory luggage if you can find one. They don't really make these anymore, but they were a good looking sport touring bike that when they first came out with this, I think even like Travis and myself, we were kinda like, Ooh, you know, that's,

Travis: no, I was always kind of looking to get one of those and just never, I don't got no money. I don't got no money.

Piper: You need a sugar mama. And I need a sugar daddy. We're accepting

Travis: applications. So if anyone is out there looking to buy a, uh, business

Robin: podcast TRO bike,

Travis: I'm not selling on a buying in.

Robin: Okay, so you've got two street twins. Mm-hmm. You could totally scramble that. Uh, get some dirt, get some aftermarket noise on there cheaper and it'll, and then drop it all you want. Who cares? And it'll ride dirt and then get yourself a legit sport profile touring bike that, you know, will give all of us a run for our money when we finally get together as a group and go for a podcast tour. A real

Piper: one, one of a couple of my coaches have the, that like sport touring Kawasaki. That looks like an old man bike.

Robin: Yeah, no, you talking about the old, the uh Oh, the old concourse? Yeah. The con

Piper: 1000. Yes. Oh yeah. They like, they all have the old concourse.

Robin: It's got my dad's briefcase

Travis: on. It's oil. Cool.

Piper: Yeah. It's awful. And so every time I think of sport touring, I think of that ugly ass bike. You got it wrong. Ugly ass in ugly ass colors. Hell

Robin: no on that.

Travis: I think that is, it's called champagne. That is an

Tim: ugly bike. It

Travis: is one of the ugliest, but

Robin: you, you need to no longer do not affiliate that bike with sport touring as the, the staple anymore.

Piper: Can't help it.

Robin: The new con, he looks like they took a, a freaking nitrous balloon and like blew it up. The exhaust bike made it into a blimp. Like it looks, it looks like inflatable. No, you want the here Yeah. The epitome of sport touring. Maybe the K, the K 1200 or Oh no, the K 1200 s.

Travis: Well again, that's, they don't make those anymore. But yeah. I

Piper: also don't want a bike that's impossible to get parts for. I'm not gonna wrench on my motorcycle. You guys can, you can browbeat me all you want. It's not my jam. I don't, I don't like it. I don't, I don't like sticking my big huge hand into little tiny spaces and trying to find screws And Does she say and

Robin: burning, that's what she

Piper: said. Grow the grow up. You two, come on.

Robin: You signed up for this show you are in.

Piper: I know. I

Tim: Willa. If you don't wanna work on it, you get a Honda. Yeah,

Travis: true. The Honda doesn't make, actually, I mean other than that cb the CB one, there's the one, there is a 1000 version of that, the CB 1000 R that's got the same styling. If you

Piper: p you got 1974 ish CB seven 50 and it's, it's, it's like in a billion pieces of my car and it's just ready for three sweet dudes. To just put it together.

Tim: Oh,

Robin: man.

Piper: Brand new engine. Brand new. Everything. That

Tim: would be fun to work on. Honestly,

Robin: we could probably assemble it inside of three hours. You

Piper: guys. It's, it's all there. I mean, it's a cb.

Robin: It's a cb. Have we made, have we made a decision? Is your credit card out? Have we,

Travis: have we confused you more credit card out,

Piper: or are you guys bringing your credit cards out? Is that what you were asking? Well, you're

Travis: the one looking for a new bike. You're

Tim: crazy. Looking at the CB 1000 R right now. That is a good looking little bike.

Travis: Those are nice.

Piper: Yeah. Maybe we should do a Kickstarter campaign and like for all of the, like for the tears of what you get. If, if you donate, I'll just like being a little ditty.

Robin: We have a listener question.

Travis: Yeah. We were talking about concourses.

Robin: We can talk about concourses. I'm not really a fan of concourse. I love the F j R, the FJ R 1300. That's beautiful. But it feels like you're riding a bigger bike than it looks when you're standing next to it, when you're riding a Yeah, it's really wide. Yeah. Like I look at the front end, I'm like, that's a really beautiful machine. And then I get on one, I'm like, this is, uh, I can't see below the bike anything.

Travis: It's like a rocket ship. My favorite, uh, s g r story is the, when we did Trip Sevens, and remember when, uh, Michael had one? Yeah. And then at the end of the tour I was like, can I take your bike out? Like the, you know, the, we're at the hotel last day and then Robin hears, hears a go boo. He's like, who's riding Michael's bike?

Robin: I was like, somebody stop him.

Travis: Somebody stop. He never took her to the red.

Robin: They're fun. He comes out, he came out. He was like, no, I, I said he could.

Travis: Yeah. No, I had to shut it down in second gear cuz I was gonna, I was already doing a

Robin: ton. Well, I did the same thing to your friend. What, what was her name? She's got the Hawk gt that was like, uh, it was her husband's bike and he had passed.

Travis: Oh yeah, Kathy Marie.

Robin: She's cool, man. She was like, yeah, take it off her spin. So I went and rode it down to the, the was is that a brewery? I don't know. There's like a big factory off your, your house. Yeah,

Travis: there's like a, there's a, yeah. Down, down by this, this scrap yard. It was

Robin: like 10 o'clock. I went down the scrapyard when I was to hook and I told you, and you were like, you're not invited over anymore. I was like,

Travis: this is like a two-lane back road of the 45, 35 mile an hour speed limit safety. Maggie Dean: Returning to now, Robin's lucky. If you listen to our prior podcast episode, we know Maureen Mabel. Maureen Mabel know people in high places that's good for Tarro. In this case, Robin gets a chat with famed guitarist, uh, Eric Buell about his latest brilliant state-of-the-art motorcycle project intent Piper.

Robin: I want to thank you for you being here today. This is a, a really high bar for us. Such interviews as this are, are

Buell: rare. Man, that doesn't say much for you.

Robin: We are here with one and only Mr. Eric Buhl, who is quite known for his bass playing and also has a motorcycle pastime as well, I hear. And we're gonna discuss some of that today. It really is truly my honor and pleasure to

Buell: have you here. Thank you. Robin Murray connected us at net. Murray and Mabel are really cool people, sir.

Robin: Agreed. So I've can contrived a whole list of questions. I'll try to make sound as natural as I can, and any of them you don't want to answer, we'll just move right along. I tried to keep it down to five, but I, I managed to narrow it down to a, uh, a very comfortable

Buell: 16. Sounds good. Hopefully I can answer them.

Robin: I'll stick with mine first, but the first one I had was before this project, did you have any regular direct access and experience with the electric motorcycle

Buell: platform? As far as, uh, you know, electric stuff is concerned. I've been interested for a long time, but one of the things I, I had always had, we laughed about it at Buell, was I had a, a 200 year plan. I, I'm pretty much of a futurist and we talked about that. I laughed about it. I said, you know, the reason I came up with that was things were so desperate in the early days of Buell struggling out of, you know, this little shed. I'm like, what am I doing? I, I just thought about, you know, does it have any purpose in the future? And I kind of ran through that and I thought, well, you know, that whole idea of independent private two-wheeled transportation I think has legs, would it be around in 200 years? And I'm like, well, maybe they'll be like flying around between the asteroids or something. But you know, what's the leanest thing you could use to get a single person from one place to another? And I figured that was an okay career. Based on that. I was always thinking about things. And many years ago back, eh, probably in mid two thousands, I was in meetings at Harley and I was saying, guys, we need to look at electric. A few years after that, they got tired of hearing that. And at the same time, I and uh, one or two guys inside view were screwing around with some ideas. I went out and did some research on it, getting a report to Harley back, probably in 2008 is when I made the report and I said, it's not viable. To do American Highway Harley type motorcycle, that's electric. It just ain't gonna work. And I gave all the reason I said not for quite some time into the future, but I think there's really a coming opportunity for lightweight urban two-wheelers and I said like electric bicycles and maybe we could do that with Buell. And of course they went, you're an idiot. Like they usually did. So that never went anywhere. Then when we were going with E B R, we were once again working on those cuz when I was independent from them. So I had gone out ridden all the existing electric bramo back then Zero Vector company out of San Francisco that taken a Ducati shaped by and stuffing electric motor, I can't remember the name now. They're long gone now, but they kind of reinforce what I knew, which really comes down to basic physics and engineering. I mean, if you really take off your emotional pad, What you need to do as an engineer, even though I love motorcycle, I need to think as an engineer when I'm designing products, the only thing that made San was urban and maybe urban is suburban. So we were working on an electric lightweight city bike. I think we called it City Cross or something. I don't remember what it was on meant. And then also we did a prototype hybrid scooter. We actually were heading towards getting that into production. We did it for Hiro for all the good reasons that that made sense. Neither of those products came to pass. Hiro pulled back from their global expansion thing to focus on India and the product was too expensive for India. Electric vehicles are expensive, and that would've been 2015, 14. So they were even worse than, you know, battery costs are coming down. It was expensive. Not expensive by selling in our country, expensive or in Europe country, but too expensive for there. The c e o there, he was kind of visionary too, and he felt that the electric made sense. Then after E B R was shut down, I then went ahead and was talking to a friend of mine and then he and two other guys started the fuel company with the goal of building two wheelers around these for customers where we felt it really fit. So actually I've got many years into researching it, designing things that didn't get built, things that got built in prototype and pre-production format, et cetera, et cetera. But finally with fuel, we're building things and of course, you know, not only the flow, but we have E-bikes through fuel with the fluid for like about four years now. Fluid one models and we have fluid two and three that are coming out this year that are going into production. Kind of my goals with these products were what makes sense not to do it cuz it's cool, but to do it because it's a business, it has to be that first, doesn't it? Yeah. And it has to pass the. No bullshit test just because it's probably like the early days of gasoline power. I mean, just millions of companies firing up and starting things that don't make any sense. I mean, if you look at the engineering one, you go, that's never gonna work. Well, but without a doubt, electric is something that is viable and not just a green choice that you give up things just to make a green statement.

Robin: It's amazing to me how many of the questions I grade out, you actually just covered in one foul swoop. All the questions like, well, well maybe we'll get to that. Boom. There you go. Yeah, I hear you. It's like the green platform. Okay. Yeah, that is a great side product, but lithium isn't pretty really when you look deep at it. But the first time I threw my leg over an electric bike, I've ridden a few powerful bikes and the constant torque and the insane top end. Gave me nothing but a grin of pure hilarity start to finish compared to anything I've ever been on combustion

Buell: wise, you have to look at all of the parameters, all of the strengths and all the weaknesses. So for example, when you look at it as a Superbike man, I can get a motor that's not that big that makes an incredible amount of torque and power, but if you use that power, you are on an energy real, real fast. So a viable superbike is not there for us. Now it's there for very specific. If you give it a little, say, okay, we're gonna have three lap races and put on event like Formula E car racing or something like that, that's cool, but an actual everyday you superbike maybe get out in Nebraska when nobody's watching it and go way, way fast. You will run out of battery in way shorter time than you ever would imagine if you haven't done the math.

Robin: So if you like hitchhiking, that was my next question was do you have a dog in the game for. Research and development, observing, acknowledging or influencing the current battery tech and its development? Are you fairly well tapped into that? To some degree,

Buell: yes. We're talking to a lot of different manufacturers. We have been for years now doing all the research we can. There's cool stuff coming outta universities that's theoretical and they've made one work and that kind of stuff That's promising. But you gotta go with the reality of many things, which is you want to be a viable business for a number of reasons. I do believe in doing our best to save the plan at number one, and number two is a rational thing. We're gonna run out of dinosaurs now. We also, so some of the concepts that Porsche's working on, creating artificial fuel using electric, whether it's hydrogen or they're making artificial gasoline, if you want to call it that, some, right. But an internal combustion fuel. Maybe that'll work. But electric seems pretty reasonable. But in order to make an effect and actually do something, you have to build things that people will buy in quantity or you're just kidding yourself. If you create this concept, the electric vehicle, it's of no use. No one's ever gonna use it, or they can't afford it, no one's ever gonna buy it, and therefore you won't be doing these wonderful things, the future that you hoped you could do. So if you're making an electric motorcycle that you want to sell for an affordable price, you gotta go with battery technology that gives you the energy, capacity, and density and that product that you need to fulfill the duty cycle at a price point that that customer can afford. And so that's another thing you gotta balance into it. It's kinda like this, you know, long term global holistic. You gotta have that view, you know? And maybe that's 200 years and it's a hundred and it's 50. And then you also have to have a five year, 10 year, like, what am I really gonna do? And then you gotta have a two year goal. It's like, what am I gonna produce tomorrow that I'm gonna sell and I can make money with and balance those things together and get ready to make this shift to the next thing when it's viable. So you gotta spend a lot of time thinking about it and researching things and knowing what's real. I'm a little a d d and maybe a lot, so it's real easy to get caught by the next really pretty bird that flies by or something. This is, this is what we gotta

Robin: do. Yeah. You gotta focus on what's at hand at that given moment, right? Which you brought up the power supply and the range based on that power supply. And my next question gets into the blueprint. How is this bike set up in terms of handling center of gravity and the final drive, which I'm pretty excited about. I see what's going on there.

Buell: We had specific targets you wanted to do, the fluid bikes. My goal with them is, Bicycles that had quite long range. If you put significant pedal effort in and very real and usable range, if you use maximum assist, and that means you gotta have a lot of battery. And so, uh, you know, our fluid ones came up four years ago, which was way more than anybody had. Now two. Uh, the next model, the two model is actually two kilowatt hours, which if you pedal put in your own 140 watts or whatever it is or whatever, a non tour de France guy like me takes funny. You could ride it 250 miles, something like that, 220 miles, or if you put on maximum boost where just gently move your feet around and the thing goes like a rocket, you know, it'll go a hundred miles and bikes with small batteries. I mean, they'll draw up these things. Like this has a range of this and this speed, but not both at the same time. There's a lot of bicycles that'll do, you know, you have a little battery on it and it gives you a little boost and you never ride it very far. But I like to ride bicycles a lot. So for me the idea was how do we make electric bicycles that are actually vehicles so you can load 'em up with pans and carriers, you know, and I rode a fluid one across Wisconsin in two days bike packing. So I had my tent all crap on it, you know, and I recharged at a, uh, camping and RV site. It's real transport. Yeah. I think had 75 pounds worth of stop on it. I had food in a stove cuz it was in, uh, beginning of November or end of October and it was freaking cold up here in Wisconsin then. So I had lots of extra clothes and tools and everything else, what nobody else was doing. And where I see this would be cool if people would do that with Flow. The real project started when I and Francois Tierney and Fred Vaser, who's now running Ferrari racing, he went to Alpa Romeo right after we started this. So he kind of disconnected from it. But the three of us were talking about how to do ebis cuz Fred was involved with a formula E erasing. We talked about it and much like they put on the formula erases in cities, well they do that for an audience, for a green audience because they can, cuz there's no noise or anything. But also because the tracks are short. Because if you actually put them on the nerve ring, you know they can't make two laps before the battery's dead. So again, it's being realistic. And then that's not saying, you know, I'm not saying that as a denigration of it because again, I believe in electric, I believe in batteries. But you gotta be real about where it's gonna work. So we were talking about that and said, you know where a really good fit would be was for commuters like in Paris, if they live outside the pet referee and you gotta come in. We were at a green meeting that was happening in Belgium. They had all these professors and politicians, it was about what are we gonna do to make Europe green? And they were talking about we're gonna be eliminating internal combustion vehicles from all of our cities, electric buses, and we're gonna have electric trains. But as anybody who goes there, and obviously Francois is from Paris and Fred is maybe not from Paris, but he's from France, and you don't have the Boston and train infrastructure to bring in the people because all of those cities, whether it's Barcelona or whether it's any of the more southern cities, they ride motorcycles and scooters into the cities. So if you're gonna ban them, how are those people gonna get in? Cause obviously those guys are racing at a big time talking about, you know, what about a formula E motorcycling, or what about an electric superbike? And I said, guys, I just ran the math for them. And they went, oh shit. Yeah, you're right. Formula E cars are like that, but you know, we can carry X amount of weight to battery. Would you wanna ride a motorcycle that weighs that much? The drag on a motorcycle is very similar to the drag on a car. So if you're going 70 miles an hour now if you're driving around in the city, they weigh less. So if it's all acceleration and deceleration, two wheelers better. Out on the highway going 75 miles an hour. A Tesla Model three has a lower drag than a da. A lot lower drag than

Robin: Harley Davidson electric model. That's another one of those gray questions. I swear you must have talked to the wife first. So that's another ones. She was the one to put in there. She was like, did you go for drag or cornering? Yeah. And I was like, well, well maybe we'll get to that one. I'll go ahead and gray that one out and here we are. Boom, there it is. Have

Buell: at it. That's a really cool question. Don't tell her that. Hopefully I'm coming up with solutions that, what is this? What is an electric motorcycle? How did you design it? And, and your wife is very astute in that it's

Robin: different. I'm not gonna tell her you said that. I'm editing this

Buell: out of the interview. Okay. What does a pe, what do people wanna have to get in and out of the city? You know, why do they ride, you know, motorcycles and which ones do they

Robin: choose? The weight of the bike, what they can do, what they can't do? I was curious about the center of gravity on it and what was gonna work to your advantage in the design

Buell: of it, you have to think about the duty cycle and the people who are gonna ride it and how they're gonna wanna use it. So the answer is, They want to accelerate quickly. They don't want some, you know, little bicycle. They want to commute with it. They want to get in, but on the other hand, they're not gonna go a hundred miles an hour cuz there just isn't time in the suburban dump. Don't have to worry about that kind of burn of energy. You gotta be accelerating and accelerate and you want zip in and out of traffic. So you want it to handle well. You want it to be light. You want it to have a low center of gravity. Now, low center of gravity in a superbike is not necessarily a good thing because when you want to go flip from left to right, it's actually better to have the CG a little higher. But we're not talking about a superbike.

Robin: So you're talking about

Buell: leverage up top? Yeah, like if you're flick over in a corner. I talk about when I raced Superbike, you know, when I was good and crazy and young, you know, I remember when I was out in, I had the pole for the, what do they call that track now, Infineon, that one north of San Francisco in the Superbike race out there. That was often won by Ducatis. One of the struggles we had with the Ducatis, it was, they had some really tight S in there. I figured out, and I could still can hardly believe I did this because I, I sit in back, I go I, that's insane. But one of the ways I got through the SS and how I had the times that would've had me on the pole except race was rained out. That bike had kind of below CG and a long wheel base and you could not turn it through ss. Now people who were street riders go, oh, do CO's handled great. They were very stable, they had a sweet motor, they turned like crap. You know, had to really muscle 'em around in tight stuff. So these tight s's, what I wound up doing was I'd go into the corner, flick it off, get it sliding and upshift it. And what I'd upshift it in the corner, it would high side and I'd catch it going over the high side to go the other

Robin: direction. It's funny because we just started doing that in the MSF

Buell: course. Yeah, I, that's highly recommend that I just thought, don't do it. I dunno how I got away with that stuff, but those are the things you do when you're young and insane as a super. Yeah. And you know, and again, I wasn't, I was pretty quick when I think about

Robin: what Kenny was doing at, so were you creating like a two-wheel slide

Buell: to do this? Mostly a end, you know, drifting in and the back end would drift out on her power and then you'd high side it, it would just snap and then you could catch it coming over the, the other side, like if you high side a bike with a low cg, it's hard to put into words. When we were running the E B R Superbikes in production trim, they weighed far less 30 pounds under than the minimum weight. So we had to put 30 pounds of weight on it. We put the weight around in different places to see what the riders liked, what was better for lap times. My first assumption was, well, let's put it low. It wound up putting it under the seat because it could help them turn, it made the bike. Controllable when you flipped it left to right so it wasn't too quick. So it was finding that right feel of period that your body could respond properly to doing it. So that was with Danny Ick and Jeff May that were doing the

Robin: testing. So for the, the wheel base, that's what worked out, right? So basically from front to back, that's where the weight really found its glory.

Buell: Yeah, right under the rider. Fundamentally another version was, you know, when Freddy was back riding that n s r thing that had the gas tank on the bottom, he could not ride it and that's cuz the weight was too low. For a commuter bike, that does not matter. You want the weight low, you want the bike to feel like you want to pick it off the sideand And I go, that's far more important than drag cuz you're never gonna get into the range where drag matters. Now that doesn't mean you add drag to make, cuz you don't care. And if you looked at our, the flow, it's pretty sleek looking. But the thing that's more important for the duty cycle and the riders are gonna use it is light. And whatever weight you have on it, make it low. That sort of stuff. The powertrain, there's a whole lot of really crazy engineering in it, but it, it really isn't it. I've always been a first principles engineer, which basically means that goes back to the days of Aristotle. You're an obviously a, a well-read person and you know, dick carte and people like that. That first principle thinking is one of model of people do, but it basically means when you're starting on a new direction, looking at something new, just forget everything except take all the knowledge you have, put it back into a primordial soup bowl and then let the lightning strike and kind of pick out the things you need. That's why its bike is so different because fundamentally the duty cycle is different, plan is different. Where the energy is stored and how it's used is different. It's a very, very different than any other motorcycle. Now it has to fit, a rider has to look cool, it has to have handlebars and those things. You know, the rider dictates some of the things on it. It needs to handle, but the way everything else is laid out was totally up to picking the right things. So for me, I wanted to wait, which meant the batteries as low as possible, and I wanted plenty of batteries. And I also wanted things to be as simple as possible. And so I, even though bicycles, hot motors have a bad image because they're really one wire crappy things. Some of the new technology that's coming out in hub type motors is really cool. I chose a hub motor because I didn't want to have a drive. I didn't want to have the motor on board if I could avoid it because it gave me more space for batteries with the kind of power and range and speed I wanted. I didn't need a gearbox. So it just made more sense there. So the other thing you notice with batteries low and the whole thing packed with batteries, the bottom section of it in a battery housing, that's actually serves as part of the frame.

Robin: Oh. So it's not Wow.

Buell: Okay. It has a huge 50 liters, but that's very large storage. Nothing else has that. No scooters have that much. Even BMW scooter, if you have a long range one, they fills up the whole storage area with batteries, so it really doesn't have a storage under the seat. So we're actually able to have a very large storage space on top of there, which again, for a commuter is what you want. Because if you look at what they use in, in the cities for commuting, they'll either be scooters or they'll be light middleweight motorcycles with saddle bags and tank bags to put in your groceries and all the stuff, and your briefcase and your laptop and all those things you gotta use to commute. So we were able to integrate that into this really sleek package where you can't see it.

Robin: I mean, 50 liters is not a small number. No, that's a big top case when you look at what other options are out there and it's hidden. Yeah, you don't, it's like that's supposedly the gas

Buell: tank. Right. So those are the kind of things that the packaging of it. It's real

Robin: unique. That leads into this next question a little bit too. Are you witnessing and solving any problems that geeks like me don't even know about yet? It sounds like kinda are, like you said, the primordial soup is your draw point.

Buell: Probably. We are finding different solutions, but they are solutions to give a better product. The things that the rider or the potential user is identifying are the real questions you want to answer. So I come up with different ways of solving that, but they all feed back to what does the user need engineering for engineering's sake, just because the engineer thinks it's cool is fricking stupid. I hate it.

Robin: Thank you. Thank you. It really is, this is the part where I'm really glad, uh, Travis isn't here. He was part of the podcast as well because this next question basically points a finger right at me. I am the guy that wants to take your bike for 300 miles, so I'm gonna go out to the middle of the alphabet soup area in the Wisconsin drift list and I'm gonna get stuck out there and then there's gonna be some. Hijack farm, I'll be like, excuse me, do I have an inverter of any kind with the kit that is gonna allow me to plug this into a three prong and solve my problems in about three hours so I

Buell: can get back home? Yeah, that's gonna be something we will have. We are not gonna include it built into the bike. It's gonna be an option to have one, because you've got that 50 liter storage in it, so it'll just disappear into that if you're taking a long

Robin: trip. I wanna laugh a little bit and think that, well, yeah, we came up with a solution. The problem is it takes up all of the 50 liters and you'll have to carry it with you kind

Buell: of thing or, right. Cause again, for most of the target customers we're aiming this commute in and of the cities and stuff, they would need that. So you don't want to take that away. That's an option for kind of a special use

Robin: situation in it. So that's equipment that you can buy as an add-on? Yes. Here's another hard question. One of those painful ones, another brand of not bike requires that, They're already installed heated seats. You must pay your monthly subscription to use them, and if you don't, they will turn that off. This got into some deep seated questions about software and features the bike is already equipped with. Are you gonna subscribe to any of those spaces where a person to obtain settings, they'll have to pay more or anything of that nature?

Buell: I wanna provide a bite, a motorcycle. It's the right kind of product for most people. Without that, you buy it and it's yours. I'm not a fan of you lease your product and a company can take it away from you at any time. I've just, because I'm a rebel and I hate governments, and I hate management and I hate corporations, and I want my own damned independence, whether I'm in the asteroids or right

Robin: here. Now this interview is out of my league, so some of these questions are scary to ask, but then I can also be the consumer and say that. I don't wanna find out that this bike is capable of having an ultra turbo lightspeed mode, but I have to buy into that programmability, push the button on the dash to get it, requires that I add something to the tab. It sounds like you kind of just answered that. You don't wanna impose

Buell: that on anybody. No. I mean, but there are controls that you might want to put on, maybe don't want to put on, but probably makes sense to put on at some point in time. Like for example, being a bicyclist that also rides e-bikes, but also rides pedal bikes. I wanna push bikes. Is a bricks going, I really get pissed off when somebody passes me on a mountain bike trail with an e-bike that has a throttle and they're not pedaling. I wanna punch 'em because screw you. You shouldn't be here. You're on a motorcycle and it's going to screw up E-bikes. It's gonna screw up the image. You see people hiking going, whoa, stop. But people won't stop. So maybe the solution to that is when you're in that G p S area where there's a trail, the throttle function doesn't work. You have to pedal.

Robin: Oh, GPS disablement, mint, if that's a word. I

Buell: don't knows. Same thing in the cities, cuz I know for example, Paris is putting a speed limit on their paid bike trails.

Robin: Yeah. Once you start kicking 25 miles an hour, well

Buell: it's 20 miles an hour or less. They're voted into office, they put the rule in place, nobody's spot it. Therefore, why go against it? And if somebody wants to personally modify their product, um, again, I'm always for that, that's cool. But for most people, maybe that should be, when you're on that trail, it's resource. G ps will give you really freaking accurate location. So maybe you're on the trails, it won't go over 20 miles an hour. So there's situations like that where you think, you know, I get that because. I want people to adopt. I don't want people to be angry at motorcyclists or image, and I'm just a believer in two wheels, wherever you can use them are superior to four for a billion reasons, which are all, I dunno if you wanna call it ecology or whatever you want, just rationally based is you see somebody driving around on a commute into the city 15 miles and they're driving a Hummer H three that weighs 4,500 pounds and it's a single person in it. So they sit in traffic, fill the space up, then they get into town. They use up a huge space to park, right? They beat down the highway. You had to process that 4,000 pounds to put it into production. I mean, it had to go through a plant, be turned from iron ore into steel, and stamped and folded, blah, blah, blah. That doesn't mean people shouldn't have a mini band when they wanna have them. I'm not saying that any of those things should be banned or anything else. It'd be better if more people use the leanest possible

Robin: logical purpose

Buell: and use. Right? Yeah. And fun can be part of the whole equation. That's too, but I'm really obsessed with this idea of commuting, but also, you know, being independent and that the whole thing that they're talking about in France won't let any of those scooters or motorcycles that the city. So now people will be lining up, waiting for the government bus. Immediately you start seeing an image of something like off of a Pink Floyd album or something where everybody's in a little gray suit marching along into the, you know, queue to get onto the train. No, no, no, no. So how do we keep that alive? And one of the ways is not to piss off the politicians and the people who aren't 2023e06-003: using

Robin: it. Yeah. It gets into representing well, right? Yes. Are you up for an off topic question now? Sure. Maybe Travis Tron up in Wisconsin, he is curious about why did you move away from the signature inside out bu break? Is it unnecessary with the regenerative breaking of the hub

Buell: motor? Yeah, regenerative braking can do most of the braking, you know, and particularly on a motorcycle because the rear brake's pretty useless if you're stopping hard, especially if the rear wheel's off the ground. You know, the famous old thing is your trainer is trying to get people to use the damn front brake, uh, because you're not gonna stop otherwise.

Robin: Yeah, just drag the rear tire for 40 yards and show 'em what's really not happening.

Buell: I learned that real early on when I was like 14 or something. I bought a basket case, Harley 52 Hardtail frame when it had a like a k h K front end on it and it had a 57, had a panhead motor in it. Right? Wow. And of course it had no front brake and me being a young guy, so I got on the back roads of Pennsylvania and I'm zipping down this road making enormous amounts of noise with my two fishtail straight pipes out the back and thinking I'm way cool. Red metal flake. Man, I'm bad at eight hangers. That's horsepowers. This lady in the station wagon put on the brakes in front of me, like a quarter a mile ahead of me. And I still hit her because there was this corner of a mile long black skid mark on the rear tire bonk on her bumper. Very tapped lightly. But I went, wait, maybe I should have a front brake. And I made immediate right turn away from choppers and never went back. Now here we are, so here we're so, yes, that's right. As far as the inside outbreak for a bike with this speed level and weight, you don't need a lot of brake number one. And number two is we need to make it affordable and nobody makes inside outbreak components. Oh wow. There were a lot of reasons that drove me to do the inside out front brake. Uh, but it was always a

Robin: killer to get it made. It gets right into

Buell: manufacturing. Huh? None of the brake manufacturers wanted to make them. Because if you're a brake company and you're selling every superbike guy to. Breaks. They sell complete bled systems that they ship into the factories, pre bled hoses on 'em, and every for the, this expedited way that a lot of these systems go. So you sell 'em two calipers, two sets of hoses, a junction block, all that stuff. Then you sell 'em two brake rotors with two carriers. Now, anyone who's a cost sensitive type sourcing guys will go in and do booth wood and do hearst or whatever they want to use. They'll do things and they'll go, okay, you have this amount of metal in here, this amount of metal in here, this amount of metal here. Here's what it should sell for. That's all we're gonna pay you. Cool. And that's how they deal. Mm-hmm. I'm a brake roter. The weighs half as much. One caliper, one set of pads. Right. One simple line. Are they gonna pay you as much? Of course not. Yeah. And I had somebody from one of the major companies and an engineer tell me that's why they were never work on it. Cause they were told not to. But I, I'm not gonna get into that too deeply. So fundamentally, there were a lot of reasons I did the single inside, you know, we were talking about building bikes that were, even in the case of an XB nine or XB 12, pretty fast motorcycles were going ridden fast a lot on long twist roads or raced or whatever else. And the light front wheel had huge payoff, uh, stuff that we really never got credit for. It's one of the reasons the bike's handled so well and one of the reasons the front end stuck like glue is we didn't have that sprung down, sprung weight issue that everyone who discs has. That's not an issue for this duty cycle of the flow. What is an issue is I don't wanna spend a lot of money on it. I wanna just be able Tory, the brake system and put it on, it'll do the job and that's okay. Otherwise, if I'd have put a, that would've been an engineer. Being an engineer, to be an engineer, the answer is it isn't needed. Stop it Eric cuz Pardon me? Went. I know that's a better system for but maybe not for here. Oh nice. Damn it. So if we build the electric superbike, you could bet your ass that's gonna have that kind of a system if we get bigger. Oh God. It's like I said, that's one of the reasons those bikes handled so crazily well. Cause the uh, front ends just stuck like glue. And one of the reasons we get away with radical geometry and having stability and it goes into a whole lot of motorcycle engineering

Robin: dynamic stuff, that math, physics dynamics. This goes back to my wife's much better questions than mine. I'll combine these two into one Who should or shouldn't buy the fuel flow. And how do you see the fuel flow standing out from your

Buell: peers? I guess anyone who shouldn't buy it is unless they wanna make an adventure out of it. I mean, you could ride a flow across country, but you're gonna have to really plan and you're gonna do all those things you'd have to do. I'm not opposed to that, but if you're expecting it to be a replacement to ride across country per your Harley, it ain't there. Number two is anybody wants a superbike? Because once again, I could build a great one except it really wouldn't be a great superbike because you would run out of battery if you're riding fast in incredibly short period of time. The energy density batteries versus gasoline, they're estimating is it gonna become equal in about 2045? Wow. It ain't even close now. And actually I could give you a little math thing on that for me, the customer for flow is anyone who's slightly athletic, who wants a fun and quick way to commute around suburbia and from suburban into urban fun, and it's quick and it looks sexy and it handles great, can carry shit. You know, it's like a Porsche, Macau or something, S U V a, high performance one. But that is what it is as far as like driving across country even now. Tesla is state of the art. They're really cool. I'm a huge Elon Musk fan. I'm not a fan of much of anybody, and I know people get bad outta shape cuz I don't like his politics or anything. Just forget that stuff. He really ain't that bad that way. He's a jokester. He

Robin: goofs off. This interview is taking place because I have what I jokingly call Megalot. I'm using his satellite internet right now for this meeting. So, so am I. My grievances can be kept under my hat

Buell: and I'm going through it right now as well. Brilliant guy and his team. He hires the right people. He gives 'em the right work situation, which I always tried to do or effort to do, especially in E B R. The whole secret is really motivate people. Hire only good people. Weed out the ones who aren't cool and let the good guys go for it. I'm friends with his first employee from SpaceX, Tom Mueller. They laid out the idea for the first rockets on the kitchen table. He says he's really hard to work for because he is such a badass. He's such a good engineer. You say it can't be done. Ooh, you better be sure it can't be done cuz he'll cruise by you. He'll sit down and do it. But fundamentally, Tesla has state of the art in electric vehicles and he's done really smart things with what he did. They bought the company that had this little lotus sports car that added battery in it. Isn't this cool? Cause it'll go real quick. Well, the answer is it's a lightweight sports car, which is a really bad place for battery because if you wanna have any range, you need weight. And he's always on the cutting edge of the latest battery technology that's a affordable, because he still keeps bringing products in that are real, that he can build in volume and they really deliver and they have really good range and they have really good quality.

Robin: So then your battery, is that a modular battery? It's lithium ion, I'm

Buell: assuming? Yeah, it's lithium ion and it is based on cylindrical type cells inside it. It's a magnesium housing. That becomes part of the structural frame, and it's packed with batteries. So basically you use someone for strength. It's magnesium because it's light. It's an electromagnetic interference blocker, and it's very recyclable magnesium's. Cool. So if you want to do this energy thing, so why has he been successful? Well, he's went away from doing the goofy stuff that people did and said, okay, I have to build a car. It's gotta have range, or people aren't gonna use it. And he started building a supercharger network at the same time as Wow. Timing. And it's still the best charging network out there. Yeah. But he also aimed up realized that most of the people who don't use cars for super long trips in a fairly recent range, he also went from a big car, the Model S and the Model X, big premium, so that he could price it high, big so he could pack in a lot of batteries because that was the only really way it would work. GM and Honda built these battery cars that were gonna sell to, you know, college professors and green minded people. They were too expensive, you couldn't make any money on them. Elon wants to change the world, but the only way he can do that is by selling shit that people will actually use. Go back to my other, my earlier point where I'm at on it. The reason I'm going off on this is just, I'm gonna get a little data off of his steps. Let's say you're going 300 miles on a vehicle that's gonna use 30 miles a gallon. That's pretty good for most motorcycles, actually, at 70 miles an hour, a lot of them don't get that because they burn more than a car. Cause the drag is worse on a motorcycle and is on a car. But let's say 300 miles, 30 miles a gallon, that's 10 gallons of gas, which is 60 pounds. And over that 300 miles, it goes to zero. So your average weight is 30 pounds. So the fuel load's 60 pounds decreasing the whole time you're riding the bike till you get down to it. You refuel in about three minutes, 10 gallons. That's literally all it's gonna

Robin: take. You pull the thing, stand weight,

Buell: and maybe you go ahead and get a copy. Yep. Yep. Electric, you go 300 miles. Let's say you go 300 miles at four miles per kilowatt hour. That's actually real good. Some of Teslas are like 4.2. Chevy stuff is like 3.5, so that's a very reasonable number. So to go 300 miles, four miles per kilowatt hour, that's a 75 kilowatt hour

Robin: battery. So you're talking about the scale of the shell that's holding the power required to go that distance versus try to put all that into a much smaller instrument that has a lot more drag.

Buell: Six gallons. Yeah. You know that size that is 75 kilowatt hour battery is what's in most Teslas is 80 fives is one that have hundreds. The 75 is a battery pack. Then at the very best current technology that's 800 pounds of battery.

Robin: So my old Suzuki band at 1200

Buell: s, and by the way, you're carrying that the whole way. It doesn't count counting in half, the weight doesn't go down as the electrons get used

Robin: up. I still think my bandit might have been heavier, but I'm not sure.

Buell: 800 pounds in a car. Let's say you have a 800 pound gas tank and a Model S, you'll never know. You know how fast they are? They're crazy powerful. You'd never feel it. And quite frankly, the motorcycle, you wouldn't feel it from a power standpoint. A motorcycle with a 200 horsepower or something, you would easily pull 800 pounds, but you couldn't ride it cuz it's just 800 pounds battery. And then you gotta have a frame and a seat and stay on bars and was there. So you wind up not having that much. You can't have that much battery. So that means a range gets less. Another reality thing is you can only really use from 20 to 80% of the battery for the battery last at all. Yeah. In a recharge range. So that means you can only use 60% of that battery capacity.

Robin: That's the zero mark, right? Cuz it needs to be able to recharge and you gotta take care of it.

Buell: Yes. Or it'll just, and the battery's gonna be in, in bad shape. Okay, so that's not gonna work. So let's see. You're gonna refuel every a hundred miles. You can do that with only a 270 pound battery, 210 pound. Maybe you could ride that bike, but you gotta refuel every a hundred miles. Charging that is gonna not take three

Robin: minutes. It's gonna be a long

Buell: launch. So the answer is, can you do this? If you wanna make a statement, yes. Can you do that just on an everyday basis? Every regular person in the world who isn't out to make a statement wants to be green but wants to get on with life, they're not obsessed with the vehicle. They just want to use the damn thing. That's why they don't make sense in a regular motorcycle format. That's why I've shot for suburban and urban, cuz it's suburban and urban. When you start driving slowly like stoplight to stoplight, to stoplight, to stoplight in internal combustion engines get real shitty on fuel mileage. Electric makes no

Robin: difference. Braking does nothing for the combustion engine, but taking off definitely drains it, whereas you're charging as you break. This starts to get into what I consider to be sort of like angry science, where people like me who don't necessarily know better, we only know enough to get ourselves into total trouble, are thinking the battery technology isn't there yet. We won't stop leaning on that optimism. Whereas those who actually have to produce this kind of science are like, you have no idea what you're asking for. You know, it's a

Buell: lot. It's a ways out when the charging is always gonna be slower than refueling, which I think is one of the reasons some of the car companies are looking at. You know, again, depending on the customer, not a lot of people, if you're driving a Tesla, if you're gonna make a long trip once or two times a year, they've got a good supercharge your network. Okay? So your trip takes a longer, not a big deal for your everyday commute. It's fine with a motorcycle, it ain't gonna work. So if you want to go to Sturgis on your Carley electric bike, you're gonna suffer a lot to make a

Robin: statement. How does your standout. Among the peers. You've now got a platform, you've got a great thing happening. My answer is that it's just a beautiful machine. I love the look at what you're

Buell: doing among peers. Nobody's quite doing what we're doing. God bless 'em for doing whatever they're doing. I don't really care. I never look, I knew all the electric bikes are out there and there's nothing new in the technology, nothing really new except gradual improvements in the zeros and bramos and all those things that are out there. I, I know exactly what they are. Like I said, I threw away everything when I started first principles thinking, which I can do, cuz I got my own kind of company. That whole kind of thinking, let's throw everything out and just do the right product and just invent stuff just does not work inside corporations. The typical executives, they're always trying, you know, let's not disturb anything and let's just bullshit everybody. I, I won't digress man. I hate that kind of stuff.

Robin: If we don't move, nothing will change.

Buell: Yes, and I'll still get paid. Right. I'm not into that yet. I engineer because I wanna make really, really cool shit that works that you know, people are excited to ride and love to ride and, and electric gives me the opportunity to be more out of the box than normal because nobody really knows what an electric vehicle is supposed to be like, you know? So it's okay.

Robin: Happiness is gonna be a mutual goal no matter what for both the designer and the rider. These are my favorite questions. These are from Tim Clark. What Modifica, there are three of these questions and they're very specific to him. What modifications are possible to make the bike more friendly to, I don't know, shorter or taller riders, seat swap, bar swap, peg, lower, or are these are some things that are gonna be factoring in eventually.

Buell: The handlebar system is a conventional handlebar, and we did that for a reason so that people can put on whatever they want. If they want a different shape or whatever, that's fine. Foot banks can be changed and modified. The seat level is gonna be what it's gonna be, and it should be fairly reasonably low. The other thing is the weight that it is in the CG being low, it feels very light. That's always a big thing about a lighter weight rider. Uh, you know, a shorter rider,

Robin: right into the next question. Is there a modification path for a big dumb podcast host who's over 250

Buell: pounds? It's only got a single shock, but it's a conventional type shock in Springs. It'll be very easy to modify that. So we didn't do anything wild and crazy and that was the reason we didn't do anything wild and crazy. There was, we wanted to be able to modify that, buy that off the shelf from a quality supplier that does 'em all day long. So it'd be pretty easy to, uh, put on a heavier spring. Have heavier

Robin: damping. I want to thank you. Your suffering is almost over.

Buell: Oh, this is fun, man. This is

Robin: fun. Then he brings up the software. Will it be possible for the firmware or the software updates to be performed through the phone app? And can the mic connect directly to fuel through home wifi?

Buell: That's certainly our goal and it's being done by other companies. That's one of the really cool things about ebi, this stuff that's electronic and with software being such a major part of an electric vehicle and the control system, how much you can do with it. Like we were talking about before about the GPS driven stuff, but similarly we talked about this is, let's say for example, you have a multi-tiered licensing

Robin: system. He brought that up. That's another great question. You're reading the great questions,

Buell: aren't you? We talked about that. And one reason you would wanna say have a lower powered vehicle with the same motor is just because it's cheaper to buy a whole bunch of the same motors, especially when it's an exotic, unique kind of motor design. So I'd rather just let it release less power. Somebody's really driving urban only and not going suburban. Maybe they don't need quite as much power and they don't wanna spend as much money per battery. So you lower both of those and it still has a rational using range and it's more affordable that we can do. Let's say they had a tiered system that said too, you have this level of licensing. You're only allowed to ride a vehicle with this much power. You could link the power to the online license capability that

Robin: they, the bureau, the, the bureau of how Fast Robins allowed to ride. I think. I don't know.

Buell: So it's interesting. It can be dark. That's terrifying. Or it can be kind of cool. Yeah. Right. But certainly the idea of doing updates to the product and that stuff over a line is, it's really cool. Yeah. You know, you don't have to do them all the time. Like there's way too many updates to a lot of software packages. Again, too many engineers. Yeah. How many of these phone updates do you go, yeah. Oh my God, they just wrecked my phone.

Robin: Leave your phone in airplane mode for two days and watch how long you have to wait to use it. You know, like after that moment? Well, the, well all the updates come up, it's gonna take forever. But the thing about the tiered speeds and stuff like that, so our newest podcast host is Armine Piper. She said, I've always loved the idea of electric bikes, so we can train students indoors. She's another MSF instructor, runs clutch motorcycle training up in Colorado. She wants to be able to coach indoors. Do you foresee offering a fuel with a governor key for the flow or some way to control top speed for new riders or a rider education program? And if so, what are your thoughts on developing a smaller, more affordable option for training programs? That's a long horizon.

Buell: Kind of depends on the demand. We could do a smaller battery pack, but there's not much we can do to decrease the cost of the vehicle. Beyond removing batteries, it'd be easy to train people. Now, if you wanna train people to ride a gasoline motorcycle by riding electric, they're a little different. You could do that. We actually talked about that. We'd have to have enough demand to justify the stuff we'd have to do. There'd be some mechanical pieces you'd have to add and then they would all just drive software shit, which is easy. But I'm just trying to get the basic product into production right now. There's so many cool things that could be done. And training was always a big deal for me. I mean, that's why we did the Stupid Blast. I'd say stupid. I actually love those vehicles. But it was, it was a long story. I won't get into the stories of that.

Robin: Saw it in Half Sports

Buell: Motor. That was such a cool product and it was, it's a long and ugly story and I'll just tell a little brief piece of it cause it just still makes me angry. This day after we produced it, I was gonna sell for $3,900 and it was profitable there. There were some shifts that happened inside Har Davidson. I'm gonna go into the depth of it. They wound up basically doubling the price of every engine that they sold to us, and it all of a sudden made Blast a loser. So then they wouldn't let us do the updates, like the Better Transmission, all things that came falling. So the XP nine and the Blast were sort of going along together, but we had to get the blast out sooner. So there's a lot of components on the xps. And Blaster was saying, but the one thing that isn't, we always had the crappy transmission, not the improved transmission. That was one of the weaknesses of the blast, which drive me crazy. The other thing was fuel injection. It should have had fuel injection. They wouldn't let us put it on because once again, it's losing money. And the only reason it was losing money is they were taking that extra skimming money to pay for the fact that they bought too much equipment and an additional facility that they couldn't fill. So they were basically covering overhead by billing us and the sports store, which is a really sad situation. And after the shakeup at Harley, the guy who came in, he had a quick job to do and he never had enough time to find out the facts about you. Fundamentally, he wound up shutting down all those plants, consolidating and getting that overhead cost away, which should have happened. That's a long blast story because it could have been a really cool bike. We were gonna have a larger displacement version of it. Some other derivative versions of the but way cooler than that, they all got killed.

Robin: Two crowns of thorns, his and yours. I mean, he probably wasn't exactly smiling about that situation. Hi, how you doing? What is going? Oh boy, here we go. That kind of thing, you

Buell: know? Well, the guy who had to fix Harley had a big job in front of him, so a lot of people are like, don't you hate Keith Wedell? Don't you hate him for shut down Joe? He shut down Buell because he worked with the information he had, and he had a company that was in horrible shape. I mean, the sock had dropped from $75 a share to nine. What do you do? That is catastrophe time. Yeah. So they brought this guy in to say, fix this as fast as you can. In the long run, he saved him from going under along the way. A lot of things were lost. That could have happened. He was only on long enough to do that, but it's never gotten back. It wasn't his fault. It was the fault of the people who put it in the situation that was in, that made him come on board. That's not because it's a Harley fault. I have no issues with Harley. He had the kind of bikes they built in, not a big fan of, but. As a company and I'm the employees. I'm fine with them. They were, God bless 'em, and we need any kind of American manufacturer, but leadership people. Yep. Shitty leadership people. I do have a problem with them, you know? Yeah. Because they heard all the guys who worked there, the blue collar guys who lost their jobs and all that kind of crap. They're the ones who's really suffered. Those other guys retired in gated

Robin: communities, so electric back at it. I'm excited about it. This brings up two more excellent questions from our own. Tim Clark has the unsprung mass of the hub motor made developing traction control systems more difficult to implement.

Buell: No, the unsprung mass is just not an issue. This duty cycle for this customer. By the way, this bike's gonna be ridden. I don't need to be obsessed with unsprung weight. Other things are more

Robin: important. How much of the bike is user serviceable, say over the first 10,000 miles? Are we allowed to work on our own things as long as it's not that

Buell: battery? Things like brake pads, tires, all those sorts of things are very easily serviceable lights, any of those kinds of things. Getting in and going after the electronics, we really recommend against it. It's gonna be very high voltage, which is what you need for performance and fast charging. That's the one reality. So we haven't made that particularly easy to do, and we don't want to. Sorry. I mean, this is the way

Robin: it is. I agree. Anything that could give me a permanent orange afro, I wanna make sure does not

Buell: from the

Robin: moppets. Yeah. Yeah. Just, all right. Well this has really raised the bar for us. And for you to set aside time and what I know is a crazy, hectic schedule with all kinds of ideas happening in your head at all times, at Constant. I understand. On such a lesser level. I understand. Having a busy mind, sir. But I'm so grateful to you for making time to be here for us and do this interview. Thank you for being here, Mr. Eric

Buell: Buhl. You're very

Robin: welcome, Robin. Maggie Dean: And that was Eric Buell talking about the flow. Electric commuter, there's no drive mechanism, no chain, no belt, no drive shaft. The motor's on the back wheel. It comes with 50 liters of storage. It's designed to be upgradeable and keep up with the progression of tech. This could replace our scooter and let's talk about the price point in a word, accessible because if we want more people riding and more people thinking about electric, I wouldn't consider a starting price in the 20 thousands as accessible. Electric's not gonna wake up. The neighbors giving up a bike you love is hard and most people buy the next bike first. I wonder where Piper's at with that decision. Now I'm not looking to get rid of my Triumph Street Triple, but we are looking at how much longer the trustee scooter is gonna last us recently. I swung a leg over a monkey, a grom, and a CRF one 50 at the local Honda dealer. In gotta admit, it did get me thinking. We'll discuss it, woman to woman in the next episode and let the boys find their own topic. Preferably not another 30 minute premise. Geek up for the riding obsession. I'm Maggie Dean. Safe travels everyone.

Robin: Really liked sitting next to, I don't remember who on the bus rides between the towns, because that guy would leave him alone. Everybody else who was playing in his band was so in awe of him that they wanted to ask him questions. Where did you come up with this? Why did you think of this? This is amazing. Why did, where did you think to stack those chords in that way? And he really liked sitting next to this guy cuz he knew not to do that. So he would get where he was going in polite silence. And so finally one day the guy was just sick of it. He had to ask, he had, well, he had to make a comment. I really wish I understood what it was like in that mind of yours. And there's no lake. He pauses on that for a moment and he waits. He leans back and he says it's absolutely beautiful, but there's no place to sit down. Awesome.

Buell: Great. That.