Robin: What year is this?

Maggie: What year do you think it is? The year was 2023! 23, 23, 23, 23... Wait, okay, so this year. The year was this year. Captain's log, stardate 81, 41.6. During the oh so treacherous month of May? Dude, that's like last month. We're going back in time to last month.

Travis: Are you telling me that you built a time machine out of a DeLorean?

Maggie: 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 writers look forward to. Alright, 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 TRO as we look back on Piper's post-Aprilia distress.

Travis: So Amarnay wants a new, a different bike.

Armene: Well, hold on. Do you want to hear my stories? I have Yeah, yes.

Travis: Tell the story.

Armene: Okay, a couple stories. One, last week I tried to break my hand. Triumph, uphill, backwards, into the garage.

Travis: Which Triumph?

Armene: His Street Twin. And I, like so smart, I kicked the kickstand down in case I felt like it was going to tip over. But I just, the problem is that I tipped it over on the wrong side. Oh, no. And so I smashed the 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 sprained. So that was on Wednesday. On Thursday, I get this really beautifully written email from Kathy Rim, who, you know, is, helps run MSF. And they told me that the 12th candidate for the Rider Coach Trainer Prep had dropped out, and I was next in line. And so would I like to join that Rider Coach Trainer Prep in June? Very cool. Side note, when Tim was in high school, 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 he was very honored by this, but at the same time was sort of like, Oh, like, what about you?

Travis: You're my second choice.

Armene: 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 because I, you know, I was like, well, so funny story is I might have broken my hand. 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, in June, on a Honda CTX DCT, on a BMW M 1000 RR.

Robin: I like you.

Armene: Where's this bike coming from? Whose bike is this? I don't know. But have you seen it? Have you seen the 2023? It is.

Robin: Oh, yeah. Yeah, we were familiar.

Tim: No, I haven't seen it yet.

Robin: You got to Google search that.

Tim: Just the words make my back hurt.

Robin: It's it's it's found its way in the conversation before. That's the problem.

Travis: So I posted a link there of the M 1000 RR, which has a ridiculous front wing on it. Like, like a Formula One size front wing.

Tim: They're rating it up to 13.8 pounds of downward force, even while leaning. 205 horsepower. 423 pounds. Piss off. Dear God. That's awesome. That is awesome. What's the entry fee for that? Oh, 28. That's it? Nope. Sorry. 32. 33. That sounds more. Thirty three thousand dollars.

Travis: Yeah.

Tim: As shown on the is 38.

Travis: I figured it would be like 60.

Armene: Yeah, I mean. That's why I told you that's the next bike.

Tim: It's nuts.

Travis: So anyway, what is the next bike? We're going to talk about next bikes.

Armene: OK, so I was thinking about a Triumph Scrambler 1200 XE.

Travis: That's a cool looking.

Armene: Yeah, but it's 89 horsepower.

Travis: What's the torque? You got to get on the torque wagon.

Armene: I don't. I just don't. Listen, I actually, I tried out one of those Ducati Monstrous things. Monster.

Robin: Oh, the Monster?

Travis: Datune Supreme.

Armene: 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 Honda Civic.

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

Travis: I can never get clean air on my helmet with the windscreen. Except for the one time I rode an 80s Goldwing and then there was no air. But otherwise I can never get. I've tried so many different windscreens for my NC700 and they all just like hurt my head after a while. So I just run the stock one all the way down. It's just every time it's just like and it gets to me. So, OK, so you want something. Do you want that vintage? Is it that vintage sort of pared down look you're going for?

Robin: 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?

Armene: I don't want to talk about it because I just got rid of basically everything that I own.

Robin: OK, well, OK, so then what's in there? What tools are in the shed?

Armene: I had a monkey. I just sold my Aprilia. You really did?

Robin: It's gone, gone.

Armene: Oh, wow. I don't want to talk about it. 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 chest. It was like the worst breakup ever. I went and got like a like an I love you forever. Aprilia tattoo on my arm and like, you know what I mean? I cut my hair and I I've been I've been listening to sad songs for days. OK, so right now I have Triumph Street Twins and it's about as fun as I'm like a go kart.

Travis: Go karts are fun.

Armene: Like a like a golf cart.

Travis: No, they're also fun. You just got to, you know, ride them with reckless abandon.

Armene: Yes, I can't do that. So I got rid of everything. All I have right now is the street.

Robin: Have you considered the 765 Street Triple R?

Armene: No. But then did I tell you that I went and test rode some an Indian Chieftain? Is that the big one?

Travis: That's the big air cooled one.

Armene: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like a like a really good motorcycle rider coach. I 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.

Travis: So cruiser, cruiser gear.

Armene: And I burned the shit out of my ankle. And so when I parked it, and I was like, not my bike. This is not see it bit me.

Travis: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Going from RSV4 to a big air cooled twin. Yeah, no.

Robin: Guys, what about the FTR?

Travis: I test rode a Chieftain. They had like the test ride truck. And I did a Chieftain and a Scout. And the Scout motor is just way better.

Armene: I'm just going to say this only because I know that my friend who I'm going to talk about never doesn't listen to this podcast. But the FTR reminds me of this particular person who is money poor, money rich and people poor. Is that a good?

Robin: Yeah, it is a good way to put it. Yeah, I know what you mean. Right.

Armene: 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 FTR, I think like divorce in the works.

Robin: Let's not. So let's not go.

Tim: Yeah, that doesn't sound good.

Armene: So as you can see, my I don't I don't have any any flipping clue. I mean, well, Chieftains and scramblers and yeah.

Travis: Yeah, you're all over the place. So I mean, do you want that more coming off of like a sport bike? Do you do you want like a pared down like naked classic kind of style? Like it's like for appearances. Is that what you want?

Armene: I do love that scrambler. I I've always loved the look of the Triumph. Yeah, yeah.

Travis: What about the BMW scrambler? The R90 scrambler?

Armene: I don't know.

Tim: Are those still being made?

Travis: I thought so.

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

Robin: It's a this is a little bit of a learning experience. So like I 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 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 what I mean?

Armene: Yeah. Have you ever done anything that's like really selfish? Oh, that's pretty daily. Um, that's like really, really selfish. And and then you feel kind of like bad about it every time that you do that thing that was selfish. 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 in.

Robin: Those aren't motorcycles. OK, anyway.

Armene: So and so now I'm I have two mortgages, two businesses, five children, an exchange student and a partridge in a pear tree.

Robin: And so then I was like, you know what, when I say, like, make sure you buy a new bike before you sell the old one. You're like, I got to buy a new 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 heavy. That's awesome.

Armene: Yeah. So I was sort of like, you know what, I can't keep being selfish about this. Like the family has got to come before my need for a really expensive, super fast, really sexy, delicious, like gorgeous. So many horsepower.

Robin: 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, my bike's fared and I'm mostly upright. Tim is pretty upright and Travis is quite upright.

Tim: Yeah.

Robin: All these bikes have a very similar posture. And yet Travis gets on my bike. He's like, nope, nope, nope, nope, never. I get on his bike. I'm like, what am I riding a freaking antelope? 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.

Travis: It's an XSR. The SCR is the cruiser scrambler.

Robin: Don't correct me. Yeah.

Tim: That thing is an abomination.

Robin: Awesome, right? And he found his machine, you know? Yeah. For now. Tim.

Travis: Mine's mine's still kind of, I love it, but it's still kind of a pliancy. I'm not in love with it.

Armene: 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 rider. Right out, right, right from the start. It was like, it was the best 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. Cause 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 I don't mind hopping on that thing. And, but it's slow and 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 perform your motorcycle's capabilities, you can actually get yourself into some trouble. When your bike can't do the things.

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

Travis: 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 bike.

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

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

Armene: Well, it would definitely be, it would definitely be me, but it would. What about those do you think that it can't do?

Travis: So I just linked you the Moto Guzzi V100 Mandelo.

Robin: Oh, yeah. So this is why it's also funny. Is that I know, I know that you're going to need to get the bike that you just speaks to you. And you're talking to us while you're you're looking through some of this stuff. That is so that is a very Robin Deaney bike. It is a gorgeous machine. But still, like, I can't believe Travis selected that, because honestly, in the part of the gag about the sensitivity between Tim's profile to my profile, to Travis's profile and how intrinsically like, no, mine, I'm going to say, like, you should get a standard posture sport bike with luggage and a fairing. And Travis is going to be like, you should get something that's super comfortable that you can actually outright Robin on if you throw yourself into the corners hard enough. And then Tim's going to be like, I don't know, I'm going up over this hill. You know, all of us are going to be like, get that thing. But there's going to be the bike that you're just like, nope, that's me right there. That is all me. And maybe it wasn't an RSV4, whatever it is. I hope to see it go to a racetrack. That would be fun. You've got to do this.

Travis: Here's my question. Have you ridden the Scrambler 12?

Armene: I have. I did. I test rode a bunch of Triumphs last summer. But that's when I was really like, had my heart pretty set on a, you know, an Aprilia. I was, I already decided. I don't even know why I went and test rode. I mean, because that's fun. But I think I was trying to convince myself out of it. But I mean, some of the other points that I made about the reasons I got rid of the bike are still true. 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 530 in the morning and letting it warm up because, you know, her bedroom is right next to my garage. And so I'm having to push my motorcycle up a hill, let it coast down, you know, a quarter mile to the bottom. It's like, so it's just not practical for my current situation.

Robin: That's fine. You don't need validation. I guess what I'm just saying is I heard you. I get it. 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 the driveway safely.

Travis: Or just anytime your neighbor talks to you, go, what? Bye.

Armene: You want these people to be your friends so that when a bear is trying to break into your home, they're, you know, banging their pans together next door to scare it away. You don't want to piss off your neighbors in small mountain towns, you know what I'm talking about?

Tim: Yeah.

Armene: So and listen, maybe I'm just giving you lots of excuses because I'm still trying to convince myself that it was the right move.

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

Armene: Thank you. Robin, was that so hard to say what Travis said?

Robin: I'm not running this. 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 ship. I'm sorry. Yeah, we needed it because I was.

Travis: Yeah, I kind of wanted to pick your brain to about that because it was like you said you wanted the scrambler and was it's like, is it the looks? Is it the style? Is it the and maybe you're not sure that you just you just like that that one.

Armene: I 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. I can go further than 200 miles without my butt hurting.

Travis: Well, yeah, that is the. I mean, so what about like the other like T-120 based? So, you know, the Bonneville or the Thruxton?

Robin: Those are heavy.

Armene: 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 seven six five street triple are Maggie rides the six seven five 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 17s. We like them. We think they're cool. It's got the bow.

Travis: The are the street triple are the with the one with a little bikini fairing.

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

Armene: We're talking about the one that looks like bug eyes in the front.

Robin: Yes, that's what we have like the old one. Well, that's the six seven five. The seven six five has bug eyes with an eyelash. However, there is a it's called the that's the trident trident. Thank you. It's the it's the same motor. I know it's just a 660. It's a 660.

Travis: Okay, like entry level bike.

Robin: Well, damn, which I've heard good things about. The best advice I ever got was from Don Baron. Go sit on a lot of bikes. That was the best advice ever. Don Baron, 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.

Armene: I just need a sugar daddy so that I can have all the bikes I sit on. You got two houses and 15 businesses. Who the fuck? 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 do you got, man? You're you're probably the wisest of the you're the wisest guy in here.

Tim: Oh, goodness. You know, I'm always going about like, you got to do comfort and you got to like, like, what are the job you're trying to do? It's like, do you want to do gravel roads? Do you want to do actual trail?

Armene: No trail. There's some gravel roads every once in a while.

Tim: 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're not going to get your teeth rattled. Where like even the XSR I've got right now is not got quite enough suspension to suck up a serious washboard. But, you know, goodness knows when I had the DRZ or the Africa Twin, you know, I could hit washboard at 80 miles an hour and be totally composed. But yeah. And being in the mountains, you probably do want the larger motor capacity. Because it's not fun to be winding out a bike just to get up that mountain road. You have to go up every time.

Travis: I did just fine on my 650 single going at 11,000 feet.

Tim: Yes. Yeah.

Travis: I mean, I couldn't go faster than 50 through the hairpins anyway.

Tim: True. Yeah. You know, it's silly because like one of the bikes that I do regret selling was my little CBX 500.

Robin: Yes.

Tim: It was a fantastic little bike. Once I got it kind of situated for me.

Robin: You and I forged a friendship through that machine, man.

Tim: Oh, yeah. Yeah. You're like, how are you even here? Like chasing me down. And where is everybody else? Yeah. 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.

Travis: Honda.

Tim: And just smooth as butter all the time.

Robin: Is that a Hornet or is that the CB 1000 you got there, Trev?

Travis: So the two links I posted one was this. It's actually the CB 650R. So that's like 90 horsepower. It's like it's basically it's basically a CVR motor.

Tim: Oh, I like that.

Travis: You have to wind it like revs to like 11,000, 12,000 RPM. And then the other one is the Z 900 RS, which that's a pig.

Robin: That's a fat bike.

Travis: But I mean, it's based off the Z 900, which is a pretty sporty. It's lighter than the lighter than the Ninja, lighter than the Z 1000 was. It's lighter than the Z 800 was. Yeah, it's a trellis frame. It's a stressed member. I mean, it's an inline four, so it's going to be heavier than like a twin. But it's, you know, near enough. 1000 CC inline four horsepower numbers.

Robin: I like 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 horsepower.

Robin: That's the same as the Beamer. Yeah, I'm 120 horsepower. That's smoking. I want her to get the Guzzi. Like I said, there's a lot of self-involvement with this. We're all being greedy about this.

Travis: Like, it's like 60 pound feet of torque with a super flat torque curve. And yeah, you know.

Armene: I like that BMW that you pulled up, Travis.

Travis: The scrambler? The R nine T?

Tim: Yeah, with the tractor motor.

Travis: Yeah, that's the oil cooled.

Robin: Is it?

Travis: Yeah, yeah.

Robin: Well, they make it. They make an R 1200 R. So it's my bike. They make an R 1250 R now. So it's my bike. It's the naked version of my R 1200 RS.

Travis: So according to motorcycle specs, 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. The parts are paying the boat. They're expensive, but they last. I mean, I've got 90,000 miles on them.

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

Robin: Piper, you got to look on your face. You got to look going right now. What's on your mind? Where are you at with all this rambling? We're all buying. We're all bike shopping.

Armene: I've actually been looking.

Robin: Oh, yeah.

Armene: Like, I've been just, you know, I've been like, it's good. 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 suitcase. And so I need like a big ass honking, you know, and then I want to 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 he's like, push a button. Yes, you need three bikes for me. I am. I'm trademarking this idea, right?

Robin: There is one bike that does that.

Armene: What is it?

Robin: I don't remember. It came out like the 08 or something. It has had self adjusting. You had to be parked for it, but it would go from being a standard posture to a full support posture. It didn't make it. They failed.

Travis: Well, it's like get something like a BMW K 1200 RS for touring.

Robin: What about the F800? F800 GT? I'll find one. More pictures on the way. Keep talking.

Travis: Yeah, I don't know. The 1200 is way faster, more powerful and more fun. It is.

Armene: I'm not sure if I'm a BMW GS 1200.

Travis: No, no, not GS. No, K.

Robin: Sport bike.

Travis: It's a sport touring bike.

Robin: I'm going to look at it. Sport touring motorbike fix.

Travis: But the thing is, is that this is like a late 90s, early 2000s bike, so you can get them cheap. Yeah, because if then you need to also get something you can do track days with so you need to get you know an SP 650 or a Ninja 400 and then you need you're like a round town Runner that you can do dirt roads on crambler so Scram out this the street twin that could work That could totally work a so Piper. I'm trying to keep it cheap. We're trying to keep it cheap That's the thing is the scrambler 1200s.

Robin: That's your GT and it 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 were kind of like ooh, you know, that's no

Travis: 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

Armene: You need a sugar mama and I need a sugar daddy we're accepting applications if anyone is out there looking to buy a

Travis: business

Robin: podcast at TRL bike not selling out of buying in Okay, so you've got two street twins Mm-hmm, you could totally scramble that 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 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 one One of a couple of my coaches have the that like sport touring Kawasaki.

Armene: That looks like an old man bike Yeah, no, you said about the old.

Robin: Oh the old Yeah, oh, yeah like they all have the old concourse it's got my dad's briefcase on it well cool Yeah, it's awful. And so every time I think of sport touring I think of that ugly-ass fight you got it It's called Ugly bike You need to no longer do not affiliate that bike with sport touring as the staple anymore The new Connie looks like they took a freaking nitrous balloon and like blew it up the exhaust pipe made a new a blimp Like it looks it looks like it's inflatable. No, you want the all-year epitome of sport touring Maybe the K the K 1200 or oh, no the K 1200 s Well again, that's they don't make those anymore.

Armene: But yeah, I 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 she's Grow grow up you two

Robin: You signed up for this show

Tim: Well, if you don't want to work on it you get a Honda yeah

Travis: Other than that CB the CB well, there's the one there's a 1000 version of that the CB 1000 are that's got the same styling

Armene: 1974 ish CB 750 and 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. Oh Man brand new engine Brand new everything That would be fun to work on honestly, we could probably assemble it inside of three hours You guys it's it's all there. I mean, it's a CB It's a CB have we made have we made a decision is your credit card out every every confused you more Or are you guys bringing your credit cards out is that what you were asking you're the one looking for a new bike You're crazy Looking at the CB 1000 are right now.

Tim: That is a good-looking little bike.

Travis: Those are nice.

Armene: Yeah If 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 big a little ditty We have a listener question, yeah, we were talking about concourses we can talk about concourses.

Robin: I'm not really a fan of concourse I love the FJR the FJR 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 really wide Yeah, like yeah, 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 I Can't see below the bike Anything it's like a rocket ship.

Travis: My favorite SGR stories that when we did trip sevens and remember when my Michael had one Yeah, and then at the end of the tour I was like, can I take your bike out like the lean of that? We're at the hotel last day and then Robin here's here's a go They're fun he came out he's like no I said he could Yeah, I had to shut it down in second gear cuz I was gonna that's already doing a ton Well, I did the same thing to your friend.

Robin: What what was her name? She's got the hot GT. That was like it was her husband's bike and he had passed.

Travis: Oh, yeah, Kathy Marie.

Robin: She's cool, man She was like, yeah, so when wrote it down to the that was is that a brewery? I don't know. There's like a big factory off your your yeah, there's like a house.

Travis: There's a Down down by this the scrapyard.

Robin: It was like 10 o'clock.

Armene: I went down the scrapyard And I told you you're like you're not invited over anymore, this is like a two-lane back road 45 35 Safety Now you're looking at now sir, everything that happens now is happening now what happened then When just now we're at now now go back to them now Why we missed it when just now when will then be now?

Maggie: soon Returning to now Robin's lucky if you listen to our prior podcast episode We know marine Mabel marine Mabel know people in high places That's good for TRL in this case. Robin gets a chat with famed guitarist Eric Buell about his latest brilliant state-of-the-art motorcycle project intent Piper.

Robin: I Such interviews of this are rare man. That doesn't say much for you We are here with one and only mr. Eric Buell 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 have you Thank You Robin Murray connected us in that Murray and Mabel are really cool people said Agreed so I've contrived a whole list of questions that 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 down to five but I managed to narrow it down to a very comfortable 16 Sounds good.

Erik: 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 platform as far as you know Electric stuff is concerned.

Erik: I've been interested for a long time But one of the things I had always had it we laughed about it at Buell was I had a 200 year plan 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 just thought about you know Does that have any purpose in the future and I kind of ran through that my thought well, you know that whole idea of independent private two-wheel 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 that okay career based on that I was always thinking about things and many years ago back there probably the mid-2000s. 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 one or two guys inside Buell were screwing around with some ideas I went out and did some research on it getting report to Harley back probably in 2008 is when I made the report and I said It's not viable to do an American Highway Harley type motorcycle that's electric It's just that kind of 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 fuel and of course they went You're an idiot like they usually did so that never went anywhere Then when we were going with EBR We were once again working on those because I was independent from them So I had gone out ridden all the existing electric bravo back then zero Vectrex Company out of San Francisco that taken a Ducati shaped bike and stuffed electric motor in it. I can't remember the name now They're long gone now, but They kind of reinforced what I knew which really comes down to basic physics and engineering I mean if you really take off your emotional hat What you need to do as an engineer, you know, I love motorcycle I need to think as an engineer when I'm designing products The only thing that made sensory was urban and maybe urban to 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 then and then also we did a prototype hybrid scooter We actually were heading towards getting that into production We did it for hero for all the good reasons that that made sense Neither of those products came to pass Hero 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 have been 2015-14 so they were even worse than you know, battery costs are coming down. It was expensive You're not expensive by selling in our country expensive or in Europe country, but too expensive for there the CEO there He was kind of visionary too and he felt that the electric made sense Then after EBR 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 production format, etc, etc 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 like about four years now Fluid one models and we have fluid two and three that are coming out this year. They're going into production How do my goals with these products were what makes sense? Not to do it because 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 line 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 It's amazing to me how many of the questions I grayed out you actually just covered in one foul swoop All the questions like well, maybe we'll get to that.

Robin: Boom. There you go. 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 wise you have to look at all of the parameters

Erik: All of the strengths and all the weaknesses. So for example when you look at it as a super bike, 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 run on energy real real fast So a viable super bike is not there for us now It's there for a 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 super bike 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?

Erik: 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 out of universities. That's Theoretical and they've made one work and that kind of stuff that's promising But you got to 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 planet number one and number two as a rational thing. We're gonna run out of dinosaurs now We also some of the concepts that Porsche is working on creating Artificial fuel using electric whether it's hydrogen or they're making artificial Gasoline if you want to call it that's okay, but in turn of 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. And if you break 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 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've got to go with battery technology that gives you the energy Capacity and density in that product that you need to fulfill the duty cycle at a price point that that customer can afford it And so that's another thing. You've got a balance Into it. It's kind of like is, you know long-term global holistic. You gotta have that view, you know Maybe that's 200 years. It's a hundred minutes 50 and then you also have to have a five-year tenure Like what am I really gonna do? And then you got to have a two-year goal is 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 the shift to the next thing when it's viable So you got to spend a lot of time thinking about it and researching things and knowing what's real I'm a little ADD and maybe a lot so it's really easy to get caught by the next really pretty bird that flies by or This is this is what you got to do.

Robin: Yeah Got to 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.

Erik: I see what's going on there We had specific targets. He wanted to do the fluid bites that 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, you know our fluid ones came out four years ago, which is way more than anybody. I'm not to The next model the two model is actually two kilowatt hours Which if you pedal put in your own hundred and forty watts or whatever it is or whatever non-tour de France guy like me Please but you could ride it 250 miles something like that 220 miles or if you put on maximum boost where you're 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 drop 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 them up with Panniers and carriers, you know, and I wrote a fluid one across, Wisconsin in two days bike packing So I had my tent and all that crap on it, you know, I recharged at a camping an RV site. It's real transport. Yeah Thing had 75 pounds worth of stuff on it. I had food and a stove because it was in a I'm beginning in November end of October and it's freaking cold up here in Wisconsin then so I have lots of extra clothes of 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 Vassar who's now running Ferrari racing He went to Alfa Romeo right after we started this so he kind of disconnected from it But the three of us were talking about how to do e-bikes because Fred was involved with a Formula E racing We talked about it much like they put on the Formula E races in cities Well, they do that for an audience for a green audience because they can because there's no noise or anything But also because the tracks are short because if you actually put them on the Nurburgring, you know, they can't make two laps Before the batteries 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, we're a really good fit would be was for commuters Like in Paris if they live outside the periphery and you've got to come in We were at a green meeting that would happen in Belgium. They had all these professors and Politicians it was about what are we going to do to make? Europe green and they were talking about we're going to eliminate 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 bus 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 because obviously those guys are racing at a big time talking about you know What about a formerly e-motorcycle 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 I'm really eat cars or like that, but you know We can carry X amount of weight of battery when you want to ride a motorcycle it 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 3 has a lower drag than a damn a lot lower drag than Harley Davidson

Robin: They like that's another one of those great questions. I swear you must have talked to the wife first So that's what I was good. She was able to put in there. She was like, did you go for drag or cornering? Yeah, and I was like, 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.

Erik: Have at it That's a really cool question. Don't tell her that Hopefully I'm coming up with solutions What is this? What is an electric motorcycle? How do you design it and your wife is very astute in that it's different. I'm not gonna tell her you said that I'm editing Okay, what does it people want to have to get in and out of the city, you know

Robin: You know motorcycles and which ones do they choose the weight of the bike what they can do what they can't do I was curious about the center of gravity on and what was gonna work to your advantage in the design of it

Erik: You have to think about the duty cycle that people are gonna ride in how they don't want to 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 because there just isn't time in the suburban Don't to worry about that kind of burn of energy You've got to be accelerate accelerate and you want to 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 super bike 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 super bike.

Robin: You're talking about leverage up top

Erik: Yeah, like if you're flicking over in a corner I always used to talk about when I raced super bike, you know when I was good and crazy and young You know, I remember when I was out and I had the pole for the I wanted to call that track now Infineon That one north of San Francisco in the super bike race out there That was often won by Ducati's one of the struggles we have with the Ducati's was they had some really tight s's in there I figured out and I could still can hardly believe I did this because I said in fact I go like that's insane but one of the ways I got through the s's and how I had the times that would Have me on the pole except race was rained out That bike had kind of a low CG and a long wheelbase and you could not turn it through s's now people who are street Riders go. Oh Ducati's handled great. They were very stable. They had a sweet motor. They turned like crap You know had to really muscle them around in tight stuff So these tight s's what I wound up doing was I go in the corner flick it off Get it sliding and up shift it and when I up shift it in the corner It went high side and I'd catch it going over the high side to go the other direction It's funny because we just started doing that in the MSF course. Yeah, I Highly recommend that Don't do it. I don't know how I got away with that stuff But those are the things you do when you're young and insane as a yeah And again, I wasn't I was pretty quick when I think about what Kenny was doing So are you creating like a two-wheel slide to do this? Mostly a back end, you know drifting in and the back end would drift out or power and then you'd high side it It would just snap and then you could catch it coming over there at 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 EBR super bikes 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 like what was better for lap times My first assumption was well, let's put it low They 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 Eslick and Jeff May that we're doing the testing.

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

Erik: You know right under the rider Fundamentally another version was, you know when Freddy was back riding that NSR thing that had the gas tank on the bottom He could not ride it and that's because the weight was too low for a commuter bike That does not matter you want the weight Well, you want the bike to feel light you want to pick it off the sidestand and not go That's far more important than drag because you're never gonna get into the range where drag matters Now that doesn't mean you add drag to make because you don't care and if you looked at our flow it's pretty sleek looking but the thing that's more important for the duty cycle and the riders are going to 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 really isn't it. I've always been a first principles engineer, which basically means It goes back to the days of Aristotle you're an obviously a well-read person and you know Dick Carp and people like that that first principle thinking is one of a lot 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 that lightning strike and kind of pick out the things you need That's why it's bike is so different because fundamentally the duty cycle is different Plan is different where the energy is stored and how it's used. It's different It's a very very different than any other motorcycle now It has to fit a rider has to look cool That's have handlebars and those things, you know, the rider dictate 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 the weight 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 even though in bicycles hub motors have a bad image because They're really long 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 Wow, okay.

Erik: 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 the cities for commuting there either be scooters or there'll be light middleweight motorcycles with saddlebags and tank bags To put in your groceries and all the stuff and your briefcase and your laptop and all those things You got to use the community. So we were able to integrate that into this really sleek package where you can't see it I mean 50 liters.

Robin: It's 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 know, it's like that's supposedly the gas tank, right?

Erik: So those are the kind of things that the packaging of it is real unique

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

Erik: Probably we are finding different solutions, but they are solutions to give a better product The things that the rider the potential user is identified 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 is the user need? Engineering for engineering sake just because the engineer thinks it's cool. He's frickin stupid. I hate it Thank you.

Robin: Thank you. It really is. This is a part where I'm really glad Travis isn't here Who's 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 super area in the Wisconsin driftless And I'm gonna get stuck out there and then there's gonna be some Hilljack 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 can get back home

Erik: Yeah, that's gonna be something we will have we're 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 trip

Robin: I want to 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

Erik: Right because again for most of the target customers. We're aiming this Commute, you know 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 situation in it.

Robin: 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? bases where a person To obtain settings they'll have to pay more or anything of that nature.

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

Robin: Yeah, 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 want to 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 answer them.

Erik: You don't want to impose 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 Really makes sense to put on at some point in time like for example Being a bicyclist that also rides ebikes, but also rides pedal bikes. I want to push bikes as a Brits go I Really get pissed off when somebody passes me on a mountain bike trail with an ebike that has a throttle And they're not pedaling. I want to punch him Because screw you you shouldn't be or you're on a motorcycle and it's gonna screw up ebikes 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 GPS area where there's a trail the throttle function doesn't work. You have to pedal Oh GPS disablement meant if that's a word I don't know same thing in the cities because I know for example, Paris is putting in a Speed limit on their paid bike trails.

Robin: Hey, what's you start kicking 25 miles an hour?

Erik: That's 20 miles an hour or less. They're voted into office. They put the rule in place. Nobody's fought it Therefore why go against it? And if somebody wants to personally modify their product, I'm again. I'm always for that That's cool. But for most people Maybe that should be when you're on that trail Resource GPS will give you really frickin 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. Yeah, 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 or superior for it for a billion reasons, which are all I don't you want to call it ecology or whatever you might just rationally based is you see somebody driving around and a commute into the city 15 miles and they're driving a Hummer H3 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 have 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 minivan when they want to have them I'm not saying that any of those that should be banned or anything else. It'd be better if more people use the leanest possible Logical purpose 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 again being independent and that whole thing that they're talking about in France won't let any of those scooters or motorcycles into 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 with everybody's in a little gray suit Marching along into the you know queue to get onto the train. 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 using it Yeah, it gets into representing.

Robin: Well, right? Yes. Are you up for an off-topic question now? Sure Maybe the travertine up in Wisconsin. He is curious about why did you move away from the signature inside-out Buell brake? Is it unnecessary with the regenerative braking of the hub motor?

Erik: Yeah regenerative braking can do Most of the braking, you know and particularly on a motorcycle Because the rear brakes pretty useless if you're stopping hard, especially if the rear wheels off the ground You know, the famous old thing is you're a trainer. It's trying to get people to use the damn front brake Because you're not gonna stop.

Robin: Otherwise, yeah, just drag the rear tire from 40 yards and show them what's really not happening.

Erik: I Learned that real early on when I was like 14 or something. I bought a basket case Harley 52 hardtail Franklin and attic like a KHK front end on 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 and I'm bad a pangers as horsepower's This lady in a station wagon put on the brakes in front of me like a quarter mile ahead of me and I still hit her Because there was this quarter of a mile long black skid bar from the rear tire Bonk on her bumper pretty tepid 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, yes, that's right as far as The inside out break for a bike with this speed level and weight. You don't need a lot of break Number one number two is we need to make it affordable and nobody makes inside out break Components. Oh, wow, there were a lot of reasons that drove me to do the inside out front brake But it was always a killer to get it made it gets right in a manufacturing, huh? none of the brake manufacturers wanted to make them because If you're a brake company and you're selling every super bike guy to Brakes they sell complete bled systems that they ship into the factories Pre-bled hoses on them and everything for the expedited way that a lot of these systems count So you sell them two calipers two sets of hoses a junction block all that stuff Then you sell two brake rotors with two carriers now anyone who's a Cost-sensitive type sourcing guys will go in and you can do Boothroyd and Dewhurst 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 There's 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 a brake rotor that weighs half as much one caliper one set of pads, right one simple line Are they gonna pay you as much? Well, of course not Yeah, and I had somebody from one of the major companies an engineer tell me that's why they were never work on it Because they were told not to but I I'm not gonna get into that too deeply So fundamentally, there are a lot of reasons I did the single inside of it You know We were talking about building bikes that were even in the case of an XP 9 or XP flow pretty fast motorcycle written fast a lot along twisty roads or raced or whatever else and The light front wheel had huge payoff Stuff that we really never got credit for it One of the reasons the bikes 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 every local discs has that's not an issue for this duty cycle Of a flow what is an issue is I don't want to spend a lot of money on it I want to just be able to pry the brake system and put on it'll do the job and that's okay Otherwise by to put a do that that would have been an engineer being an engineer to be an engineer The answer is it isn't needed stop it Eric because a part of me went I know that's a better system for But maybe not for here. Oh nice. Damn it So if we build a electric super bike, you can bet your ass that's gonna have that kind of a system if we get bigger God, it's like I said, that's one of the reasons those bikes handled So crazily well because the 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 lot of motorcycle engineering

Robin: Dynamic stuff 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 peers?

Erik: I guess anyone who shouldn't buy this unless they want to make an adventure out of it I mean you could ride a flow cross-country But you're gonna have to really plan and you're gonna do all those things you'd have to do it I'm not opposed to that But if you're expecting it to be a replacement to ride across country for your Harley it ain't there Number two is anybody wants a super bike because once again, I could build a great one except it really wouldn't be a great super bike 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 going to become? Equal in about 2045 Wow It ain't even close now Actually, I could give you a little math thing on that for me The customer for a flow is anyone who's slightly athletic who wants a fun and quick way to commute Around suburbia and from suburban and urban fun and it's quick and it looks sexy and it handles great can carry shit You know, it's like a Porsche McPowell or something SUV 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 bent out of shape because I don't like his politics or any Just forget that stuff. He really ain't that bad that way. He's a jokester.

Robin: He goofs off This interview is taking place because I have what I jokingly call megalomania net I'm using his satellite internet right now for this meeting So so my my grievances can be kept under my hat and I'm going through it right now as well Brilliant guy and his team he hires the right people.

Erik: He gives them the right work Situation, which I always tried to do or effort to do especially in EBR the whole secret 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 bad ass He's such a good engineer. You say you can't be done. You better be sure it can't be done because he'll cruise He'll sit down and do it But fundamentally Tesla is state-of-the-art in electric vehicles, and he's done really smart things with what he did They bought the company had this little Lotus sports car that added battery in it. Isn't this cool because I'll go real quick well, the answer is it's a lightweight sports car, which is a really bad place for a battery because If you want to have any range you need weight and he's always on the cutting edge of the latest battery technology. That's 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 So then your battery is that a modular battery?

Robin: It's lithium-ion. I'm assuming.

Erik: 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 them at first strength. It's magnesium because it's light. It's a electromagnetic interference Blocker and it's very recyclable Magnesium is 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 going to use it and he started building a supercharger network At the same time Wow timing and it's still the best charging network out there Yeah But he also aimed to realize that most of the people who don't use cars for super long trips in a fairly recent bridge He also went for a big car the Model S and the Model X big premium so they 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 we're gonna sell to you know, college professors and green minded people. They were too expensive He couldn't make any money on him. 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 bad on it The reason I'm going off on this is just I'm gonna get a little data off of his stuff Let's say you're going 300 miles on a vehicle. It'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 because the drag is worse on a motorcycle is on a car 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 60 pounds decreasing the whole time you're riding the bike till you get down to it You refuel in about three minutes ten gallons That's from literally all it's gonna take you pull the thing stand wait, and maybe you go and get a coffee. Yep Yep, electric you go 300 miles Let's say go 300 miles at 4 miles per kilowatt hour, that's actually real good some of Tesla's are like 4.2 Chevy stuff is like 3.5 So that's a very reasonable number. So to go 300 miles 4 miles per kilowatt hour. That's a 75 kilowatt hour battery

Robin: 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

Erik: six gallons Yeah, you know how that size that is 75 kilowatt hour battery is what's in Most Tesla's is 85 is one that have hundreds The 75 is a battery pack that at the very best current technology. That's 800 pounds of battery So my old Suzuki bandit 1200 s and by the way that you're carrying that the whole way It doesn't count in half the weight doesn't go down as the electrons get used up I still think my bandit might have been heavier, but I'm not sure 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 Well motorcycle with enough 200 horsepower or something You wouldn't easily pull 800 pounds, but you couldn't ride it because 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 percent of the battery for the battery last at all

Robin: Yeah

Erik: In a recharge range, so that means you can only use 60 percent of that battery capacity

Robin: That's the zero mark right because it needs to be able to recharge you gotta take care of it

Erik: Yes, or it'll just when the battery is going to be in bad shape Okay, so that's not gonna work. So let's see You're gonna refuel every 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 hundred miles Charging that is gonna not take three minutes. It's gonna be a long launch So the answer is can you do this if you want to 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 because it's a bourbon and urban When you start driving slowly like stoplight to stoplight to stoplight to stoplight in peril combustion engines get real shitty on fuel mileage Electric makes no difference

Robin: 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 lot

Erik: It's a ways out When the charging is always going to 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 supercharger 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 Harley electric bike, you're gonna suffer a lot to make a statement How does your stand out among the peers?

Robin: You've now got a platform. You've got a great thing happening My answer is that it's just a beautiful machine.

Erik: I love the look at what you're doing among peers Nobody's quite doing what we're doing. God bless them 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 Brahmos and all those things are out there I know exactly what they are. Like I said, I threw away everything when I started first principles thinking Which I can do because I got my own kind of coming 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 always trying, you know, let's not disturb anything and let's just bullshit everybody I won't digress man. I hate that kind of stuff if we don't move nothing will change Yes, and I'll still get paid I'm not into that. I Engineer because I want to 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 Happiness is gonna be a mutual goal no matter what for both the designer and the rider.

Robin: These are my favorite questions These are from Tim Clark. What modification? There are three of these questions and they are 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 raise are these some things that are going to be factored in eventually?

Erik: The handlebar system is a conventional handlebar and we did that for reasons so that people can put on whatever they want They want a different shape or whatever. That's fine Footpegs can be changed and modified the seat level is going to be what it's going to be 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 You know a shorter rider Right into the next question.

Robin: Is there a modification path for a big dumb podcast host? Who's over 250 pounds?

Erik: It's only got a single shock, but it's a conventional type shock and spring. 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 doesn't all day long So it'd be pretty easy to put on a heavier spring have heavier damping I want to thank you your suffering is almost over.

Robin: This is fun, man. This is 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 bike connect?

Erik: Directly to fuel through home Wi-Fi, that's certainly a goal and it's being done by other companies That's one of the really cool things about ebike this stuff That's electronic and software being such a major part of an electric vehicle in 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 system. He brought that up. That's another great question. You're reading the gray questions, aren't you? we talked about that and one reason you would want to say have a lower power 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 want to spend as much money for a 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 until 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 the Bureau

Robin: The Bureau of how fast Robbins allowed to ride I think I don't know.

Erik: It's interesting.

Robin: It can be dark. That's terrifying or it can be kind of cool.

Erik: Yeah, right But certainly the idea of doing updates to the product and that stuff over a line is 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 Too many engineers. Yeah, how many of these phone updates you go? 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 It's gonna take forever But the thing about the tiered speeds and stuff like that, so our newest podcast host is Armin a 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?

Erik: That's a long Horizon 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 But be easy to train people now if you want to 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 were all just drive software shit, which is easy But I'm just trying to get the basic product in a 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've actually loved those vehicles, but it was as long. So I won't get into the stories of that Saw it in half sports to motor. That was such a cool product and it was it's a long and ugly story I'll just tell a little brief piece of it because it just still makes me angry to this day After we produced it, it was gonna sell for $3,900 and it was profitable there There were some shifts that happen inside or it is 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 following it So the XP 9 and the blast we're sort of going along together, but we had to get the blast out sooner So there's a lot of components on the XP's and blaster the same But the one thing that isn't we always had the crappy transmission not them We improved transmission. That was one of the weaknesses of a blast which probably 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 was losing money as 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 here, which is a really sad situation And after the shake-up 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 view Fundamentally, he wound up shutting down all those plants consolidating and getting that overhead cost away. What 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 that way cool and that they all got killed Two crowns of thorns his and yours.

Robin: I mean, he probably wasn't exactly smiling about that situation. Hi, how you doing? What is going? Oh boy.

Erik: Here we go He's that kind of thing, you know Or 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 keep one dollar you hate him for something? I'm doing he shut down dual because he worked with the information he had and he had a company that was in Shape. I mean the sock had dropped from $75 a share to nine 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 The kind of bikes they build I'm not a big fan of but As a company and employees, I'm fine with them. They were a god bless on them. We need any kind of American manufacturer, but Leadership people. Yeah Shitty leadership people. I do have a problem with them You know Yeah Because they heard all the guys who work there that we call the guys and lost their jobs and all that kind of crap They're the ones who's really suffered. Those other guys retired and gated communities.

Robin: 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?

Erik: No, the unsprung mass is just not an issue this duty cycle for this customer for the way this bikes gonna be ridden I don't need to be obsessed with unsprung weight.

Robin: Other things are more important How much of the bike is user serviceable say over the first 10,000 miles Are we allowed to work on our own thing?

Erik: So long as it's not that 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 that. It's gonna be very high voltage Yeah Which is what you need for performance and fast charging. That's 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 it is.

Robin: I agree anything that could give me a permanent orange afro. I want to make sure does not From the Muppets Yeah 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.

Maggie: Mr. Eric And that was Eric Buell talking about the flow electric commuter There's no drive mechanism. No chain. No belt. No drive shaft the motors on the back wheel It comes with 50 liters of storage It's designed to be upgradable and keep up with the progression of tech. This could replace our scooter Let's talk about the price point in a word Accessible because if we want more people writing and more people thinking about electric I wouldn't consider a starting price in the twenty thousands as accessible Electrics 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 trusty scooters gonna last us Recently, I swung a leg over a monkey a Grom and a CRF 150 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 primus geek out for the riding obsession.

Robin: I'm Maggie Dean I Really like 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 us? Why did you think of this? This is amazing Why did where did you think to stack those cords in that way? And he really liked to sit next to this guy because 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 like who's pauses on that for a moment. He waits. He leans back and he says it's absolutely beautiful, but There's no place to sit down Cool