http://www.autoblog.com/2009/03/02/brammo-enertia-to-be-sold-at-best-buy/
Brammo jumps shark with Best Buy sponsorship on leather jacket.
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March 2, 2009 9:43 a.m. John Brown SuperDork
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March 2, 2009 9:45 a.m. Grtechguy SuperDork
does that mean the "geek squad" will be the "geek squid"?
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March 2, 2009 10:03 a.m. maroon92 SuperDork
makes sense if you ask me....
but nobody did.
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March 2, 2009 10:14 a.m. Tom Heath Production Editor
I'd rather have one of these.
Cheaper, available now, and I won't be pressured into a service agreement. With a light kit, it's street-legal, too.
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March 2, 2009 10:26 a.m. fastEddie Dork
Will the Geek Squad be offering MSF courses at your house now?
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March 2, 2009 10:48 a.m. stuart in mn Dork
That photo of the Brammo in the link is really weird, like it was stretched to make the bike look like it's a foot taller. The proportions are all wrong.
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March 2, 2009 10:50 a.m. Jensenman SuperDork
That's neat and all for short hops around town, but electric dirt bikes? With current technology they are restricted to closed course use. I mean, if I'm 35 miles west of East Bumfuc* Nowhere and the battery goes dead, I'm not seeing an easy method of recharging the thing so I can get home. And I hates to push.
That is what killed Cannondale; they made a fuel injected dirt bike that was bleeding edge technology and pretty cool but the average guy looked at it and said 'if my (insert UJM dirt bike here) shuts off on me at least I can try beating on the carburetor with a stick'. What Cannondale's marketing people missed was this: 90% of motocross bikes never see a MX course but are rather used as trail bikes. So Cannondale immediately cut off at least 80% of their possible market before they ever built a bike.
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March 2, 2009 10:52 a.m. dyintorace HalfDork
Is the Brammo in this story the same Brammo that was assembling the Ariel Atom in the US?
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March 2, 2009 10:54 a.m. PHeller Reader
Carry another battery?
Fold up solar array?
Portable fusion cell?
Oh wait...that last one is Fallout-esque.
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March 2, 2009 11:02 a.m. John Brown SuperDork
dyintorace wrote:
Is the Brammo in this story the same Brammo that was assembling the Ariel Atom in the US?
Yes.
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March 2, 2009 2:02 p.m. Keith SuperDork
Building, actually. They did quite a bit of alteration to the design to add bucket seats and fit the Ecotec. The Atom 3 - now being built by TMI - is the same on both sides of the pond.
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March 5, 2009 10:01 p.m. Opus HalfDork
Jensenman wrote:
That's neat and all for short hops around town, but electric dirt bikes? With current technology they are restricted to closed course use. I mean, if I'm 35 miles west of East Bumfuc* Nowhere and the battery goes dead, I'm not seeing an easy method of recharging the thing so I can get home. And I hates to push.
That is what killed Cannondale; they made a fuel injected dirt bike that was bleeding edge technology and pretty cool but the average guy looked at it and said 'if my (insert UJM dirt bike here) shuts off on me at least I can try beating on the carburetor with a stick'. What Cannondale's marketing people missed was this: 90% of motocross bikes never see a MX course but are rather used as trail bikes. So Cannondale immediately cut off at least 80% of their possible market before they ever built a bike.
I do not agree, I ride trails with a friend on his cannondale and we typically go on 60-80 mile loops.
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March 6, 2009 7:08 a.m. Jensenman SuperDork
I did not say the Cannondale wouldn't do it. I said the vast majority of the guys I rode with took one look at fuel injection that won't work unless the battery is charged and said 'no way'. Go back and check the magazine articles from the intro and they said the same thing. On an XR600R, for instance, if the carb starts flooding you can whack on it and it'll run well enough to get you back to the truck. If a Cannondale starts flooding, what are ya gonna whack on?
Personally, I liked the FI setup. It had a lot of potential (and still does). I think Cannondale's problem was they tried to go too far bleeding edge without having a solid customer base. If I had been in the shoes of their CEO, I would have used, say, a Rotax or Folan engine, built my own frame, used decent and proven White Power or etc suspension and sold that to start with. That would have cut development time and cost plus allowed for building a dealer network and customer base. Then I would have added the bleeding edge stuff.
EDIT: I haven't checked in a while, but Gas Gas was supposed to be building a FI dirt bike with no battery. It had a high capacity capacitor (you listening, Hess?
) and you always had to kick it twice: the first kick charged the capacitor so the FI stuff would run, the second kick started the motor. That was pretty cool, but you have to wonder about fixing that trailside as well.
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March 6, 2009 7:38 a.m. Grtechguy SuperDork
My question is this......
how well are the electronics sealed on those?
I sure wouldn't want to have that short out on me in the middle of a creek.
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March 6, 2009 8:50 a.m. Jensenman SuperDork
Must be sealed pretty good. The last hare scramble my club put on involved a deep muddy creek crossing (on purpose! Gotta separate the men from the boys, right?
) and to top it off it was in the high 40's and raining. In short, a typical nasty wet South Carolina winter day. The Southeast Cannondale distributor sponsored 2 riders and they both came through just fine.
But the question Grtechguy posed is exactly what a lot of people were asking themselves and had a lot to do with Cannondale's lack of success.
Hey, I'd LOVE to see a US dirt bike manufacturer make big inroads against the Japanese Big 4 and KTM. I was rooting for Cannondale, I just didn't try to fool myself. ATK bought the remains of their operation cheap and maybe they will eventually make something of it. But so far they are still just a bit player. http://www.atkusa.com/
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March 6, 2009 10:30 a.m. CrackMonkey Reader
ZERO is planning to release a supermoto version of their bike. Either way, if the cost ever comes down, I could see using one for my suburban commute. But at the current price, I'll stick with my Harley.
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March 6, 2009 12:02 p.m. Jensenman SuperDork
Hmmm. I wonder what would happen if you were riding a ZERO with the 58V DC battery fully charged and somehow it decided to short itself to the frame?
Fricaseed motocrosser.
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March 6, 2009 3:22 p.m. xci_ed6 New Reader
Jensenman wrote: EDIT: I haven't checked in a while, but Gas Gas was supposed to be building a FI dirt bike with no battery. It had a high capacity capacitor (you listening, Hess?
) and you always had to kick it twice: the first kick charged the capacitor so the FI stuff would run, the second kick started the motor. That was pretty cool, but you have to wonder about fixing that trailside as well.
Keihin does for Suzuki, I think Kawi and Honda may feature it also. I don't follow dirtbikes much but there was an article about one of them in a rag I picked up awhile back. 2-kicks to charge it, then it will only take one to restart if you stall out.
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March 6, 2009 4:00 p.m. Jensenman SuperDork
It turns out Gas Gas did release the FI bikes. It also seems that Suzuki will be the first to offer EFI on a production motocrosser. That's a bit odd because Suzuki and Kawasaki share a common engine, so why is only 'Zook offering EFI?
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March 6, 2009 4:17 p.m. suprf1y Reader
Jensenman wrote:
It turns out Gas Gas did release the FI bikes. It also seems that Suzuki will be the first to offer EFI on a production motocrosser. That's a bit odd because Suzuki and Kawasaki share a common engine, so why is only 'Zook offering EFI?
That RMZ FI was out last year. The Kawi/Suzuki relationship was over a few years ago. Even the CBR125R, an entry level street bike is FI. Soon everything will be. It makes me laugh when I hear the MX guys beaking off about all the negatives of FI, then drive home, not even thinking about how reliable it is in their late model pickups.
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March 6, 2009 9:29 p.m. Jensenman SuperDork
Kawi and 'Zook split up? Shows how much I have kept up.
