The lifespan of an electric bike taken on a trip like LONG WAY UP cannot really be compared to the lifespan of same bike simply riding a mix of highway and city commuting on paved roads for an hour or so twice a day. I love those series, but they are a highly specific and unusual use case, my fear for the long term reliability of an electric bike is pretty much non-existant with how I will treat it!
Yeah, it's alot like my Zero S. Bit more stylish, I think, but the stats overlap alot.Rode this for over an hour yesterday, with a half hour ride on the Livewire One in-between the Del Mar rides (for comparison). It is a bit tall seat height, but its really comfortable and fast/easy to maneuver. Silent compared to the Livewire One. Speed/Acceleration comparison between the One/Del Mar on my butt dyno shows no discernable difference. Both take off like a bat out of hell and feel exactly the same in terms of acceleration/speed.
Only real differences between the bikes are rider position: One is a more sporty forward lean/Del Mar is more MX upright position and easy to stand up on the pegs if desired. One's seat height is slightly shorter than the Del Mar. (I could stand flat footed on the One, but was up on toes for the Del Mar) The battery is different on the del mar, using standard panasonic cylindrical cells like Tesla, and is a bit smaller which is why its got less range. As a result, the bike is 100 lbs lighter. Other than that, the main differences are cosmetic.. del mar has traditional harley bullet turn signals instead of those butt ugly futuristic light bars on the One. Del mar also went to a more traditional style speedo (in modern technology) with a sportster style circular single speedo, which is a TFT screen. The handlebar controls on the One are standard Harley controls, while the Del mar has updated nicer handlebar controls which also switched over to standard japanese bike turn signal alignment as a single toggle switch on the left (compared to standard harley one on each side for that side).
They are both solidly built bikes, but the Del Mar feels like a more thought out and polished design/construction. The One just looks like the design team didn't flesh it out as much to really keep the essence of Harley (through small design elements like the bullet turn signals and sportster speedo) within a modern/updated styling.
With the pricing dropped back down to close to announced pricing, and comparing it to the existing Harley bike prices, I've evolved into acceptance of the pricing (still think its about 2-3k more than it should be for the range). Its slightly more than I'm comfortable with purchasing, but its a really solidly built bike that does not feel cheap in any way, and I will be selling a couple vintage Vespas to take the sting off that purchase price financed.
I'm a vintage guy, love the sound and feel of old bikes, love shifting/etc, but the more I commute in NYC congestion on my Harley, the more justified my mind sees an electric bike for this narrow use case. No legal lane splitting in NYC. I'll lane split in Manhattan traffic at lights and occasionally in motion when traffic is crawling, but I refuse to lane split on the highway where people drive like animals around here. With that style of driving, I get stuck in an hour of stop and go traffic on the highway probably once or twice a week. Clutch hand cramp is a pain in the ass after half hour or more in traffic. I thought I would hate the twist and go feel of it, cause I hate modern twist and go scooters, but this bike is so fast compared to modern scooters that they are not even in the same ballpark of an experience. The twist and go riding style on an electric bike really isn't noticeable or annoying like it is on a scooter where you just aren't having as much fun! So the twist and go electric bike, not having to deal with clutch hand cramping, and more than enough range for 40 mi round trip daily commuting is pretty much the ideal use case for a bike like this. I've got a Harley for driving longer distance than the range would allow. Bonus is that I work real early and real late for most of the year, so I can commute on this without feeling guilty about waking up the world, and don't have to baby the throttle at those hours of the day/night just to keep the sound down.
I see the pricing this way... Harley/Livewire would love it to be 2-3k more than it is.. customers (like me) see it being 2-3k more than it should be.. and Livewire probably got some crap from reservation holders like myself about changing the price to almost exactly as the limited version.. so they chose the median between their desires and customers desires on pricing, which in turn lands at almost exactly what they announced.
Not trying to be rude but this is a curious question. Why are we talking Harley pricing on this forum? I'm new in this CT owners forum.
Because this is in the general automotive and off topic section of the forum. And it's related enough being focused on ev motorcycles.
Thanks for your kind reply.
Because that's what some of us want to put in our trucks? ^-^
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Oh yeah I didn't even realize that destination chargers were ac and superchargers were DC! Two years of actively paying attention to ev industry and I never really looked close enough at the charging aspect of it! Obvious how it wouldn't work plugging one into the other now that you point that out! I always just assumed that all chargers converted AC to DC.
Well knowing this now, the S2 Del Mar has only L1 or L2 charging, so I assume the hardware and software required for that switch between AC and DC charging is not present in that bike. It's kinda pointless to use a supercharger with a converter magic box to convert the DC back to AC for the bike to then just convert it back to DC into battery as is default. Your still only getting L2 charging speeds and adding the extra cost of the magic box and the extended charging times at the super charger.
Zero SR..
