Electric motorcycles are fast, light and quiet!

There's this thing called the TTXGPit's a motorcycle race series for world class zero emissions motorcycles (now in its 3rd year) http://esr.cc/nfgcIS

That's right, the electric motorcyle racing circuit. On Sept 5th, 2011 all the electric motorcyle people held their last race of the North American series at the Miller Motorsports Park outside Salt Lake City Utah and both the European and Austrailian series have more races before their seasons conclude.

MotoCzysz (very fast but not yet commercially available) won the race but Brammo ended up winning the North American championship title with an average speed of about 77mph (that's 120 kph!) and I stress that was the average speed. IMHO, Brammo really won because these guys are already in market. You can buy a Brammo Enertia in BestBuys across the United States for under $8,000 USD http://esr.cc/qEec3f (When battery prices come down - expect the cost of the bike to drop as well). The Enertia is also available in Europe at The Carphone Warehouse.

Brammo's been getting a lot of media lately, in May, CEO Craig Bramscher, made a few waves by giving a motorcycle away at DisruptNYC to a mom who's son was in the Marines (that's nice). Checkout the TechCrunch article for yourself: http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/25/this-brammo-enertia-electric-motorcyle-was-just-spontaneously-given-away-at-disrupt/

Here's nice pic I found of the Brammo - you can see women are a big target market. And why not? Some women are intimidated by the wieght and loud sound of bikes. Not only women but I can see any novice motorcycle rider wanting to ride motorcycles that are lighter, quieter and just as fast as petrol bikes!

I tried to find a recent video review but could only find this one by a woman rider, reporting for the LA Times.

Even KTM has an electric off-road motorcycle in market (see video below) but I can't understand what they're saying and where this "e-bike" is available. Can you?

One last electric motorcycle company worth mentioning is Zero http://esr.cc/qx6XJw . Their Zero MX is the electric dirt bike model. Now if you've never been on a dirt bike, like me, people who have will wax on endlessly about: how much fun dirt biking is. How if will improve your motorcycle riding; and how you'll fall in love with it. Sounds amazing, but I've been hesitating because first of all these bikes are tall and second they're crazy loud.

Enter Zero MX, it's fast, light and quiet... and it looks like there's a dealer about 100 km from me. Maybe I'll give it a shot. Here's a good humored video that sums it up the Zero: Zero emissions, zero fuel consumtion, zero fire hazard (apparently dirt bikes tend to catch fire).