We love motorcycles at CarNewsCafe. In fact, the more the better, and electric motorcycles offer so much potential. If the gasoline internal combustion engine (ICE) has the follow problem, the need to constantly boost performance, the electric motor has the opposite. You need to tone down the wild 100% torque as soon as it spins, otherwise your electric vehicle (EV) would just spin tires until they melted. Isn’t that a sweet problem to have. Think about it. One needs to boost the performance, the other needs to tone it down. Which one would you rather have?
An angry and fast electric snail
Hat tip to our friends at Gizmag for catching this wild one. The Johammer electro-cruiser is unique, beyond the obvious. The company not only creates its batteries in-house, which means they can feasibly sell to others, but they also took the creative liberty that comes with designing an EV to really innovate with their electric motorcycle.
This is another thing we love about EVs. They unleash a designer’s imagination. They allow engineers to think outside the box. They basically free those who design them from the constraints of bulky engines and gasoline tanks. They also produce some pretty wild things, and this Johammer electro-cruiser certainly deserves a spot on the podium of wild things.
Revolutionizing Johammer electro-cruiser, or simple evolution?
There are things on the Johammer electro-cruiser we would like to see on more motorcycles. They are things that will happen, one way, or another. For instance, gone is the traditional dash, hello mirror displays! Yes, you read it well. If you need to know how fast, your range, or anything else, look into your mirrors. Now, that might be a novel idea for many car drivers out there, but it is a constant reality for motorcycle riders, and we feel most will appreciate this.
Motorcycles ride on two wheels so when you brake hard, they have a tendency to nose dive. BMW motorcycles revolutionized the world of front suspensions in the 1990s. It introduced a revolutionary front suspension that made nose diving a thing of the past. So how about a hub-center steering, with its suspension as low to the ground as possible and an electric motor nestled in the rear hub? The design and vision is simply brilliant.
For the range wussies out there
For those who still moan and groan about range this, and range that, the electro-cruiser packs a mighty 12.7 kWh battery stack. This gives it a 124 mile range, or the magical 200 km barrier, comparable to a normal gasoline bike. And for those of you still shy about batteries on electric motorcycles, we don’t understand why you would, the Johammer claims 124,000 mile or four years warranty on them, and they won’t drop below 85 percent capacity.
One particular design oddity about the bike is that the electric motor is located on the rear wheel hub. This makes us wonder how the bike handles in fast corners with this unsprung weight, but we’re sure the engineers at Johammer thought the suspensions through.
How much?
Big battery packs and great engineering doesn’t come cheaply, unless you’re BMW motorcycle. By the way, we’re still waiting for an electric BMW motorcycle. The Johammer electro-ride has a few options that might entice you. An entry level 8.3 kWh version at about US $31,860 and the big battery pack (12.7 kWh) will set you US $34,630 back, not much of a difference all things considered.
Johammer is in Austria, will we ever see them in the U.S.? As we said before, EVs are wonderful because they breath new life in an otherwise slow development pace gasoline world. We applaud companies like Mazda and Skyactiv technology for giving hybrids a run for its money, but we are equally excited about bikes the Johammer, or the out of this world Lightning Motorcycle SuperBike bound to keep your adrenaline pumping for a very long time. Excite? What else is new at CarNewsCafe?
