I think you’re way off tbh. Something like 85% of the motorcycle market is for pleasure. Plenty of those bikes have a range of only ~100 miles as it is. Stopping is not really the problem. The problem is the charging infrastructure does not exist and the charge times are way too long.
Do some motorcycle owners commute on their bikes? Of course, but that’s clearly the minority of the market. The reason cycle trader is full of low mileage bikes is that the whole activity is kind of a pain in the ass when you think about it. Add charging to that and it’s just too much to bear.
Pleasure riders often ride on nice sunny sundays in groups to ruralish areas where it’s scenic and the roads are winding with few traffic lights etc. they need to be able to “gas up” a significant number of bikes quickly. And that shit is a pain to organize so they do it like twice a year. Hence the low mileage.
Electric motorcycles really are a super hard sell. The stark varg makes way more sense cause that’s a type of motorcycle that gets carried to the destination most of the time anyway. So the range thing is way less of an issue and the upsides stand out way more. That’s probably why I see way, way more Vargs or bikes like them than live wires.
>Plenty of those bikes have a range of only ~100 miles as it is.
This is not true. If I'm wrong about this, I'd love to be shown a citation.
The Livewire problem is MOSTLY that (a) Harley made it too expensive and (b) Harley has to performativly hate anything that isn't big and loud with a vibration at idle that would churn butter. And they do this to the detriment of their brand.
It’s more common among the sporty bikes. A lot of these bikes didn’t even have a fuel gauge until that long ago. Just a fuel light. Tons of guys say they go about 100 miles for fill ups. Maybe that’s cause of the history of the bikes, you want a number that’s easy to remember cause you were really looking at the odometer as your gas gauge. Even a Harley bob only has 165 miles of range according to the website. Assume you don’t go from absolutely full to empty, 1 gallon less than the maximum, you’re at 120 miles.
Yeah the live wire is real expensive. Where are you going to charge it? It doesn’t make sense. Compared to a car the battery is tiny, so you should be able to charge at like full DC fast charge rates on a level 2 charger. Except the original livewire had a super weak built in charger so it couldn’t charge at above 1.4kw? So you had to look for dc chargers. It failed for really good reasons. That’s the point I’m trying to make, it failed for good reasons. I think it’s actually rational.
Traditional motorcycles are a terrible use case for replacing with electric right now. But on the commuter side they are becoming insanely popular (although I think usually they are the illegal suron type bikes).
I’m not gonna defend harleys and cruising. I don’t get it. I’m just saying these things are mostly toys. The new bike buyer is buying a toy. But lots of people have lots of reasons for things. Personally I think sporty cars are about handling and power and stuff so I think sporty EVs are great. Most people disagree with me. They want noises and “character”.
So sure, you pick a high-test bike absolutely not intended for anything but urban hooliganism.
There are virtually zero bikes with an range of only 100 miles. People still joke about the VMax because it actually DID have that limitation. It's the exception that proves the rule.
The vast majority of bikes are good for materially more than that. Even my very staid, traditional Bonnville will easily make 150 on the highway if not farther. My BMW will double that.
My main point about the Livewire is that it's more than Harley failed IT because they're absolutely terrified of annoying their MAGA boomer base that is incredibly hostile to the whole IDEA of EVs.
Daily commuter bikes are a GREAT use case for electrics, IMO. I know a couple folks here in Durham who do it (one, in fact, on a Livewire). I haven't looked hard at electric bikes myself because I do much farther rides than that, so the utility isn't there -- but as an urban runabout, they're awesome.
100%. Tire technology is a real thing. Tires have advanced a ton in the last 10 years. But driving style is the biggest thing. Some people can only get 10k miles out of a set of tires, while others with the same car and tires get over 40k.
But they do care about tire wear a lot, they know the acceptable wear life for the class. A couple years ago I bought a set of Pirelli tires that were ~50% off because they were an older version; hoping I’d get some benefit. Unfortunately they had half the life and were a bit worse in every way than the newer tires I had before and after.
Some tires are going to wear fast no matter what. I had some Pirelli PZero summer tires that I could never get more than 15k out of regardless of how I drove. The tire compound was very soft and sticky.
If you have something like really high performance tires, I recommend just using them. The grip is always there and you are always paying for it. As long as you aren't losing traction constantly, the difference is negligible in my experience.
2025 S is the same as your 2014 S? That’s some hilarious cope. Stop lying. You know it’s completely different. Yes, a model S is still a model S. And the F150 is still a pickup truck. Surprise!
New motors, new battery pack architecture, chemistry, etc, new body structure (giga castings), new interior, new facia and body panels, new computer architecture, new door handles. It goes on and on and on. Find me a part on your 2014 that is the same on the 2025. Show it to me in the Tesla parts catalog. It’s online. Should be easy.
just asked my wife and she said the first thing she looks when she is deciding to buy a car are giga castings and facia and door handles - boom - tesla s ftw ;)
When I bought my S in 2014 people were breaking their necks checking it out, it was the shit - now this car is soooo dated there is no reason to buy 2026 vs. my 2014 (I got new DU, new battery…)
Tesla entire lineup is old outdated cars. Ford has F-150 and then another 50 models to choose from…
90s trucks sure. But they turned into tonka trucks over the last 30 years. The grills and everything just keep getting bigger.
It’s actually worse than that though. Ford got rid of the heavy duty package on the f150 and said to customers “just buy the f250 instead”. Which is even more tonka.
The Starbucks example to me is a bad example, and seems very cherry picked. They mention the one time stock bonuses he got, most likely part of his recruitment. He’s a highly sought after fast food executive. They also got him to work in Seattle. Last time he switched companies (Taco Bell to Chipotle) they moved their headquarters to him in Newport Beach. Chipotle moved their headquarters from Colorado to California, and their stock went up ~5x during his tenure. That’s probably why he got a huge signing bonus. And Chipotle wasn’t paying him peanuts either, apparently he made $38M one year and was averaging around $20M.
He stated his plan with Starbucks is focused on “theater” and in person service. Doesn’t sound like coffee bot to me.
Because people think the progress shown with gpt5 is unimpressive. Meanwhile Claude is very successful, Grok has come out of nowhere and according to some benchmarks matches or exceeds gpt5 slightly. Meaning openai might not be THE horse to bet on. Doesn’t mean there isn’t a race going on with the potential for a big prize at the end, even at current valuations. Only time will tell! As per usual!
But that's just ... Not what a bubble is. A market leader having viable competitors doesn't make them any less of a market leader, and doesn't make them "a bubble".
Pretty much. The math is pretty simple: the more you drive the more economical an ev is due to it being more efficient and lower maintenance. Fighting against EVs is fighting an uphill battle. But I suppose it’s the only logical thing to do for the oil companies, and so many people are afraid of change they can easily leverage that. The whole range anxiety thing for instance is such a joke.
Not if it’s below regulatory threshold. Which they seemed to say it was in the article (they said it’s below EPA threshold, so I assume that means the OSHA threshold too).
The article never says how much they detected. I can only assume it’s because it’s a nothing amount. If it was significant they would have been saying how much. It’s hard to take the article seriously as a result. We have crazy sensitive tests now, they do nothing in the article to show it’s not just another story about how sensitive testing is these days.
> The article never says how much they detected. I can only assume it’s because it’s a nothing amount. If it was significant they would have been saying how much. It’s hard to take the article seriously as a result.
Did we read the same article? There's a table with the amounts of different metals, with the amounts found in each of the different samples.
Keep in mind stucco is very common in Southern California. Basically a 7/8” thick layer of concrete on all the exterior walls. It is fire resistant. Many such buildings burned down.
This isn’t the three little pigs where the brick house is the solution. And that wasn’t the moral of the story anyway.
The first house by the forest would probably still be destroyed, however the next one has a much better chance because it’s not next to a large flammable structure.
Because old cities had these kinds of fires constantly (in my city there's still a paiting of a fire from 18th century that destroyed half the Old Town) and usually only stone/brick buildings survived.
This isn't a 0%/100% thing, but it increases the chances by a big margin.
Do some motorcycle owners commute on their bikes? Of course, but that’s clearly the minority of the market. The reason cycle trader is full of low mileage bikes is that the whole activity is kind of a pain in the ass when you think about it. Add charging to that and it’s just too much to bear.
Pleasure riders often ride on nice sunny sundays in groups to ruralish areas where it’s scenic and the roads are winding with few traffic lights etc. they need to be able to “gas up” a significant number of bikes quickly. And that shit is a pain to organize so they do it like twice a year. Hence the low mileage.
Electric motorcycles really are a super hard sell. The stark varg makes way more sense cause that’s a type of motorcycle that gets carried to the destination most of the time anyway. So the range thing is way less of an issue and the upsides stand out way more. That’s probably why I see way, way more Vargs or bikes like them than live wires.
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