Interesting news out of BRP on electrification.

[askitee]

I am also hoping they dont shoot themselves in the foot by coming out with a proprietary charge connection where you'll need to bring your adapter with you everywhere to charge it...

 

[PistonBlown]

I specifically looked in Google where your country produces electricity. Yes, you are lucky only 6 percent get from coal. But not in Europe( USA I don't know but I think it's not so good either) where only Norway almost completely generates electricity through renewable energy sources. The rest of the talk about the fact that cars with internal combustion engines will go into the past utopia for many many years. I think even if such a small country as New Zealand to transfer all transport to electric traction with electricity will be difficult.

Its actually other countries that are making the main moves in electrification. For example the UK has moved the ban on new ICE vehicles in 2030. Bearing in mind the average vehicle age in the UK is 8.2 years you can see how that's going to drive the market soon. EU is even earlier with a proposed ban in 2025, though that's still being argued about so I suspect it will slip further out. Apparently in the UK they have already started rolling out large scale charging stations in preparation for the increased demand. Your right about their lack of renewable electricity, basically it will be moving the problem rather than sorting it.

Some states in the US are also looking at bans from 2030, though obviously that will be a lot more patchy.

New Zealand is going a bit slower with 2032, we also tend to keep hold of vehicles a lot longer than many countries (average vehicle age is 14.4 years). However we do have the advantage that 84% of our electricity is renewable and we're on course for 100% by 2035 even with the forecast increase in demand. There's a lot of infrastructure projects around this at the moment.

Like you mentioned its going to be a problem in countries like Russia where climate is the issue. I remember from when I worked in Antarctica and Finland how much batteries could be impacted by the cold. Not heard of any new battery tech that will solve that.

 

[Eranical]

Reviving an old thread because of this video that came in my Google feed..

https://youtu.be/a_9b8WBZIHE

Electric motorcycle from can am

 

[Little Blue]

E v spyder

Well bring your best shot. I hope they can get it done and right. I wish BRP the best. .....:thumbup:

 

[CloverHillCrawler]

EV's are a pipe dream, According to Pacific Gas & Electric a new electric vehicle on a dedicated circuit could draw 6.6 kilowatts—and up to 20 kilowatts in the case of an optional home fast charger for a Tesla Model S.

Good luck on the grid supporting that. One of the guys at work lives in town houses with common parking and some idiot there installed a charging station in his yard and is running the cable across the street to the common parking to charge his vehicle overnight.

HOA told him no can do. He is now suing the HOA trying to force them to install chargers. Electric company said no can do.. no capacity to support charging in that neighborhood. Lesson learned .. before you buy an EV make sure you have the electrical capacity available to support your charging.

Not sure what this idiot was thinking when he bought an EV and lived in a town house without it's own driveway.

 

[Piratezz]

First there have too be morons, that buy electric, to even make the conversion happen.... Me for one, like the burble coming from an exhaust combined with a combustion engine, transition is unavoidable, the whole politics worldwide, are making rumble to change to electricity, all changes are difficult, Tesla was made out for an Idiot, he proved to be right... But have to agree with some of the earlier posts, that we have along way too go...

Personally I think, Hydrogen is the answer, atleast here in the netherlands we have the infrastructure already there, cause most houses are connected to gas, and hydrogen, is transportable trough these pipes.
Time will tell, again there are alotta pro's, but also a lotta cons

 

[bikerbillone]

Interesting read, EV for me? No way as many have already said here. Seems the industry has enough problems, finding a new car or motorcycle is a real challenge, if ya find one, call Bill Gates for a long term loan.

 

[CloverHillCrawler]

Personally I think, Hydrogen is the answer, atleast here in the netherlands we have the infrastructure already there, cause most houses are connected to gas, and hydrogen, is transportable trough these pipes.
Time will tell, again there are alotta pro's, but also a lotta cons

Hydrogen is definitely a lot cleaner but mass production of the gas can be tricky to maintain "clean standards" the Scottish people are working on a clean solution to produce hydrogen.

https://www.sdi.co.uk/news-features/news-and-feature-articles/how-scotland-could-be-a-major-player-in-future-hydrogen-industry

Still a lot of bugs to work out though even if it is produced cleanly it still has to use fossil fuel to store (kept cold) and move it around.

 

[Wmoater]

Watched that yesterday. Saw it on dootalk. Look at the blerred out cycle on the right in the beginning shot. Very last one. It’s a spyder. They already said the seadoo will be 2024 and a SXS in 25. We’ll see. It will only be one version my guess. So it will be the RT, F3, RYKER, and some other name for the electric version like the spark or shockwave.

 

[GFrog]

Personally I think, Hydrogen is the answer, atleast here in the netherlands we have the infrastructure already there, cause most houses are connected to gas, and hydrogen, is transportable trough these pipes.
Time will tell, again there are alotta pro's, but also a lotta cons

I also agree with Hydrogen. Most of our current internal combustion engines can be converted to run on Hydrogen. Mining for lithium to make lithium-ion batteries in expensive and messy. After 10 years, you have to dispose of all that toxic waste from old lithium batteries. There are still many electrical plants that use oil and coal to produce electricity which is used to charge EVs.

Hydrogen production is still problematic and expensive, but should the world shift to hydrogen on a large scale, cost would eventually be reduced making hydrogen powered vehicles possibly cheaper than using oil or electricity. The other benefit is that current vehicles could still be used with minor modifications.

 

[BLUEKNIGHT911]

I'm a retired electrical technician from a power company and no way in hell will I ever buy an electric car or motorcycle after working 37 years with batteries!!! This is all a bunch of crap this global warming bull ----! All it's doing is filling certain peoples wallets. The vehicles might be good for a couple years but after that look out and open up your wallets for repairs. That's all I've got to say.

:agree: X's 10 ..... and let me add .... When they introduced " CELL " phones a couple of decades ago, the system wasn't ready for their introduce THEN ,... because they STILL arn't ready even now .... Concerning " EV's " .... there ISN'T enough Electricity to power the current needs of the world NOW ..... WHY do they think adding millions & millions of vehicles Now are going to make this situation better, and where, when and how are they going to be re-charged unless the veh. is parked at your house ( which isn't going to have enough electricity to charge them anyway) ...... The USA was over-producing oil & natural gas in 2020, and still could be ..... You can figure out the rest ..... JMHO .... Mike :thumbup:

 

[Pirate]

Side question of sorts. Do all these EV's take the same plug in or are they all proprietary? If you buy a Tesla and want home charging and down the road get BRP EV, are we all going to have a bank of chargers in the garage??

 

[GFrog]

Side question of sorts. Do all these EV's take the same plug in or are they all proprietary? If you buy a Tesla and want home charging and down the road get BRP EV, are we all going to have a bank of chargers in the garage??

For the most part, they are all the same. But Tesla Super Chargers only work with Tesla. Here is a link to an interesting article about charging connectors.

https://www.motorbiscuit.com/electric-cars-use-same-kind-charger/

 

[Pirate]

For the most part, they are all the same. But Tesla Super Chargers only work with Tesla. Here is a link to an interesting article about charging connectors.

https://www.motorbiscuit.com/electric-cars-use-same-kind-charger/

Thanks. So, from what the article showed the fastest chargers are for Tesla only (15 min or so charge) and the station ones can charge between an hour and 11 hours. Not sure I could wait that long to charge even if gas is $6. a gallon here.

 

[WisconsinDavid]

Really not interested for a long time due to long distance touring trips. I don't want to have to sit and recharge for a long time after going 200 - 300 miles. Also, I don't plan to hunt for charging stations at the off-the-beaten-path areas to be explored. It will be a long while and using lots of others as guinea pigs before I buy an electric vehicle of any type.

 

[Raven]

They said on the news last night that BRP was going to start building motorcycles again under the Can-Am name.
These are going to be electric. :sour:

 

[BMac920]

Just an old Japanese bike rider here wanting to suggest a few things for BRP. A) Maybe put your engineers to work on finishing the current product line first before trying product extension to electric. 1. Standardize most bolt sizes. Like not needing two different size wrenches to drain the oil. 2. Design or select an oil dipstick that isn't the same color as clean oil so it might be easily seen. 3. Don't design things that have a blind hole to work with, like panel pushpins, bolts inside u-channels 4. Put latches on all hinged panels/doors/lids that actually line up easily with a good tactile click-feel when closing. 5. Use switchgear on hand controls that also have a good tactile feel with positive detents. 6. Be sure things such as the gear selector display is large enough to locate and easily read when in daylight and moving at 60+ mph 7. Just upgrade the Pully belt drive system to a virtually foolproof drive shaft system (read like any of the Honda or Yamaha shaft drive bikes). 8. While on the drive system also replicate the dual-clutch system on any of the semi-automatics by Honda. 9. Look into variable steering ratios with the aim of the steering systems to combine low-speed agility with safe high-speed behavior. 10. Allow the owner to select how much intervention of the Nanny is desired with more and less aggressive settings similar to the Yamaha Nemesis-TCS module.

This list isn't intended to beat up on BRP, as they have a great machine that has found an important market to serve. However, it is intended to say to BRP that you actually have a long way you could go to improve the Spyder, and have great existing examples to benchmark the direction you could head to significantly improve on what you already have. My list is not exhaustive or prioritized, it is simply where engineering resources could/should be spent before you think about an electric machine in my opinion. (Hope I didn't hijack your post Billybovine!) Regards.

 

[hut1]

I for one think EV's will be a "significant part" of our motoring future. It may or may not be the predominate mode in most of our lifetimes, but I believe it's here to stay. I would love to hear from any of our members who have first hand experience with EV's, cars or motorcycles. Personally I have regular access to a Tesla Model 3. I say "access" because it belonged to my late father-in-law and we now use it to run errands and transport my mother-in-law. FIL also installed a Tesla solar roof and 3 Powerwall batteries. For the way we use the car, solar takes care of all the charging power needed. Granted, this isn't for everyone; and the total investment is substantial, but I embrace the concept and envision other "alternative energy" vehicles and power sources in the future.

 

[vito1943]

I think that BRP should offer an electric Spyder with a matching trailer. In the trailer would be a gas powered generator for re-charging the Spyder when you find yourself nowhere near an open recharging station. Or the trailer could hold an extra battery pack, sort of like a Reserve in the gas tank.

 

[bigbadbrucie]

I think that BRP should offer an electric Spyder with a matching trailer. In the trailer would be a gas powered generator for re-charging the Spyder when you find yourself nowhere near an open recharging station. Or the trailer could hold an extra battery pack, sort of like a Reserve in the gas tank.

Using that line of reasoning, I guess a lot of us should be towing a matching fuel trailer also.:banghead::banghead: