Brammo introduces the Empulse, a new high performance electric motorcycle

Photo courtesy Brammo

It’s an exciting time to be an electric motorcycle fan, what with multiple manufacturers bringing bikes to market, and the electric motorcycle races in North America and Europe. Electric motorcycle maker Brammo last week unveiled an exciting new high performance electric motorcycle, the Empulse. It’s a “naked” bike (no fairings) in the street fighter style, offers 100 miles/hr top speed and a trio of ranges from 60 miles to 100 miles. They expect to start delivering the bike next year, in 2011, and have started accepting pre-orders.

Brammo has been in the electric motorcycle business for a few years and began selling the Enertia motorcycle a year ago. The Enertia and Empulse are not two variants of the same bike, but are different motorcycle in style, construnction, layout, and components. The Enertia is a smaller motorcycle, with an upright seating style, a sub-freeway speed and range suitable for around town use. The Empulse is larger, with a seating style more suited for racing, a speed beyond what’s required for freeways, and a range long enough to satisfy most riding. The Empulse performance is way beyond other commercially made electric motorcycles, especially at the price, so much so that many are saying it’s a game changing motorcycle. However other electric motorcycle companies aren’t far behind. Some are selling lower performance bikes, with intention to offer more powerful ones. Others claim they will offer higher performance bikes but are not near production, and are at price points way beyond Brammo’s.

In many ways the Empulse is the result of the electric motorcycle races that began with the 2009 TTXGP race on the Isle of Man. At the time of that race Brammo was nearing release of the Enertia and one might have expected them to race a biggified version of the Enertia at the TTXGP. Instead they raced with two motorcycles called the Enertia TTR, with a racing-style design and a very different drive train. The Emplulse shares more similarity with the TTR than it does to the Enertia.

Unfortunately Brammo is not releasing detailed specs at this time, claiming the details are in too much of a flux. What’s known is:-

The 100 mph top speed of all three Brammo Empulse models is a 60% improvement over the Brammo Enertia and it’s competition
Empulse 6.0, 6 kwh batttery pack = 60 mile range for $9,9995
Empulse 8.0, 8 kwh batttery pack = 80 mile range for $11,995
Empulse 10.0, 10 kwh batttery pack = 100 mile range for $13995
Rather than the lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) Valence batteries used in the Enertia, the Empulse will have a custom battery pack and custom battery chemistry for higher energy density than LiFePO4 allows
Liquid cooled AC Synchronous motor
After tax credits in some states the Empulse 10.0 could end up costing you $7000

Brammo is making it clear one will not achieve a 100 mile range while riding 100+ miles/hr. This is not exactly a surprise (e.g. in gas powered vehicles keeping the accelerator floored means lower miles/gallon hence a shorter range). Offering a 100 mile range in a commercial electric motorcycle is quite an accomplishment. The compactness required for motorcycles doesn’t lend itself well to large battery packs, and range is largely a matter of stuffing enough kilowatt-hours onto the vehicle. It can be noted that the bike Lightning Motors is racing in the TTXGP is a production-intent prototype, with an 11 kwh battery pack, and its designer claims the numbers indicate a 100+ mile range which they’ve never tested because they’re having too much fun seeing how fast it will go.

The 100 mile range allows Brammo to claim the Empulse “promises no more range anxiety for Brammo customers.” Range anxiety in any vehicle is relative to where you’re going and the ubiquity of recharging infrastructure. Gasoline vehicle drivers have an illusion of infinite range because of ubiquitous gasoline stations. Give electric vehicles a similar ubiquitous infrastructure and EV owners would also believe they have infinite range. Last fall Brammo’s designer, Brian Wisman, did the Shocking Barack ride traveling from Detroit to Washington DC on his Enertia. The recharging issue was a major facet of that ride with a scramble to find power outlets every 35 miles. If one repeated that ride with the Empulse, one still would have to scramble for power outlets, just with a longer distance between scrambles. If ones motorcycle riding habits fit into a 100 mile range then the Empulse will be fine.

Recharging the Empulse is one of the details Brammo has not officially described. In discussion on an online forum Brian Wisman (Brammo’s designer) did discuss the numbers for recharging rate, and also indicate the onboard charger uses a standard 120 volt power cable. The Empulse 10.0 has a 10 kilowatt hour battery pack, and over normal 120 volt power outlets the effective charging rate is around 1 kilowatt-hour per hour. Thus the Empulse 10.0 would require around 10 hours for a complete recharge. He went on to drop a hint about a faster recharging rate on 240 volt circuits implying that Brammo will offer other recharging options than 120 volts. If they chose to use the J1772 connector designed for electric cars then an Empulse owner would be able to use the recharging networks being built for electric cars and get a much faster recharging rate.

A departure from Brammo’s past is the purchasing arrangement. In the past Brammo sold the Enertia primarily through Best Buy stores, and did not sell through any regular motorcycle dealership. Brammo plans to sell the Empulse not just through Best Buy, but also through select motorcycle dealers world-wide and through their own web site. It’s always been a bit of a head scratcher how motorcycle sales would fit in a consumer electronics store. Selling vehicles is a different buying relationship than selling refrigerators or stereo systems, even if the vehicle is electrically powered. It’s heartening to see Brammo beginning to sell through motorcycle dealerships, and one hopes they take lessons from the history of previous electric motorcycle companies (notably Vectrix).

The Empulse is clearly the result of having gone racing last year on the Isle of Man. At the time they claimed to have learned a lot from the race, but the timing was not right to roll those lessons into the Enertia. In May, during the TTXGP race at Infineon, a twitter exchange with CEO Craig Bramscher gleaned that while Brammo was not racing at Infineon, they do understand that racing amplifies R&D efforts, and that they would be at races later in the season, with a new bike. It's not surprising then that the Empulse unveilling is timed to coincide with the e-Power race at the Laguna Seca track this coming weekend.