Zongshen to mass produce electric cars for sale in the US?
 

With all the talk of futuristic 3 wheel commuter "Motorcycle" prototypes out lately such as Elio and Sondors, here is one that is actually for sale. It is a fully enclosed electric trike that can go on the highway. In California you can use hov lanes since it is somehow considered a motorcycle.

This arcticle says Electra Meccanica has an agreement with Zongshen to make 75,000 of these things by 2020. I would like an Elio but who knows if they will ever be produced.

https://electrek.co/2018/05/09/elect...iveries-in-us/

I could see me ripping the electricals out of that and stuffing a nice P-twin in there.

That could get me from Northridge to Palmdale Monday through Friday, but my employer would need to have a plug for me to 'top up'. I drive just under 100 miles round trip, and I would hate to run out of juice a few miles from home...

We've owned a few electrics.... In my experience a person should only buy one that has at least 150% of the range that they "need" . There will be the odd side trip, or colder day, or emergency reroute...or power outage that makes things tougher without the extra range.



The ability to use high speed charging stations will alleviate some of these issues, but they still take some time to access and recharge.



I've been waiting for Arcimoto to get into production for years. Pretty much given up. Supposedly starting to sell a few, but I have not seen any. https://www.arcimoto.com/

Chonda, the Arcimoto is definitely another one to keep an eye on. Lit Motors is interesting too because of its 2 wheel, self balancing design.

I do a ton of miles every day so the Elio design looks like it could work for me since it is gas powered and will supposedly have a 672 mile range. Like you said about Arcimoto, I am no longer holding my breath on any of these being mass produced.

https://www.eliomotors.com/features/#details

Evoke started a few years back on mychinamoto.com with one of the principals putting out a survey (they probably had some money and were going to go into production); a couple guys from Canada living in China. I even put them in touch with Excalibur Motorsports, but the Evoke bikes were way out of league wholesale price-wise for Excalibur to carry. They do mail order their bikes directly here from China, and have gotten a few good reviews on mainstream motorcycle magazine websites.
http://www.evokemotorcycles.com/

They are available and have been around a few years, but need a serious distributor here.

Those look like great local commuter bikes. Rode a Zero sport bike once- 0-60 in 3.0 seconds and man was it a rush. I immediately walked away as it would have cost me a grundle in speeding tickets. Hard to gauge your speed on them because they are so quiet.


I'm not sure I would bet my own cash that the 'Murican public will ever be attracted to the 3 wheeled vehicles in large numbers.

"We continue to see electric vehicles as a tremendous opportunity... They are suited to a generation of people that don’t have the mechanical depth of experience that maybe boomers had with manual transmissions and clutches.

Companies like Zero Motorcycles have already proven that demand exists for electric motorcycles among younger consumers. Even though Levatich’s view that Harley Davidson needs to start targeting customers that don’t have as much wrench turning experience might sound CONDESCENDING, it is true to a certain extent. Many current Harley Davidson riders grew up swapping carburetors and headers on the weekend, but future customers are much more likely to have spent their weekends swapping graphics cards and monitors. :D
Many of these customers don’t want to be checking oil and learning to feather a clutch. For the most part, they’re more interested in the benefits of the fun, simple, and easy to use experience that electric motorcycles can provide."

https://electrek.co/2018/04/27/harle...ycles-younger/