Is electric the future?
By TMX Archives on 25th Mar 10
KTM deliver an electric shock while over in Wales Gareth Hockey delivers a shock of his own...
IS the future electric?
With just a little luck, opposite this page you should be able to see a picture or two of KTM's latest baby, the Freeride, or Zero Emissions motorcycle. The luck is called for because T+MX is being assembled this week on an entirely new editorial system, so given that Sod's Law will apply, which states that ‘anything that can go wrong will go wrong,' there may well be a picture of a monkey, or possibly no picture at all. If that is the case I apologise in advance. And if there are indeed pictures of an electric KTM – then I knew it would be fine all along!
Back to the bike. Zero emissions is of course artistic interpretation, a teeny distortion of the truth which is played for all it is worth by anyone and everyone with a vested interest in the ‘environment' or ‘climate change' or whatever green issue floats their boat.
It may well be zero emission at the point of use but in the great scheme of life there is no such thing. Even assuming that the primary power source is a windmill or hydro-electric or whatever is actually almost irrelevant, there's a whole host of other things to take into consideration. Like the actual environmental cost of mining the raw materials and turning them into batteries! If you want to know some of the answers to that I suggest you go online and give Google a workout! I have done and believe me it would fill a book.
Whatever, governments worldwide just love to be seen as being ‘green' as it allows them to jack taxes up while telling us it is for our own good. Companies in turn queue-up for grants which are doled-out for so-called ‘green' projects. I don't blame them – I would too!
Leaving all such arguments (and there are many) aside there are actually some genuine good points in favour of the electric bike. The blindingly obvious one is that it is silent, which of course means that it can be used in urban environments which would be a total no-no for a conventional machine. It opens up no end of possibilities for new facilities whether it is just for fun, or actual racing. The cost is actually one of the biggest drawbacks, with KTM claiming that they are hoping to keep the price under 10,000 euros. Let's say £9,000 – that's still a hell of a lot of moolah for an electric bike and it isn't something that you are going to buy just for a bit of fun. It's hard to get your head around such a price for something that looks so simple. But whatever, there's nothing I can do about that. KTM know the figures and they are what they are.
The only certainty is that, for all its good points, the electric bike will never replace the combustion engine for competitive sport. Admit it, half the reason we love bikes is the noise and smell. We are even split down the middle with many of us revelling in the ring-ding of two-strokes or the thump and roar of four-strokes. Does anyone think that the whine of an electric motor – could ever replace the thunderous roar of a full line-up of competition bikes leaving the start-gate? Perish the thought...
ON page 2 this week comes news that the 2010 British MXGP has been cancelled. To say that our Grand Prix has had a troubled time of late is to tell the truth. Again, the why's and wherefore's would fill a book. It's common practice for us, the public, to blame Youthstream for charging promoters so much for the privilege of staging a GP but the REAL villains are actually the FIM for grabbing the Youthstream cash (yes, they pay the FIM for taking the organising of GPs off their hands) and then letting them get on with it.
The person who cops the real flack from the public, us, is of course Gareth Hockey, whose company RHL has promoted the GP in recent times. Gareth is the first to admit that he promotes the GP against all logic. He KNOWS that the figures don't stack-up yet he loves the sport so much that he just can't resist getting stuck-in and giving it a go. The potential losses are truly HUGE yet he ploughs-on knowing that every clever-clogs in the country is busy spouting about what he is doing wrong and that he should do this, that and the other.
Just finding a venue that ticks all the Youthstream boxes is a job in itself.
Mallory Park may not have been ideal yet it actually fulfilled most of the criteria admirably. But those all important figures just didn't add-up. So Gareth set about approaching the problem from a different direction and headed into his native Wales – where at Government level they actually show some interest in motorcycle sport. The short version is that he lighted on a venue – Chepstow race course – that looked good on paper – but alas we'll never know whether it would have worked in practise...