% ?Is Apple going to steal Alta-Motors' motorcycle employees like @ Mission-Motors? %
http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Alta-Motors-builds-a-hotter-motorcycle-powered-7218750.php Alta Motors builds a hotter motorcycle, powered by a plug March 30, 2016 David R. Baker [images / Connor Radnovich, The Chronicle http://ww1.hdnux.com/photos/45/06/44/9726212/5/920x920.jpg CEO Marc Fenigstein stands beside one of the electric motorcycles in the research and development area at Alta Motors in Brisbane http://ww2.hdnux.com/photos/45/06/44/9726265/5/768x768.jpg Engineer Brandon Dawson works on one of the electric motorcycles on the assembly line at Alta http://ww3.hdnux.com/photos/45/06/44/9726258/5/768x768.jpg Chad Redman puts a back tire on an Alta motorcycle. The Brisbane company, founded in 2010, plans to begin deliveries in the next three months http://ww2.hdnux.com/photos/45/06/44/9726209/5/920x1240.jpg Two Alta motorcycles in the research and development area of Alta Motors in Brisbane, California, on Wednesday, March 30, 2016 ] The half-built electric motorcycles lined up in Alta Motors’ [ http://www.altamotors.co/ ] small Brisbane assembly plant face a skeptical crowd. They were designed for speed, power and control — just like any serious bike. Two of them will compete this weekend in a race in San Jose [CA]. But motorcycle enthusiasts have been slow to embrace battery-powered bikes, something Alta CEO and co-founder Marc Fenigstein knows all too well. Electric cars have established a small but growing foothold in the mass market by appealing to eco-conscious drivers. Plug-in motorcycles have not. Alta aims to change that. “The way you do it is to have the humility to think about what matters most to (riders) — and it may not be the environment,” Fenigstein said, as engineers labored over two skeletal bikes nearby. “It’s their performance as a rider. Are they faster than they were a week ago? Faster than their buddies? If you can satisfy them there, the other considerations fall by the wayside.” The company, founded in a Potrero Hill [SF, CA] warehouse in 2010, plans to begin deliveries during the next three months (although one lucky couple received their motorcycle in December). Backed by $17.5 million in venture funding, Alta enters a marketplace that has already thwarted other startups. San Francisco’s Mission Motors, for example, went bankrupt last year. Oregon’s Brammo, another electric motorcycle pioneer, was purchased by Polaris Industries in May. Much like electric cars, early plug-in motorcycles offered underwhelming performance, said Paul Scott, co-founder of Plug In America, an electric-vehicle advocacy group. In recent years, however, the bikes have improved dramatically. Scott rides an electric motorcycle from Zero Motorcycles of Scotts Valley, one of the field’s few success stories. His bike can go from 0 to 60 mph in about 3 seconds while making almost no noise, he said. And yet, that same lack of noise turns off many motorcycle fans, Scott said. Somehow it doesn’t fit their idea of what a bike should be. “They equate loudness with power, and they want power,” he said. “And they like a lot of attention. They’re not likely to get on electric motorcycles at all, or if they do, it’ll be a long time from now.” Fenigstein himself didn’t think the business would work, when a colleague first offered to put him in touch with the men who would become Alta’s other co-founders, Derek Dorresteyn and Jeff Sand. Dorresteyn and Sand had been tinkering with the idea of an electric motocross bike. Fenigstein, who at the time was working at the Frog design and strategy firm in San Francisco, took a look at their work and changed his mind. “I’d gotten a couple assumptions wrong,” Fenigstein said. “To begin with, I’d never seen a beautiful electric motorcycle before.” The company started by designing two motorcycles — the RedShift MX and the RedShift SM [ http://www.altamotors.co/bikes/ ]— for very specific segments of the market. The MX is built for motocross racing, while the SM offers similar performance for street riding. Motocross races tend to be the same length — 30 minutes. The motorcycles used in those races occupy roughly the same weight range and offer the same amount of power. As a result, Alta could design a rechargeable battery pack to meet those requirements, rather than trying to build one for road trips or long commutes. The SM, which sells for $15,495, will get about 50 miles of range in city driving, less on the highway. [© 2016 Hearst] ... http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/02/alta-electric-motocross-bikes/ Meet the Silicon Valley company bringing electricity to motorcross [20160402] http://o.aolcdn.com/hss/storage/midas/f510b6a5abf345e126a036e1051cc045/203632252/Alta_hed-ed.jpg ... http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/template/NamlServlet.jtp?macro=search_page&node=413529&query=Alta+motorcycle&days=0 Alta motorcycle on evdl ... https://www.google.com/search?q=Mission+Motors+apple Apple kills Mission-Motors For EVLN EV-newswire posts use: http://evdl.org/evln/ {brucedp.150m.com} -- View this message in context: http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/EVLN-15-5k-Alta-Motors-hotter-e-motorcycles-r-50mi-tp4681373.html Sent from the Electric Vehicle Discussion List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Read EVAngel's EV News at http://evdl.org/evln/ Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
