Definitely agree on the recycling. Carbon fibre is a whole can of worms there.
Definitely agree on the recycling. Carbon fibre is a whole can of worms there.
In general, agree with your explanation here, but would disagree on the repairability point. Lots of carbon repair shops will repair carbon parts. Often just needs paint sanded off and additional carbon bonded on. Generally doesn’t bend and deform like metal parts, so the cracked bit can just be cut out and reinforced.
On the other hand the aluminum alloys a lot of car parts and bikes are being made of end up quite difficult to weld and re-heat-treat in practice, so no easier than carbon.
In the PinkBike video, they mentioned that the full-face helmets didn’t perform as well in at least the rotational impact tests due to their higher mass and moment of angular momentum.
I think it always ends up being a bit of a trade-off, depending on the types of riding and impacts expected. In a low-speed impact to the side of the head a regular bicycle helmet will often do better than a big heavy motorcycle one. Obviously the opposite is true for a motorcycle crash at 80 km/h.
The range and charging leave a lot to be desired for many applications, but the bikes themselves seem to be quite nice.
My concern is that finding chargers will be even more difficult than it already is since I don’t think there is any DC charging support. So none of the side-of-the-highway EV charging stations will work, and you’ll specifically have to seek out a level 2 charger next to a coffee shop or something. Just makes any travel longer than the ~130 km range even more hopeless.
If I didn’t already commute everywhere locally by bike, I would definitely consider something like this though.