High-Performance $100,000 Electric Motorcycle Could Hit the California Sweet Spot

For a number of reasons, this is a match made in Heaven. Veteran EV powertrain company AC Propulsion (which built the BMW Mini E and made the car that became the Tesla Roadster) and the Progressive Insurance Auto X Prize-winning Swiss company Peraves will team up to make high-performance electric motorcycles for the California market. And they'll probably sell a bunch of them, too.

Peraves has been making high-tech motorcycles for 25 years. Its latest, the MonoTracer, is a 160-mph machine with a four-cylinder BMW engine. But it won $2.5 million in the tandem class at the X Prize with the X-Tracer, an enclosed electric two-wheeler that runs on four wheels at slower speeds. Peraves CEO Roger Riedener told he's already plowed every dime of that money back into the company, mostly for developing the production version of the electric motorcycle, which will be called the E-Tracer (the "X" was just for the Prize).

In some ways, the E-Tracer will be the two-wheeled version of the Tesla, combining some of the same advantages as a car (including weather protection) with the instant-on rush of a motorcycle. It has a pair of smaller auxiliary wheels that can turn it into a four-wheeler at lower speeds. The E-Tracer will do zero to 60 in five seconds, and hit 155 mph (without a speed governor, it would go over 200 mph). With a big 150-kilowatt motor and a 24 kilowatt-hour battery pack (larger than in some cars) it has an impressive range of 200 miles. It will run for three hours on the freeway.

The E-Tracer will match the Tesla in price, too, at around $100,000. Riedener says that producing the car/motorcycle fusion (it has a sunroof and the same interior space as the Tesla) at that price will be a challenge, since it has an extremely pricey but very strong hand-formed Kevlar body. The battery pack and motor won't be cheap either. But the E-Tracer's blistering performance justifies the high price, which can absorb the cost of the expensive components.

The E-Tracers will be built in Switzerland, then shipped to San Dimas, Calif., where AC Propulsion's Tom Gage will supervise installation of the electric drivetrain. International shipment was the bête noir of cars the Cadillac Allante, which used an extremely expensive "air bridge" between its Italian coachbuilder and Detroit. GM lost money on every one. But Riedener says he can pack eight E-Tracers in a 40-foot container and, anyway, California is their final destination: The E-Tracer will be sold only there.

That makes sense, too, because California will play host to probably half the U.S. EV sales in 2011, when the first E-Tracers are delivered. California has the perfect mix: Great weather for motorcycles, the best EV subsidies of any state, a pool of wealthy people who want the latest ultra-fast gadget, and a growing plug-in infrastructure. The Coda electric sedan will also initially be sold only in California.

"We offer thanks to Tesla for paving the market for us in California," Riedener said. "The state already has a mindset that high-performance electric vehicles don't come cheap. People there are open to new concepts."
At $100,000 a pop, Peraves doesn't need huge volumes to make a profit. That also parallels Tesla -- no, the Palo Alto-based automaker (1,300 sales to date) hasn't made a profit, but CEO Elon Musk says it would be making one if it wasn't plowing every spare dime into development of its four-door Model S sedan. One hundred E-Tracers a year would be a good volume.

Also possibly headed for production is the Edison2, a radical approach to the aerodynamic EV that was the mainstream $5 million winner of the X Prize.

All in all, I think the E-Tracer is the right idea at the right time. I'd certainly buy one, assuming I lived in California, was filthy rich, and already had a garage full of toys. As Kevin Bacon said when caught breaking windows in the film Diner, "It's a smile."