Hungarians make goulash of Enertia

The world is flat. And it’s shrinking. You might, for instance, see a video on YouTube posted from another country with people speaking a foreign language, but something familiar catches your eye.

For example, here’s a video of a couple guys at the Brammo booth from the EICMA motorcycle show in Milan, Italy last Autumn.  You don’t have to speak their language to know that they are mightily impressed with the Enertia.

Thank goodness there are generous people in this crazy mixed-up world who like to help out a non-Hungarian speaker with a rough translation of the review.

(Warning – not for the faint-of-heart-Brammo-fans)

Don’t be rattled by people’s shock about electric motorcycles — though looking at this design (points at the Enertia) I am not surprised.  Nowadays everyone wants to build alternative energy vehicles, which for now means batteries. Can’t imagine what the designer was thinking when he decided that it should look like this.

I warned you.  It gets worse.

That’s not even the worst of it — listen: 95kph top speed which even a (unintelligible) can pass; 128km range — two round trips in town then you can plug it in to charge and take a taxi to your destination.  And the price — 8600 Euro — what idiot would pay more than 2.5 million (forints) for this?  If there is such a person anywhere that was willing to buy one of these, let us know, I swear we’ll pay them for a spin on this.

But  why does a motrcycle have to look like this?  Suppose when much smaller batteries are developed, the shape of the chassis will change…  (pans camera to two girls roller skating by — Hello, now that’s the kind of alternative transportation I could stand — tie them to a sled, they would pull and I would crack my whip — giddyup!).

(pan back to the bike):  They kept the chassis simple and tried to figure out how to maintain the motorcycle look while fitting numerous batteries in there.  This is why this technology is in its infancy — so much crap needs to go in there, that a motor block is around 50kg.  This battery mass is a lot.  It’s true that the gyroscopic effects of a gas motor are no longer present, so pushing the bike into a turn may be easier, but there is a lot of room for advancements.  This is why the traditional ice bike makers do not need to shake in their boots — even twenty years from now there’ll be a need for ice machines.  I support the effort — hooray, work on it, but not in such a disgusting form — it makes me want to puke.

Look at the photos.  What a production floor.  These guys are dead serious about this.  That someone is actually going to buy this.  2.5 million+ (forints)…

The American flag on top of the pole tells us that these guys are from the other side of the ocean.  Regardless an Italian word comes to mind that I would use to describe this: “un-do-ri-to”  ( actually an Italian-sounding Hungarian word, means disgusting).

It gets better . . . slightly.

(standing by the Empulse).  Moments ago I gave this brand a one star rating,  but now I’ll change it to just below a three, since this bike looks much more like a bike, though what they messed up here is that the batteries are visible.  The reason it’s below 3, not above, is that the girls at the booth keep running away from the camera — they look like crap and refuse to be on camera — then why are they here?

Standing by the 2009 race bike — the value of the brand is increasing in my eyes, now that I see they built a race bike as well — they now have my 3 star+ rating.

Okay, so it ends on an “up” note.  Plus, it gives me an excuse to post one of my favorite pictures from the EICMA show:

Ciao, le Brammo Ragazze