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Just a few months since its first motorcycle, the Redshift, became available to the US market, Alta Motors is set to roll out a new concept model. Inspired by flat track machines, the Street Tracker is conceived as a road-legal battery-powered motorcycle built around the Redshift platform.
Californian startup Alta Motors spent six years setting up a production facility, organizing a dealer network, and developing its first model from the ground up ahead of its market launch in 2016. The Redshift is a lightweight electric off-road motorcycle available in a motocross (MX) and a street-legal supermoto (SM) version.
The American company builds the motorcycle's engine, frame and battery cases in-house, as well as all the electronic gear tasked with controlling the motor's 40 hp (29.8 kW) power and 122 lb-ft (165 Nm) torque output. These are complemented by equipment outsourced from industry leading brands, like WP suspensions and Brembo brakes.
Is there a market for silent motorcycles?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 09 2017, @04:10PM (1 child)
Silent motorcycles are extremely dangerous. I'm not one of those loud pipes save lives morons, but a more or less completely silent bike is even more likely to be unnoticed than a normal bike. Not to mention, the fact that it means that blind people and other pedestrians don't have the sound available to help judge the distance.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Sunday April 09 2017, @05:48PM
There is zero evidence that is true. It doesn't make a lot of sense either. You have a driver ensconced in a sound dampened interior approaching a motorcycle. The exhaust and majority of the noise from that motorcycle is direct rearward in a direction away from the approaching vehicle. The only people the noise alerts are those behind the motorcycle or outside of cars, and it alerts them you are an asshole. I say this as a motorcycle rider.
https://motorbikewriter.com/challenging-loud-motorcycle-pipes-theory/ [motorbikewriter.com]