Last August, Indian mobility company Ola Electric announced its upcoming lineup of full-size electric motorcycles. The firm has now provided specs for one family of the bikes, the Roadsters, which boast a range of up to 579 km (360 miles) and a top speed of 194 km/h (121 mph).
All of these “features” seem more like nightmares to me. Like, brake-by-wire? Throttle-by-wire is already a pain in the ass to modulate correctly compared to a more typical set of throttle cables, and now I have to hope that the computer gets it right without tactile feedback? A motorcycle that modulates my braking for me, including while I’m in a corner? Uh… No thank you; I’ve practiced trail braking, and I have no desire for my bike to make an executive decision that I’m braking too much going into a corner. I don’t know too many people that have ride modes on their bikes that don’t just set them to ‘race’ or ‘track’ and leave them there. Touchscreen and wifi on a motorcycle? Really? The range might be accurate, but ‘eco’ mode is going to translate to about 20mph.
This sounds like hot trash, and at those prices likely very badly engineered and manufactured, especially given that a decent bicycle–the human powered kind–costs more than the mid-tier model.