would you buy an Electric motorcycle kit.

[Ryland]

That enertrac motor is just the motor and a rim, no rear brake, no controller, if I were to buy one of those I would budget $3,000-4,000 for the bike as it's going to require a $600 controller, a disk for the brake, a caliper for the brake, an adapter to give the caliper the right alinement to the disk, that is alot of parts to make, that is a big pile of custom made parts just so you can use a new motor, I like to reuse things, just like the people who are putting forklift motors in Geo Metros, only there are a wide range of forklifts out there with a wide range of motors, golf carts use a pretty standard bolt pattern motor.
I've also worked at a motorcycle shop and have seen some common problems in each brand and model of motorcycle, most have to do with the fact that they tend to sit over the winter, the motorcycle I'm using has this issue where after 30 years it's water pump tends to corrode enough that it leaks on the alternator, to fix either of these you have to pull the engine, to hire someone to make this repair is above the value of the bike in most cases, so craigslist searching it's appearing that this is a common non-running motorcycle.
So you have a common motor that doesn't tend to wear out or have any issues but is lacking a support bearing on the drive end of it so it can't just be bolted on to a project, thus it's really cheap to buy used and a common enough style of motor that you can buy them used in a wide range of voltages 36v 48v 72v you can even get them as three phase brush-less.
Then you have a motorcycle who's engine is complex and hard to work on that when it has an issue it tends to sit, I put an ad on craigslist looking to buy one for $200, someone called me up and only wanted $100 because the engine didn't run, someone else has one that is in great shape but also has a bad engine but they want the full $200.
If you want to try to do something in the same way with a hub motor I say go for it, I have a hub motor on my bicycle that can handle 45mph and I would not want that much unsprung weight.

Originally Posted by chaster

If you're going to offer a kit to convert motorcycles, it needs to fit as many different motorcycles as possible and make the conversion as easy as possible. The best way to do that (IMHO) is to offer a hub motor, like enertrac does:

[chaster]

"If you want to try to do something in the same way with a hub motor I say go for it, I have a hub motor on my bicycle that can handle 45mph and I would not want that much unsprung weight."

You asked for input, so I just gave some input. <shrug> I have zero interest in making or marketing an electric motorcycle kit myself.

Good luck with the project.

Eric

[Ryland]

I think I'm done with asking for input on this project as I've had enough people show interest in an electric motorcycle of this type that I'm not even going to need to go out side of my local area to find people to help me work the bugs out, so far I'm well within my $1,500 budget altho that is most likely going to be using lead acid batteries rather then lithium.