The Arsenale’s latest offering is the Plan B: a lighweight, ultra-long-range, 2WD, low-power, hybrid gas/electric bike for wet, slippery, snowy or sandy conditions. With two failed indiegogo campaigns behind it as the 2X2 Ultrabike, it has reemerged at The Arsenale, a high end boutique for unique transportation solutions in Dubai.
It’s still one of the best ideas we’ve seen, but it ain’t perfect and it now costs more than the original US$2,000 … a lot more … coming in at $15,000.
Just the same, we’re in agreement with The Arsenale that this idea is too good to die, and we feel certain that if the Plan B’s unique virtues become widely known, the machine will be further refined and become even more useful, and hopefully a little more affordable.
You might also like to have a look at the original Indiegogo pitch.
The Arsenale certainly knows how to promote its wares, and the Plan B name captures the spirit of the machine.
If you want something that will take you into, out of or across a couple of hundred miles of wilderness, this bike might be a contender if it were finished to production quality, but it really doesn't look like it is.
If I had to choose from any existing commercial vehicle to get me across say 200 miles of wilderness without outside assistance, I’d go for a Rokon, a specialist manufacturer of 200cc all terrain motorcycles since 1957. That’s the one I’d stake my life on getting me there, and I'd choose the Rokon MotoTractor for the job. The Mototractor is well optioned at $10,250 and I'd warrant it could be rolled out of the showroom and accomplish the feat with no modifications.
The Plan B has the potential to go much further in the wilderness than the Rokon though, because it is much lighter and built to travel at an even more pedestrian pace. It’s an ebike with an ingenious design and the potential to use as little gasoline and/or energy as possible.
The faster you go, the more energy you use.
To double the speed of a car or motorcycle, you need roughly four times the horsepower. The corollary of this is that if you halve the speed, you only need a quarter the power, so you can go much further on a given amount of gas … OR … you don’t need to carry as much fuel to get there, which makes everything's job easier.
Getting back to why I wouldn’t be choosing the existing Plan B to get me through bear country, while the Plan B is one of the most convincing proofs-of-concept I’ve seen, there’s plenty of obvious development work still to go.
I sent the pics to an old motorcycle testing buddy (we tested dirt bikes together for several magazines) to see what he’d say.
First response: “Those wires hanging out are a worrying sign that someone doesn't know what they're doing. You wouldn’t get out of the car park before they snagged on something.”
Then I told him about the fuel in the wheels that can be used for a portable generator to charge the onboard batteries for long-range trips. “It’d turn like an oil tanker, and I'm not sure those tires would last long in anything but snow.”
By this stage we were looking at the web page, and he was developing some rhythm in his scorn. "'The most capable cross-country electric vehicle on the planet' is a bit of a stretch isn't it? Doesn't America have consumer protection laws?"
Then he found the horsepower figures (1 kW at each end): “They’ve taken all the fun out of a motorcycle and that’s all that's left, and if it can do what they claim it can do, I'd be very surprised. You couldn't ride that thing out of sight on a dark night.”
So we moved on. The expectation might be that if you've taken a $2,400 product from Indiegogo and put a $15,000 price tag on it to sell to preppers, hunters, rangers ad infinitum, you would be knowledgeable enough to make it fit for purpose and, well, it certainly doesn't look like something I'd trust my life with.
I’m still not convinced it’s not a killer idea though, with enough latent demand to make a robust marketplace once it is refined and proven to be ruggedized enough to be useful should a real "Plan B" situation arise.
Like my function-over-form friend, I too have reservations about putting all that unsprung weight in the wheel that steers the bike, and it would definitely be a pig to turn at any speed. Then there's the fascinating topic of how you think the bike will handle differently as the in-wheel fuel tanks diminish and the fuel begins sloshing around.
All that, and there’s plenty of room around the center of mass of the motorcycle to store some gas, so why go to all that trouble when it will make the bike more difficult to steer and ride and puts your fuel in such a vulnerable position.
The idea that a hybrid ebike/motorcycle can offer an ultra-long-range conveyance for people to get around in the wilderness is a promise worth pursuing. In driving both of those balloon tires, the bike should theoretically be capable of going anywhere ... but I've tried to find information about the tires and there is no detail to work with.
Dunlop, Continental, Metzler, Bridgestone, Pirelli et al have been making tires forever, continually improving their grip and reliability and resilience and the trust we place in them is not misguided. It should be noted that all those tires still get an occasional puncture because riders run them at low pressure for the extra grip. Trusting a no-name "low pressure tire" that looks like it came from a craft shop is also a step too far.
This is a fabulous idea that could be a fabulous product if it had some development.
At $15,000 in its current form, caveat emptor!
Source: The Arsenale