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Hybridmomentspass
| | Posted on Friday, July 15, 2011 - 05:45 pm: | 
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Awesome, they are working on a $14k bike, thats wonderful news.
But to me its hard to say that this bike (1190) is based on a 14k streetbike when the 1190 came first.
The fact they have a bike on the way for under $15k is remarkable for their size of company/production.
Its one of those really good times for a fan of the Buell/Erik Buell brand. |
Jules
| | Posted on Friday, July 15, 2011 - 05:56 pm: |
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The fact they have a bike on the way for under $15k is remarkable
The conjecture that they might possibly have a $14k bike is interesting...
I can't see how that's possible without it being heavily based on an existing platform. If it is then there are other issues to overcome before it gets into production... |
Froggy
| | Posted on Friday, July 15, 2011 - 06:08 pm: |
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quote:I can't see how that's possible without it being heavily based on an existing platform
All ready does with the RS. Lose the expensive magnesium wheels, Ohins suspension, titanium valves and all the other exotic parts and you instantly cut the RS price in half. The hard part was getting the RS out the door, now that its done, they just need to water it down for mass production. Erik plans to release 3 new models, surely one of them is based on the RS. |
Fresnobuell
| | Posted on Friday, July 15, 2011 - 06:27 pm: |
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All ready does with the RS. Lose the expensive magnesium wheels, Ohins suspension, titanium valves and all the other exotic parts and you instantly cut the RS price in half.
I like the idea and in a couple years when it's time for a new bike, these will be on the market. I hope they go middle ground on the replacement components you mentioned--otherwise you will have something similar to the 1125R with a full fairing and front-facing radiator. |
Blake
| | Posted on Friday, July 15, 2011 - 07:02 pm: |
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Cost per unit for 100 is tough if you try to cover tooling and development (non-recurring engineering (NRE), testing, etc) for a new frame, a new swingarm, new engine parts, new fairing and other bodywork, new subframe, new wheels, new brakes, etc.
Cost per unit for tens of thousands or even just thousands for that exact same non-recurring portion is much, MUCH less.
It's funny how so many folks tend to figure the cost of a product as just the cost of the material components. The NRE is HUGE.
(Message edited by Blake on July 15, 2011) |
Hybridmomentspass
| | Posted on Friday, July 15, 2011 - 07:16 pm: |
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Blake - the NRE youre talking about, that just about using the same parts again and again (ie the airbox cover on all XBs)? Pretty much since they arent changing anything they arent adding much expense to the cost.
As far as price, I just see it harder and harder for people to price things at the low costs that we are use to (that our bikes were MSRPd for less than 13k), heck I was shocked to see in this months Sport Rider that the Kaw ZX6 is less than ten thousand dollars (MSRP), when the others in the category are at least 1400 bucks or so higher. |
Hybridmomentspass
| | Posted on Friday, July 15, 2011 - 07:18 pm: |
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wait, F it, I read it wrong, my bad on the NRE stuff. I got it reversed. That the INITIAL tooling was the cost, adn later the prices arent that bad cause its already setup to manufacture. |
Sprintst
| | Posted on Sunday, July 17, 2011 - 11:51 am: |
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thankfully tooling out of China is about 1/4 the cost of tooling in the USA, or less
(Message edited by sprintst on July 17, 2011) |
Kinder
| | Posted on Sunday, July 17, 2011 - 12:50 pm: |
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I think I will be a while before we see a 14k Erik Buell Racing bike. Costs are directly tied to manufacturing processes and production levels. Right now they don't have the facilities or dealer network for a full production bike. That's what the racing is for. To build up interest, exposure and investors.
As for the weight placement... I can understand not wanting to add it to wheels but what about lining lower body panels with weights?
(Message edited by kinder on July 17, 2011) |
Rpm4x4
| | Posted on Sunday, July 17, 2011 - 01:11 pm: |
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I think 14k is a bit wishful for such a small company. While I would love it I hope they dont ever sacrifice quality/reliability for a pricetag. I would rather pay more for quality. |
Xb9er
| | Posted on Sunday, July 17, 2011 - 02:54 pm: |
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mass production needs employee's and space. E.B.R. has little of both. Plans are to go into mass production and you will get your 14K motorcycles. Remember buell only had 200 employee's. How many does kawasaki have......thousands? |
Reepicheep
| | Posted on Monday, July 18, 2011 - 09:52 am: |
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For the record, I don't have any inside information... I made up the $14k number.
Anyone who watched the Craftsman Experience show knows Erik Buell Racing has their sites on production bikes, not just a one off exotic, so I'm just interpolating the line between the data points (guessing the real cost of the 1125R, guessing at the price of the new 1190 technology, thinking about what the market will bear).
My point was that it seems to be better for us as consumers if a manufacturer builds an amazing exotic with an eye towards using it for an amazing production bike. And the 1190 has all sorts of fingerprints of that approach all over it. Look at the wheels... if it was just going to be an exotic, they would have used normal off the shelf wheels of standard architecture but made of insanely light (and insanely expensive) material. Problem solved, if your goal is just an exotic.
But instead they reworked the architecture of the wheel to achieve the weight savings. So that when it gets translated to an affordable production bike, we still get weight reduction benefits.
I'm an architect in the IT field, so I recognized what they are doing almost immediately. It's what we do also.
When we build an exotic one off system, we built it one off exotic. Slap it together, fill the black hole with money, get what we want out of it and then leave it be. We would never build another, and likely never scale it out or scale it down.
But other systems, the important ones, we make sure they will run fine on my desktop for development, and run fine in production on a dozen blade servers. But if you look closely, see that the overall architecture and a million little features make it clear that it's built such that if the phone rings on a Monday, I can take my 12 server setup, and by Thursday, I can have it up and running on 1500 servers spread across 6 data centers on 3 continents.
Erik Buell Racing has created a "scalable performance architecture" all across the 1190. Lots of pieces that can have major reductions in cost, with only incremental reductions in performance. And things that when you do throw the exotic materials and techniques at them... will perform better then normal thinking with expensive materials could achieve. It's brilliant (IMHO). |
Crackhead
| | Posted on Monday, July 18, 2011 - 10:00 am: |
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Adding the weight down low is the wrong way for a race bike.
Adding the weight down low makes the bike more stable in a straight line but makes it harder to turn.
One of the better places to add weight would be where the rear cylinder is and about even with the top of the wheels. The weight would still lean in the turns to help with the pitch and wouldn't contribute as much to increasing the fore and aft roll.
I have rode bicycles with front and rear bags. The thing had amazing stability and is great for long hauls. But when I need to haul gear on tight mtb trails a triangle frame bag allows for better directional changes. |
Jens
| | Posted on Monday, July 18, 2011 - 11:34 am: |
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All the projects with bellypan "under engine" fuelcells, showed that the weight downtheme is not endless to push. They all had a very specific handling, at least unusual, most riders didnīt liked it at all. I see better points to fix the weight than under the subframe, but that works and have no other unwelcome influences on other parts / functions. So for the rollout I think there is nothing wrong with that. At the end a point in the center of the bike might be better, but thats also a questions of your front/rear weightbalance. Because extraballast is not only a pain it can be also a welcome tool to finetune your setup, but also to find out that, you need TRACKTIME. |
Blake
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 19, 2011 - 06:40 pm: |
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>>> I think I will be a while before we see a 14k Erik Buell Racing bike. Costs are directly tied to manufacturing processes and production levels.
Price is only related to cost in that you need to sell for more than cost in order to profit. Price is or should be determined by the value of a product, what folks will pay for it. Anyone who sets price based on cost isn't doing good business. Ask Harley-Davidson. |
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