Even though it’s been around for a few years, we’re just now taking a look at this beast above. Yes that’s an honest to goodness working motorcycle that you can ride on the street. Legally. It’ll either make you look like a tiny human from afar, or a gigantic douchenozzle from near. And since we’re a publication that cares about details, let us give you some about the Gunbus 410: it weighs 1,433 lbs., measures 11.3′ in length, has a saddle height of 2.6′, and the 2 cylinder V-type engine produces 710Nm at 1,900 RPM. If your metric is rusty, as ours is, that’s 510 ft/lbs in Imperial units. Yeah, that’s a lot of torques. Oh, and a reported 350 horses. And the 410 in the name? That’s for the displacement, coming in at a respectable 410 cubic inches; motorcycle aficionados will want to translate this into familiar terms so that’s 6,728cc. That’s right.
The Gunbus 410 is made by a German company called Leonheart Manufacturing and if you’ve been smitten by its gargantuan proportions, you can own one for the princely sum of about $350,000.
[ Product Page ] VIA [ DudeIWantThat ]
With Tesla paving the way, the reputation of electric vehicles as tree-hugging, wheeled road turtles is slowly fading away. The Mission RS from Mission Motorcycles is breaking ground in terms of performance. With an electric motor that’s one tenth the size of a standard motorcycle combustion engine, the RS packs 160hp and 120 ft/lbs of torque starting from 0 rpm. This can propel this crotch rocket to 60mph in 3 seconds, cover the quarter mile in a blistering 10.492 seconds, on its way to a top speed of 150mph. The bike is so fast that “Piloted by Steve Rapp, the Mission RS dominated the 2011 FIM/TTXGP at Laguna Seca, finishing the 8 lap race 39.9 seconds ahead of the second-place finisher. Rapp’s qualifying lap time of 1:31.3 broke all previous electric vehicle records at Laguna Seca.” All this with zero emissions, barely any engine noise and a real world range of about 140 miles. You won’t go cross country with this beast, but at least you’ll care about the environment without sacrificing any performance. You will sacrifice one thing however, and that’s money. The Mission RS is limited in production to 40 vehicles, and costs $75,000. Its almost-as-performing and much less rarified sibling, the Mission R, “only” costs $30,000 to $40,000, however.
[ Product Page ]
Without brake lights, motor vehicles would be pretty dangerous; simply watching that hunk of metal in front of you getting bigger isn’t going to cut it, ever. But standard lights are also not 100% perfect. For instance when you slow down through either engine brake or downshifting, nothing lights up. And there’s rarely a way to tell whether you’ve just tapped the brakes or are mashing them with all your might. The VoloLights solve both those issues by including a 3-axis accelerometer. Sadly for motorcycles only, these LED lights will blink any time you’re slowing down, whether it’s through pressing the brake lever, through downshifting or even engine braking. What’s more, they’ll blink more rapidly in proportion to how fast you’re scrubbing speed. The system is embedded into a license plate holder that also has plate illumination so you can remain street legal. At $79 as a Kickstarter pledge, it’s a pretty affordable way to add yet another layer of safety to your ride.
[ Project Page ]
You could argue that anyone can ride a Vespa-type of moped, but there is a strong contingent that will find it rather emasculating. There’s something about traditional mopeds that only teenagers and girls can get away with, and please don’t shower us with complaints; we’re just stating a known fact about a particular demographic. And yet not everyone that would want to ride a “grown-up” bike has the time, money or inclination to really do so. The 2014 Honda Grom appears to possibly bridge the gap between the two. While it’s definitely still a moped, the 125cc motorcycle seems to have enough muscle to please the manly man (or rather the manly 20 something), while still not entering the territory of higher-priced, higher insuranced, higher consuming, full-fledged motor bikes. Starting at only $3,000, you can use the Grom to go to college without spending half your tuition money on real-bike costs and without running as much of a chance of meeting a ditch at high speed.
[ Product Page ] VIA [ Werd ]
This is one badass looking helmet. Based on a regular helmet structure (and thus, safe), Russian-based NLO Moto sculpts with fiberglass, carbon fiber and polycarbonate a crazy looking helmet reminiscent of the Predator. It’s complete with a dreadlock mullet and a tri-laser LED light, which can be upgraded to become a (possibly illegal) actual tri-laser. Other upgrades include carbon spearheads that attach at the tip of the dreadlocks, and “top level airbrushing”. Keep in mind that this is all on top of the base price, which stands at a hefty $780. That’s a lot of money to spend on a motorcycle helmet, so here’s hoping your ride is equally impressive.
[ NLO Moto ] VIA [ GeekAlerts ]
This is a life-size motorcycle made out of candy. It’s reminds me of The Candy Bike we saw a while back, but this one’s got a motor. No, no it doesn’t actually. But it looks like a motorcyle so… totally different? The sugary moto was made by Artist Christiam Ramos who used 20,000 candies to complete the whole thing. That… is a lot of candy. Like, a one way ticket to diabetes. Never look back! The only thing that would make this thing sweeter (!!!) is if it had a sidecar. Not just because that means EVEN MORE CANDY but also because a sidecar means you can tote someone along to share in the enivtable candy-binge to come. Jk jk, it’s totally because that means even more candy.
While we’re over here playing with our R2-D2 watches Geekoligie reader Morgan was busy converting his Vespa into an awesome R2-D2-mobile. He converted the bike himself using adhesive vinyl and presumably lots of patience. But the Vespa itself isn’t the only thing rocking Star Wars style—Morgan also jazzed up the trunk on the back with cool vintage style Star Wars travel stickers. (Who knew you could get to Dagobah on a Vespa?) Morgan says he gets a lot of looks while riding it… and I really hope it’s because he’s also dressed like C3PO at the time.
Check out Morgan’s Photobucket page for more photos of the Artoo Vespa.
For this year’s Progressive International Motorcycle Show, i.d.e.a. branding and advertising agency turned models into motorcycles. NO, they’re not magicians — they hired artist Trina Merry to paint the bodies of yoga gurus (aka flexy people) to look like a sport bike, a dirt bike, and a cruiser. I know, a little disappointing to learn that no magic was involved, but still, the finished result is pretty impressive nonetheless. What’s not impressive intheleast is this 6-pack I tried to airbrush onto my gut. I did a bad job!
The failing weather reminds us we're fast approaching the end of another year, but Zero Motorcycles wants to brighten our day with the announcement of its 2013 all-electric line-up. Immediately noticeable are the harder lines and healthy dose of matt black on the frames of the Zero S, DS, XU and MX refreshes. New to the team is the FX "Stealth Fighter" (pictured above), touting the fastest acceleration of any Zero moto to date and taking design cues from the late Zero X, which has been removed from the roster. As well as aesthetic improvements to the bikes, each Z-Force motor should produce up to 125% more power than previous iterations, and an optional CHAdeMO charging accessory will juice you up in around an hour. Companion iPhone and Android apps will also be available, allowing you to customize your ride's performance and review other info. The class of 2013 will be hitting retailers throughout January and February, with MSRPs of the basic spec models running from $7,995 to $13,995, depending on your wants and needs. Head over to the source link to review your hardware options and, more importantly, choose your color scheme.
Filed under: Transportation
Zero Motorcycles reveals its 2013 models: Zero X dropped, FX drafted in originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Oct 2012 19:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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