Something we emoto riders don't think about too much is that we're using a chemical energy storage system (battery) with a finite lifespan. I'm 52 and I've been riding gas dirt bikes my whole life so moving to electric had me thinking as I was just hitting some sweet single track here on the Wasatch front of Utah. With a gas bike, you are essentially paying some $ amount (think gas and maintenance) every time you ride. Sure, your dirt bike may only have a 1.5 gallon tank, but you have to fill it before you ride, and that's going to cost you $5-$8 depending on where you live and how expensive gas is. With an emoto, you don't really think about the cost to charge it up (although that is a real cost as well, even if small). You just wait until the fan turns off on the wonderful Talaria charger, you check for full bars on the charge indicator, and off you go...braap! However, we must all remember that our battery packs are 100% going to die one day. It may be a slow fade, but eventually, that battery pack isn't going to hold as much charge as it once did and we'll have to start looking for a replacement. Now, I'm not pointing any fingers, but I just wonder how sustainable it is to sell a $4k ebike and charge almost $2k for a new battery. The model here seems to point towards these manufacturers just wanting us to buy a new bike after the 3-5 (or more) years that the battery pack will last. That sounds a lot like some "unnamed" electric car manufacturers...but that's another discussion...
Anyway, there is something you can do to prepare yourself for the inevitable cost of getting a new emoto or ebike battery. If you put a $20 bill into a jar every time you ride, you'll only need to ride 80 times to have enough in that jar to buy a new Talaria battery, which at the time of this writing is somewhere in the neighborhood of $1600 USD. I'm not sure who would actually do this as it would take a lot of discipline to not rob a few $20's from the jar now and then for pizza. Most of us will probably just bite the bullet and either upgrade our battery pack and controller when the original battery dies, or we'll get a new bike.
Fortunately, here at BraapZap, we're looking for a sustainable solution to rebuilding Talaria battery packs at a fair price so we can keep these wonderful machines on the trail! Reach out if you have a dead pack or keep us in mind when it's time for you to get your pack rebuilt. We'd love to help put some zap back in your Braap!
Keep riding!
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