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It's a lot more than that.
There is a hugely damaging to motorsport, woke ideological element to electrification.
So if the Varg is more fun and sells more than an ICE bike than why would anyone be upset?
or
If the Varg is less fun and sells less than an ICE bike than the people upset are the early owners. So why are the ICE loyalists upset?
Let me help you out here, bud. You see, in moto, you're not allowed to have NEW, UNPROVEN, fun, you can only have OLD, ESTABLISHED, fun. Old, established, fun involves shackling your happiness to certain noises and smells and to manufacturers who make their bikes in certain colors so we know which is which and don't get confused and become sad. There are RULES, you see, and someone is trying to break them.
If this attempt at offering us new, unproven, fun isn't stopped, we could end up not understanding why it's bad, and that would be awful. It just cannot be allowed to happen, and if you think it should, well then, you're just an immature insecure child prone to melt-down rants about Brittney Spears.
I would know, as that's exactly what happened to me. But I'm all better now.
BAN ALL NEW UNPROVEN FUN, DAMMIT!!!!!
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Have any other states besides California implemented any programs specific to offroad motorcycle emissions?
That’s funny cause all the Chinese bikes are knockoff ktm/husky plastics. This bike is actually there own design.
lot of people in here clearly feel like they are threatened by the stark.
Woke ideology .. how wonderfully provincial ! Thank you.
Guess it's a safe wager that E-Moto bikes will not be available in Florida then ?
Traxxis R/C car sales are 95% electric & 5% nitro, a transformation that began over twenty years ago.
The R/C hobby is more popular & accessible than it's ever been, although it's doubtful that the average nine year old playing with one is factoring for the culture war du jour of the month - they just wanna go fast.
When four strokes came along - nobody wanted that, then Doug Henry won a race & the changeover began, a changeover based solely on performance on the track. ( manipulated displacement rules notwithstanding )
The history of the world is one of conquest.
.
I'm not a hater. I believe the more options we have the better. I was just stating an opinion that I'm not a fan of the look.
The opinion is still out for me on the Stark and it's production delays, but in what world does someone put stock in "rave reviews" by the press? What motivation does any reviewer have to give anything but a rave review. This is access journalism we're talking about, a publication/journalist is not going to be critical and effectively lock themselves out of what may be the biggest moto story of the decade, regardless of what happens when the dust settles.
After reading many articles about the press ride, this sounds no different than how things are handled in the car world. If you'd like to see how some OEMs game press drives, this is a good introduction.
I have one on order...of course, I'll be watching real world reviews with great interest. Also not selling my other bikes (two strokes and four strokes) anytime soon. A hunter needs many arrows in his quiver...why limit ourselves to just one? Oh, and this thread is odd...people find reasons to argue about virtually anything I guess...
That is all....
Some of the rave reviews came from guys who, in their "day jobs," are sponsored riders of other brands whose bikes were there and were ridden by them back-to-back. In one instance, a pro who rides a Husky for a living was told he was several seconds faster per lap on the Stark, and his pained response of "I was? Oh." is, to say the least, illuminating.
Do yourself a favor and watch the videos that begin this thread before you comment. Put in the time before you grab a brick and mindlessly chuck it, because otherwise, you'll look as silly as some of the other mindless brick-chucking Varg haters on here do.
It was foolish to assume that I haven't watched the videos posted here and elsewhere. I've followed this saga closely.
Every time someone posts in this thread, you seem to spend time picking apart small details of their statements if they are not 100% in line with your own belief. I'm sorry that benign comments regarding integrity with regards to access journalism seem to upset you so much. None of what I posted is an indictment of Stark or its product, only the cozy relationship between the press and OEMs. I've even illustraded how this is a problem not unique to motorcycles, but one that is VERY common in the automotive PR space, one that I have years of experience in.
I think that some of the reasons people do not like the looks are because it is pretty clean with little graphic's on it. If you strip off the graphics and have a solid color of most bikes they all have a way different look. With a more common graphic style on it , it starts to look like a Gasgas with a Yamaha front . There are people who dislike the looks of the Yamaha's but that doesn't make Tomac any slower on them. Looks are subjective. Stark has said they did not want their bike to look like a toy like so many motorcycles do. So they are trying to make it look different. Anytime you have something different, You'll get people that don't like it at first, but then warm up to it.
I really like what they are trying to do. the 3 colors they offer it in. Who knows , maybe they start to offer a few different bodywork styles in a few years too.
And nonmatter how you feel about the Varg , if its pretty close to being able to do what they claim ,it will improve other bikes too. If it is dramatically better than all of the current gas bikes, then after it comes out all of the other brands will be working on making their bikes better. The suspension and chassis advances that came on 4 strokes have trickled into some of the 2 strokes now with the KTM brands. The ergonomics developed on 4 strokes , handlebars, levers, tires, wheels, etc. They have all made 2 strokes better too. So an Electric bike that is better than gas , will help make the gas bikes better. And if its worse , all of the electric haters can say how they all told us so. I hope that the Varg is everything that they are saying it is. I'm sure it will have some issues just like any mechanical device ,nothing is perfect. So it may over deliver in some areas and under deliver in others. I can understand some of the doubt, but there is always a first . Will the Varg be the first electric dirt bike that sparks the electric erra in MX , or will it be the mark of another error of electric? Time will tell
If you watched the reviews, then what was your point? That we cannot trust the test riders positive reviews because car reviewers aren't credible? Uhhh, are movie critics credible? How about people who test air conditioners? Boats? Coffee pots?
You're making my point, as your critique sounds like you're looking for any flimsy reason to cast doubt on the Varg, and that is something I have come to find less that productive here, because you anti-Vargers keep beating the same dead horse with the same worn-out broken-down beat-to-crap stick.
What I'd love to see here instead, is for some of you to IMAGINE THE GOOD THAT CAN COME FROM THIS. Not whine about the plastics, not bitch about the potential corruption of the media critics, not grumble about the lack of an exhaust note - NO NO NO - but to imagine the good, for it is prodigious. And worth giving a f***k about.
And with that, I am GONE.
Good find.
The Stark soft ride impression day was even more closely managed.
There were no tests of any kind run, no hard questions asked by the journalists about any of the dozens of obvious issues that afflict ambitious techy-type start ups and a really onerous publication embargo.
Presumably the bribe of a Spanish holiday buys their compliance and silence.
The point was that I would not put much stock in what is effectively thinly-veiled advertising that occured in a tightly-controlled environment. I'm not sure why you did not understand this the first two times that I said it.
When production units get in the hands of retail customers, that is when the world will know whether the stark is this generation's CR250 Elsinore or Cannondale. There are valid criticisms in this thread that you simply chose to overlook and/or attempt to shout over via your long-winded rants.
Okay.
What happened to being "GONE"?
Pit Row
The self-importance is too strong with that one.
The lack of understanding is a result of the contradictory example provided ; Ferrari didn't provide four competing manufacturers current machines to compare to theirs back-to-back on the same day, they just massaged the car to optimize performance on a given track.
Stark did provide the competition's machines.
KTM, Yamaha, Gas Gas, Husky & Kawasaki's current 450's were on site & ready to ride, in fact Stark pretty much insisted the testers also ride the gas bikes ... as part of that 'tightly controlled' media event / test.
No MX bike manufacturer ( or auto maker ? ) has ever done such a thing.
So all context evaporates when the very thing meant to underline a statement isn't remotely applicable & thus the stated premise fails to meet the threshold of 'valid criticisms' much less a cogent point.
The Elsinore / Cannondale analogy IS potentially valid though & a pretty good one, time will tell buckaroo's.
Particularly interested in the outcome when Varg gets dropped hard in some rocks & that battery case meets a hard, pointy object. .. what rhymes with ; 'chemical fire' ?
The link I provided illustrated one example of how OEMs manipulate testing/reviews and how the journalists look the other way. This wasn't explicitly a "Ferrari does X, so Stark is probably full of it too" type of thing.
I'm also slightly confused in you implying that these press rides are anything but thightly controlled. If a manufacturer provides the bikes, sends engineers to "mind" the bikes, dictates where you ride and for how long, and provides you materials (talking points, photographs, etc.) to aid in the creation of your own article/video, how is that anything but tightly controlled? It's not like they shipped a bike to MXA so they can rip it on a Glen Helen practice day.
Stark isn't an outlier here. This is all very common in the automotive space. Contrary to your statement, auto OEMs regularly provide comeptitive products during press drives. Perhaps this is a new thing in the bike world, but the playbook Stark is using for the PR rides is an established one. Again, this is not necessarily a bad (or good) thing, but as we agreed the real test will be when customers get their hands on the finished product.
Here is a great example of the point you are making. The electric F150 won MotorTrend truck of the year. Then Tyler Hoover did a review and said, "This truck can't do normal truck things". How the fuck does it win TRUCK of the year, when you can't even tow 100 miles?
They are trying to sell as many as possible before anybody knows any better.
The production delays are not a big surprise and the revised timeliness are not that concerning at this point.
I bet this bike comes out and is a step up from the Alta MXR but not a huge leap. Most riders will put it in map 2 or 3 (assuming 4 maps) the top map will basically be a novelty or start map. It will handle very well on hardback and moderate loam, it will lose the handling edge in sand and deep loam, it will also lose handling in mud but the ability to change maps will make up for that. The battery will not last 35 minutes in deep sand unless you run a more conservative map (harkening back to the days of preserving your bike for the moto). The bike may or may not run 35 minutes on hardpack/light loam at full power. The bike will not have a problem running local races with an hour or 2 of charge time between motos. Tracks will designate a charging area if it becomes an issue. The bike will be 90%-100% of what is expected for 95% of the buyers. It will have a few issues upon release hopefully nothing catastrophic. Many people will be happy with it, some will not be.
And now production and deliveries have been halted indefinitely on those buzzers.
The complaint was about the complete lack of rigorous testing for range, performance and component overheating (and subsequent effects) of those prototypes; the things on every thinking person's mind, not if it compared well to other machines.
5 minute pleasure rides are not tests of something touted as the best MX bike ever; a 35 minute ride, flat out on a demanding track, by a pro on a hot day is the minimum hurdle.
Most understand that feed a decent size electric machine enough current and it has huge area under the curve and great performance- and probably good dynamics. Not everybody realises that induction type, rare earth magnet motors can be completely ruined with a single high temperature excursion- as can various other components, like the controller, and the battery.
Of course another few months has gone by since those experimental-something bikes were ridden and there is no reliable information at all about deliveries or even any proper information on it's final specification, as opposed to the sales hype.
Really, at this stage, the Stark is a Brand without a Product and those who say the Eicher Motors buy in was really a concealed buy out have some grounds.
" auto OEMs regularly provide competitive products during press drives " - drunkonunleaded
They do ? .. would very much like to know more about such instances.
The bike and car manufacturers have often given vehicles to the respectable print publishers for long term evaluations and proper testing.
Great story, but are you able to prove any of that?
No. Just speculating like everyone else.
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