75,000 Miles and Counting
There are plenty of concerns with battery electric motorcycles. Range is probably the number one, but high on the list is the concern that batteries don’t last forever, and they’re expensive to replace. Italian electric motorcycle manufacturer Tacita sought to show its batteries are designed for longevity.
As a battery goes through its charge and discharge cycle, it loses a bit of its capacity. This means your range will decrease and the battery won’t be able to hold as much of a charge. This takes time, and Tacita thought it best to show the world how long this process actually takes in a modern battery installed on one of the company’s motorcycles.
Since 2012, the company has put around 75,000 miles on one of its test bikes, according to electricmotorcycles.news. That bike still has the same battery in it, and Tacita says the bike still performs well. During that time, the battery went through more than 1,700 recharge cycles during that time.
While Tacita didn’t say the percentage of battery charge retained thus far, it does say the results prove the company’s claim that the battery will keep up to 80 percent of its charge even after 4,000 recharge cycles. That suggests to me that the battery must be more or less unaffected thus far.
It’s worth noting that the battery wasn’t just used on any old test bike. The company used the battery on the electric bike that was the first ever to compete in the Merzouga Rally in Morocco. From there the bike raced in several other races. Then the battery was transferred to other bikes. It has been in the same one since 2014.