CZEM Drill One


mr.skywalker

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13
Location
Mississippi
I really like the looks and performance of these, just the price is a little hard to make the jump vs surron (or the ktm for a little more but they arent really apples to apples). The suspension is the biggest selling point, good forks and GREAT rear shock, but the battery not being easily swappable is another drawback. Also has a true moto style seat vs surron. I do see potential area where a second pack could be ran in parallel giving a little more range too, the triangle under the seat looks pretty big. I hope they sell well, but the surron is so much cheaper I dont see it selling very well but it does look worth the upcharge. Id love to have both
 

B. FRANK

Well-known member
no available skid plate (yet), no quick change battery option and $6500 more than a Sur Ron! looks cool but those are some pretty serious drawbacks. 3 grand buys a Sur Ron a 72v battery and an asi bac8000 controller and charger with $3500 left over to upgrade brakes and suspension.my Sur Ron has a mx seat $100,fits over the existing seat and battery cover with straps so it's on or off in seconds. it is good to see the world starting to take electric bikes serious though. the future looks bright.SUR RON.JPG
 

mr.skywalker

Member
Likes
13
Location
Mississippi
Its actually less than $5500 more as the surron just went up in price to $4k deliver vs $9400 for the drill. I completely agree it can be done cheaper with the surron but its nice you dont have to get everything tuned and working out of the box. On my surron I just did the BAC4000 and have a range extender battery pack that puts me in the 150a from the battery so +9kw if I want and I'm doing some custom suspension. All said and done I should be about $6500 but that is far from plug and play so for most it would be well over $10k to build my setup if you bought parts($1800 forks, $800 shock, $800 controller, $1800 battery, $800 upgraded wheels, $400 brakes, etc) and paid someone to do it for you keeping it "out of the box" like the drill. Nothing wrong with either way but nice to have options now
 

B. FRANK

Well-known member
it is a very cool bike. I've been bitten a few times(alta being no exception) by companies going belly up after I buy one of their products and I like to wait a few years until the product is perfected or abandoned. also I owned a cz(Czech motocrosser) and it was undoubtedly the worst motorcycle I ever owned, so I'm a little scared of Czech bikes, but that's just me.
 

Alta-NY-VA

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10
Location
Virginia
I have way too much money in my Sur Rons. They are fun because there are so many options but the Drill definitely looks more well designed and the geometry is more tunable than any other bike out there with multiple frame attachment points. It’s got my eye on it and probably not going to get any cheaper but I do know the performance and range will only get better on all these bikes.
I just bought a Kuberg Ranger so I’ll run that around and see how it does when it comes in about a month hopefully less.
 

enjoythesilenc

Well-known member
Likes
263
Location
virginia
20220820_123556.jpg

Finally got to ride one briefly. OK power, very supple suspension and great brakes. Ergos were weird for me, probably would start with a bar riser. Louder than expected and power characteristics were different from what I'm used to. A buddy commented that maybe they run the motor sensor less. It does have a hole through the center of it!

Great potential but I'm not sure if any tweaking of components is possible.
 

smdub

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Likes
11
Location
maryland
LOL, I rode the same one enjoythesilenc did. I was really looking forward to it that day. The things that stood out to me:
* No where near the power of a Nucular 24F modified SurRon. Literally, no comparison.
* It is loud. A chain drive primary conversion on the SurRon might be the same though?
* Low clearance. I bottomed out on several logs that my 21"/19" SurRon does not. This happened enough times I really started to take more care to not beat up Sam's bike. Or maybe the Manitou damping is a lot softer than my Fox? It didn't seem bouncy though.
* Great brakes
* Awesome color! Appeared to be really well built.
* Shorter seat height than a 21"/19" wheel'ed SurRon? Drill One Enduro spec is 920mm. Not sure where they are measuring it. My SR is about that at the tail, and lower in the front. (I don't have a seat riser as it would then be too tall for my wife.) Maybe they are the same and just the rest of the ergo's being off it felt short? Maybe Sam had the sag set way down? Anyway, as soon as I threw a leg over it I literally thought 'damn, this is short.' But maybe I had just jumped off my KTM E.
* Throttle response. This is the showstopper. Its jumpy and slow/laggy from a stop or coming from low throttle. Like the control software can't handle low rpm (slow control loops?) Or it has a heavy (slow) filter or ramp on the throttle input. But sitting there at a stop and applying throttle you can see the control is a bit confused. It actually appears to, at times, drive in reverse a couple of degrees. Like the control didn't correctly detect where the magnets were. I was the one commenting to enjoythesilenc that it seems they were running it sensorless (no idea if its actually got an encoder or hall sensor though.) The slow off-throttle response made it very difficult to time unloading the front end even while moving. It just doesn't have an immediate throttle response as you crack it open. Its very off putting.

I forgot to take a pic of it. I'm just now noticing that the rear shock forward bolt locations doesn't have the 'circle' of options all the web photos show.

I'd love to ride it at a faster track. Sam says the front end has more rake than a SR and its a lot more stable at speed. The rear linkage seems to not be very progressive at all so I'm also curious to see how it handles bigger hits.
 

Philip

Administrator
Staff member
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4,252
Location
Lake Havasu City, AZ
Cool. I have moved this thread from "Alta Alternatives -- Production Intent" to "Small/Play e-Motorcycles".

It is nice and very interesting to follow how some concepts are becoming a reality.
 
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