So, I want to provide some basic introduction and give people an understanding of what we are doing here at Turner Motorbikes so that folks who are just coming to read about us for the first time have a jumping off point.
Let me introduce myself,
Hi, My name is Clayton Turner Williams
I am the Turner in Turner Motorbikes. Building bikes and making my own way in the bike industry has been an evolving pursuit of mine since I began working on bikes in my early 20's. I started with building a simple cargo bike to carry my tools and began offering Mobile Bicycle Repair around Eugene Oregon under the name Patchwork Repair. If you are local there may be a chance I fixed your bike at any given time over the last 10+ years. And my progression in the industry has brought me closer to a specialization on the high power electrification revolution that has happened in the proceeding time.
It was like overnight, we here in America realized that the rest of the world had electrified bikes and major advancements in battery technologies allowed the mass scale adoption of electric mobility to begin to take shape.
I like to refer to the early adoption phase of this progression at the kit bashing DIY phase. The pervasiveness of really quirky and pieced together e-bikes began to hit the roads. Bikes cobbled together from parts in different industries, the motor controller from a fork lift, the motor from a ceiling fan (essentially) household crip connectors just barely holding the whole thing together and the folks who built these were an eclectic bunch. This first phase of the electrification wave as I understand it was shaped by the activities of online forums like Endless Sphere and bike blogs. And the community shared designs and some parts began to come in from around the globe. When the first 18650 cells hit they were amazing by comparison to the nicad and lead acid era but could be unreliable at times to be generous, and downright sketchy when rattling around a fabric bag zip tied to whatever point was available on your dads old frame at worst.
Then the industry seemed to find a footing and kept growing despite major opposition from the traditional cycling industry and its loud belly aching cries of "That's cheating!" and the technology progressed so that common designs began to make volume concerns less of an issue and cheaper designs and component availability began to be just a headache and not impossible as it had been. Soon it became common place to see a few models at your local shop and big boxes to jump on board (especially with e-scooter craze). New enterants to the industry began to produce different types of frame designs and this is where my love cycling began to focus in a new direction. ONYX, Super 73, Sur-Ron, Alta Motorbikes, CAKE, and others began to take performance of electric systems in new directions and carved a new branch in the electric mobility landscape, between cycling and powersports. This middle territory and the technology advancements that make it possible are what I am most excited to bring my attention and skills to bear in. Building bikes that preform well with new and old categories of riders, and have enough capacity to back up the professed capabilities.
The next phase of the industry has begun and there are already many new competitors emerging to play in the vast chasm that is left between the aging cruiser motorcycle scene and the Lycra wearing roadie community. Among the downhill guys, the cafe inspired beach bike riders, electric conversion and sur-ron modder communities, and new minted electric motorbike companies all vying to put buts in seats on new and flashy prototypes. Considering all this new development let's take a realistic view of the current state of performance in the electric space. I see and dont want to beat around the bush when comparing battery powered bikes head to hear with fossil fuels for the purposes of extended trips. In these long range battles they just doesn't measure up when you are talking high power electric. Highway miles will likely remain the domain of the wide glide kings of the goldwing cruiser scene. The OEM's like HD with their live wire are attempting to slot in an electric powerplant into the current offering and hope no one can do math. And I think that being insulting peoples intelligence is not the way to build an electric motorbike revolution. The reckoning of the technologies limitations are apparent when it comes to highway journeys, but that doesn't deem electric motorbikes obsolete for all applications. The decent components and high power cells that have been built up around niche communities of riders are now opening up a new field of applications for electric motorbikes. Light power dense trail bikes, supermoto style, dirt bikes that can out compete gas in competition, pit bikes, minibikes, quasi-bicycle-shaped-objects, and all will continue to evolve as new companies come into the space. But the next few years will see the space gel into some interesting and definitive categories as people push bikes to the limit and find new and interesting design freedoms that electric bikes will open up because of the nature of the technology.
As a few take the early leap like KTM, the I believe the future will see some of these types larger OEM's come in and make a play as big industry is often does and either by acquisition or by offering models that define a category they will round out the landscape of electric mobility and to the general consumer not closely paying attention they will offer a sense of legitimacy to this new segment of riders and bikes. The cool thing about all of this that as people/for people who like to ride, the options will not only get better, but more types and features are going to hit the market and with any luck a lighter approach to regulation by the governments around the globe could cement this new mode of micro mobility and take it more mainstream. Hopefully as a result we can shift ever so slightly away from a car centric system and take bites around the edges of the hold that it has on our build environment and psychic association with American-ness=driving a big SUV. If regulation comes in the form of massive clamp downs it could spell disaster for the fledgling segment, but I don't think pandora is going back in the box at this point.
That is the nature as I see it of some of the best and brightest advancements towards defining a new segment of riders types of electric 2 wheelers available to be produced and Turner Motorbikes was founded with the intent to encourage the growth of this industry, and provide a unique vision for the way ahead with our design led approach to building bikes the right way and not just more of them (although with the right stuff, a little luck and a whole bunch of hard work we have a shot and producing a ton of really awesome bikes that we can be proud to call Turner Motorbikes).
I want to build electric motorcycles, a though that I cant get out of he head and over the last 6 years as of writing this I have made the majority of the career aspiration and dedication towards making it a reality. I have spent countless hours thinking and researching and planning and making and as of September 2024 have been hard at work putting these things to the test, building parts, and designing new systems, and learning as I can get my hand on about the state of play in the electric motorcycle space. Design is a process of iteration and making revision after revision to the dense technical documentation of the prototypes that I am building is key as I see it to being able to not just make 1 bike but to take the plans and make a bunch of them well. We have completed all but a final finishing details on the custom large battery that we are going to use in the first prototype which has allowed us to begin testing our electrical. the base of which is a 72V 59Ah monster (20S14P battery with a custom aluminum enclosure and large 400A DALY BMS) This will be cradled between the frame rails that we are currently in the final stages of building and will incorporate a suspended QS 165 Motor to act as our bikes powerplant. Using this base allows to adapt the design to accommodate a range of motors now being produced in this form factor. Controlled by a Fardriver 72680 which we chose because of the high power density, cost to performance ratio and open nature of the programming. These are the basic elements of the bike and our custom 4130 frame and custom shaped aluminum parts will lend a classic element to our design. How I got to these elements has a lot to do with where I have been and I have yet in this diatribe to mention my time as technical specialist at UBCO Bikes, which also at the time of writing this I just found out is going defunct in the US. But I was proud that over the last 4 years I was able to help them build up their manufacturing capabilities in North America and maintain the highest level of production quality and customer technical service that we could attain. Although I can't wait to see what the future holds for them, back in June 2024 I made the decision to step back and began to peruse my own enterprise and bring my vison into reality.
Building this prototype bike is just the first stage for me as we begin to grow this company. I am offering custom built batteries and conversions as well now to our local area and with help from friends we are entering the largest push to complete the first electric prototype bike and begin our testing and refinement development. All to often it seems in our electric motorbike space the launch of a new endeavor is not coupled to a business that can support such rigorous demands as is required to bring a prototype bike from concept to volume production and bikes enter as a flash in the pan only to disappoint a group of eager early adopters. At Turner Motorbikes are taking a measured approach to the development cycle to help build up that base of processes and offerings that will continue to provide profitable revenue streams to the company from inception through to growth and we carefully consider the sources of funding that will help us grow our operations at the correct pace as our early development takes shape and we move into the realm of production complexity and scale. We understand that this sort of business is capital intensive and with new competitors entering the space you need to show up with your A-Game.
Our prototype has a few simple requirements that we set down early on, and use as our targets to strip down the elements of what really matters in a bikes design and what the rest of the industry is perusing for its own benefits at the expense of the riding experience. The overly-techy, and flashy trend is seems is to offer a companion app developed by a bloated team of feature creators and decisions are being made without riders being in the room or even in mind, when decisions get made. To use a phrase that has recently entered the general cultural lexicon, the enshitification of silicon valley bros making overengineered systems is common and it means big business. Tracking, data mining, overhyped and underwhelming user experiences are glossed over with slick marketing and the riding experience and quality of the bikes takes a back seat as a result of compressed timelines and dwindling R&D budgets. This can get really into the weeds but the oversimplification here is a simple statement of my opinion but stands in juxtaposition with the experiences I have heard echoed countless times as I was talking with a customers on the phone. Folks almost in tears of frustration as they are stranded by a bike that was supposed to produce unbridled joy for them. And when the curtain is peeled away and the raw human moment that riders are slapped in the face with, the reality of the moment is that they are going to have to push this thing or abandon all hope because a little ride just turned into a survival situation. These experiences shape how I view the problem and make it clear to me what it to be done if this segment is to flourish and rise to the challenge. Bikes need to be simple and reliable to operate, full stop. They need to be able to maintain a high standard of quality and be produced by folks who take pride in building a bike to a high standard. And they need to be more functionally repairable in an emergency. Not everyone wants to mess with high level settings but some users need be able to take ownership of the basic technology that power their bike and need a more open approach to supporting their bike and its components.
Many cases of a company that produces a bike in this early industry only to completely abandons its users if there is an issue with their bike has become common. And in talking with others in the industry, they can attest t and might have even had a similar situation because the manufacturer couldn't be reached or be bothered to divulge any useful information about the bike in order to help anyone. "have you tried reading our half translated manual" or "did you try turning it off and then back on?" are what scraps the general public are left with in regards to their multi-thousand dollar brick that their bike has now become. My experience in working closely with riders informs my approach to development at Turner Motorbikes and the types of pillars that we use to ground the development of this first prototype. Building a strong foundation is a good way to ensure the rest of the structure can stand up.
In another post I can get more in depth on the prototypes specs and features but I wanted to outline how we see the current state of the industry that we are entering and the why, behind how we are going to build kick ass electric motorcycles.
Thank you for coming along on this journey with us.
-Clayton Turner Williams
Founder, chief designer, fabricator and trash emptying bitch of Turner Motorbikes.