VOL. 55 ISSUE 34 AUGUST 28, 2018 P99
(Right) Range
is still an issue
with electric
motorcycles but
ridden within its
limit, which is
getting broader
all the time, the
Alta Redshift EXR
is tons of fun.
(Below) The Alta
product lineup is
made in America
on a simplistic,
yet tech-heavy,
California
assembly line.
burning bikes parked at Alta. A lot.
The production and assembly facility is clean,
simple, efficient and impressive. Considering every
component of the bike is engineered in-house and a
lot of them are hand-built on site, it's a very cool opera-
tion. We saw R-packs being assembled and turned
our cameras off at times as secret doors were opened
where component creation was churning. The assem-
bly line is advanced with connected tools and torque
settings registering the bikes' birth straight to the cloud.
If you are into barcodes and how computers can track
actions and time into numbers in cy-
berspace, you'd really like this place.
There's also a dyno. And I can attest
that a 50-horsepower electric motor-
cycle on a dyno is actually pretty loud.
At the end of the line and of our
tour was a stack of newly built Red-
shift EXRs. This got us ready to ride
our test bikes and we were soon on
our way.
Commuting through San Fran-
cisco's neighborhoods on an Alta
Redshift EXR should probably be
against some laws, especially with a group of
dirt bikers at the controls. We don't condone
illegal riding behavior, but it's sort of impos-
sible not to accelerate with aplomb and utilize
all of the immediately available torque.
Wheelies were witnessed. Tires were abused.
Filtering through traffic on the narrow and
nimble machines is easier than on a bicycle
(thanks to the hefty power punch warp-speeding
you in front of accelerating cars). There is no heat
so you're sort of always more comfortable than on
a gas-powered bike. And the RC-Car whirrrrr is an
addictive sound to replicate once you realize your
throttle hand makes it happen and making it happen
makes your arms straighten.
Let's go riding!
