Sondors Took The Metacycle On A Range Test Across Southern California

Unveiled a few weeks ago, the Sondors Metacycle hit the world with some pretty impressive specs for a commuter motorcycle. With a claimed top speed of 80 miles per hour, and up to 80 miles of range (admittedly not at 80 mph), it seems like a great machine for the daily city rider. This bike, for example, could do pretty much everything I do with my Leaf. When those specs came out, some were incredulous of the possibility.

Sondors decided to post some video of a real-world range test in an attempt to prove it was possible. Now obviously this video isn't scientific proof, and it's possible that the company could have edited around something that would indicate it was lying or falsifying range claims. For the record, I believe that this kind of range is possible and I don't think they have any reason to be lying, but as "proof" goes, this is a little thin.

You can watch the paraphrased road trip at the Vimeo link below.

The video follows a rider on a two and a half hour ride from Irvine, California to the Long Beach aquarium. In watching the video we can see the rider exceed 60 miles per hour at least once, but most of the ride is at legal speeds on surface streets, meaning range will be pretty good. Sondors claim that the route was 48 miles in total, and speeds averaged 45 mph. That already doesn't pass muster, because two and a half hours at 45 mph would be around 112 miles of distance. Perhaps they meant 45 mph was the moving speed average and the rider sat in 90 minutes of traffic or stopped for lunch or something?

In any case, the company also claims that the bike had 20 percent charge remaining when the rider got to the final destination. That means you should be able to get around 60 miles of real-world range in real world traffic at real world non-highway speeds. Considering the Metacycle's 4 kWh battery, that would translate to around 12 miles per kWh, which is around double what I saw on the Harley LiveWire cruising at 70. Yeah, if the bike is actually as light as Sondors claims, I could see that being true.

The Metacycle would have to be highly efficient to achieve those numbers, and the rider probably employed some hypermile techniques to make it happen, but I'm pretty well convinced that these numbers are at least within the realm of possibility. I'm not sure the video did anything to prove its case, but it was kind of fun to watch.