Tesla made a huge impact on the electric car industry, and sells some of the best electric cars. Still, the company has stayed well away from developing an electric motorbike. But what if things changed, and a Tesla Bike were made?
Designer James Gawley has come up with a concept to showcase what a Tesla-made motorbike might look like. And, well, it makes me wish that Elon Musk didn’t have such a hard anti-motorbike stance.
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Gawley named the bike the ‘Model M’ and it looks absolutely incredible. It’s sleek, aerodynamic, and all the other things Tesla has been working on improving with its cars. Just in the form of a motorbike. It even has a touchscreen display, with a user interface based on the one you’d find in a Tesla car.
“Model M is a premium motorcycle.” Gawley explained. “The gem and main feature of this machine is the top display touch screen, which is curved upward towards the rider and includes both day and night modes for better visibility without distraction. it puts rich content at your fingertips and provides mobile connectivity so you can easily find your destination, favorite song or new restaurant.”
The display is very big, which gives us pause and raises the question whether it would be able to maximise the amount of information on display and use the motorbike’s shape to make it as unobtrusive as possible.
Why hasn’t Tesla developed an electric bike?
It’s hard to dispute the impact Tesla has had on the electric car business. The company helped popularize the idea that an electric car could be stylish and functional, after all.
So if Tesla were to go all in on an electric motorbike, particularly now that the company is so well known, it could potentially have a similar impact on motorbike side of the EV industry.
But that’s not going to happen, because Elon Musk doesn’t want anything to do with producing motorbikes. And it’s because he had a very serious accident when he was 17.
He explained that back in 2018, when a shareholder asked about the prospects of a Tesla bike: “I actually used to ride motorcycles when I was a kid. I was into dirt biking for like 8 years or something. Then I had a road bike until I was 17 when I was almost killed by a truck so we are not going to do motorcycles.”
So as much as we like the idea and the look of a Tesla motorbike, it’s almost certainly not going to happen. That's unless Elon has a major change of heart. Assuming that his accident is the real reason why Tesla has stayed away from the electric motorbike market.
After all there’s a huge difference between developing a vehicle with four wheels, and one that has to balance on two. Tesla could easily attract the kind of talent needed to develop a motorbike, but it would still be a big step.
There are still plenty of ways Teslas could be improved, so the fact the company isn’t spreading itself too thin by producing bikes might be a good thing. But we can still dream of a day when there is a Tesla bike. Even if that dream isn’t likely to be a reality.
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