Erik Buell Speaks about WSBK plans

[Classax]

http://www.sportrider.com/news/146_1...perbike_plans/

Hmm let's talk about time lines.

The first race is Feb 23 2014, homologation inspection is to take place 30 days prior to the first race or by January 31st.
EBR must certify that it has shipped or has bills of ladings for 125 motorcycles by January 23rd or no later than the 31st.
41 Dealers at present at 6 machines each means they have a back log of 246 machines.
Production began last week, and you figure they are closed the week of Christmas and a few days for New Years, and weekends, they've got 34 days to build the bikes. That means assembling, testing and QC roughtly 3-4 bikes a day. That's alot, for machines that are effectively hand built.

[Scott]

http://www.sportrider.com/news/146_1...perbike_plans/

Hmm let's talk about time lines.

The first race is Feb 23 2014, homologation inspection is to take place 30 days prior to the first race or by January 31st.
EBR must certify that it has shipped or has bills of ladings for 125 motorcycles by January 23rd or no later than the 31st.
41 Dealers at present at 6 machines each means they have a back log of 246 machines.
Production began last week, and you figure they are closed the week of Christmas and a few days for New Years, and weekends, they've got 34 days to build the bikes. That means assembling, testing and QC roughtly 3-4 bikes a day. That's alot, for machines that are effectively hand built.

Great article and good information. I think the biggest barrier will be getting all the parts for the first run, but once they get going, I don't think 3-4 bikes a day will be pushing it.

I had the opportunity to visit the old Buell production line, and they were making about 50 bikes a day. And those were probably built similarly to how these will be built. There were a number of stations and workers had a set of tasks they performed at each station. For start-up, I would expect EBR will have fewer workers so each worker will perform more operations (and likely cover three or four stations instead of one), but other than that, it will probably look very similar to the old line.

I would expect they plan to make 2000 - 3000 bikes the first year. With approximately 250 workdays in a year, that would be about 10 bikes a day. So I would expect that once they are up and running, they'll be making roughly 10 bikes a day.

That means 125 bikes would be about 2.5 weeks worth of production. And sure, there are likely to be some glitches and problems initially that could slow things down, but if they're getting any production done now, I'd think 125 bikes by late January won't be a big deal.

[Scott]

I count 43 dealers right now and they're being added every day, so I think a goal of 100 dealers selling 20 - 30 bikes each in 2014 would be reasonable.