Who Killed Alta? The Tragedy of the Best Electric Motorcycle

Lauded as the best electric dirt bike, the Alta Redshift only lived four years before the company went bankrupt. Who killed this futuristic motocross bike? And why?

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Directed and Edited by Luke McAdam

[chesthairascot]

I'm one of the EE's that put about a year of work into the battery in the company's early days. There was lots of problems with Alta.. Engineering management knew how to make an awesome race bike, but they didn't understand how to run an engineering team.

Funding was on ongoing issue.. Motorcycles just aren't all that popular in the US (as compared with Europe and South America), and that meant that most of our investment had to come from overseas. We ended up with an absurd number of small investors, which just complicated everything. We never had a VC firehose.

I still remember sitting at the conference room table when the 2012 release deadline was announced. At that time, our battery was still blowing bond wires regularly, and we still had a mountain of lessons to learn. Hell, we didn't even have any sort of formal requirements management. You should have seen the battery boards before I joined. They were designed by someone that came out of the maker community, but that didn't yet know how much he didn't know.

After I'd left the company (due to a toxic manager), I'd heard of an incident where a test rider ate shit hard on pavement. Despite being a pro racer, the telemetry showed he was putting a lot of front brake it while putting in a lot of power. Knocked him clean out. When the paramedics were lifting the bike off him, they grabbed it by the throttle grip, which was still active. Put power to the rear wheel and ran him over AGAIN. That's the story of how that bike got a tilt sensor.

Despite that, we actually did a ton of work on safety testing, and I do consider the redshift to be a safe product (aside from being a scary fast dirtbike.) Two memorable tests- Dropping it from the ceiling of the machine shop (it was an old brewery building 1398 Bryant St, San Francisco) to simulate missing a double. Shook the entire building. Bike didn't care. The other good one was PPR testing on the battery. The emergency exhaust vents were undersized, and when we intentionally cooked off a battery cell to trigger the failure, it ended up blasting one of the endcaps off the battery housing. It flew about 100 feet across the parking lot and left a corkscrew of smoke behind it in a ballistic arc.

The bike was actually made to compete against 250's, not 450s. We ended up making it way too good for 250's though, and it didn't quite have what was needed to race against 450's. (This is my understanding from a few years back.. I never actually followed how it did in the races.)

As far as a sellout to Harley- that would have been well after I had left the company. Most everyone at Alta thought that the Livewire was a bit of a UX trainwreck though, so it's possible that attitude could have contributed. Our approach was to make a dirt bike that looked and felt like a normal dirt bike. (As opposed to the trend of making EV's look dumb so that people know they're an EV.)

If you want to hear something amusing though- The inverter architecture and firmware was repurposed by a Croatian contractor from something else that was intended to be used on electric mine carts (IIRC). I never dug into that subsystem, but I later heard that the PWM signals to drive the inverter fets was bit-banged -_-

[JM-hmpj]

Fortnine kills me with all this absolutely gorgeous shots of nature and motorcycles, combine that with good editing and good writing and this becomes easily one of my most high quality YouTube channel I've ever found.

[TDCrotty]

This utterly depressed me…It’s a shame when a fantastic piece of engineering is locked up because of some bureaucratic bs. Can we just have one nice thing that actually works for once in our lives. Honestly, screw Harley.

[q.e.d.]

I have to write this. I’m 78 years old and have never owned a motorcycle and never had any real urge to do so. For transport I need a car; weekends, sailing was my schtick and exercise, a bike helped me stay fit.
So why do I watch every single one of your videos? Simple answer - you’re the best!

[bwhaskell]

I'm one of those 1000 customers. My Alta MXR is still, almost 4 years later, the best dirtbike i've ever owned. And it still performs as well as the day i bought it. Damn shame. Redshift 2.0 was going to be even better.

[DAITION]

Ryan strikes again with another “here’s the best bike ever that you’ll never be able to find” tease video. Bravo.

[NORMIES_GET_OUT]

Had a chance to ride one as one of my good friends was a dealer. Was an absolute blast to ride and I seriously considered purchasing one. I hope someone finds a way to purchases whats left of them and pick things up where they left off.

I never have and never will own a Harley. I hope they suffer a similar fate as Alta in some form of poetic justice.

[J.S.McDuff]

Hey Ryan, I just wanted to say this here; the watch you used for most of your videos i think it was the FS4835, from Fossil. I noticed that it was fogged up which means heavy water damage. If it isn't too late you can pop the backing off the watch and glass down put it on a hair dryer to evaporate all water particles in the watch so it doesn't rust. If it's a goner I hope that the serial number FS4835 will help you with your search for a replacement. Good watch mate! I'm a watch fanatic and couldn't help but notice. You're not the only one who knows how to fix gear :D

[dirkmohrmann]

The astonishing thing is that the Alta bikes were so far ahead of the competition back in 2018, that even now in 2022 there is NO production electric motocross bike available from anyone at any price that beats it. I can't help but think that all the established brands were quite relieved to see this little problem disappear before it could do much damage to their bottom lines.

[maustin]

Harley’s brutal murder of Alta was the absolute worst thing to happen to the evolution of the electric motorcycle. Their greed killed a shining star that could have advanced eMoto and all electrics ahead years. I lament that watching supercross without a half dozen Altas is still exciting but Alta could have taken electric racing years into the future by now. I knew Harley had killed Alta and I lost all (remaining) respect for them then but I will forever be a vocal opponent of their company and their absolute short sightedness for the future of electric motorcycles. Alta set the bar high and would have helped push other companies forward so much faster. (I’m a technician at one of the other electric motorcycle companies). Thanks to Ryan and co for yet another insightful and honest appraisal of our industry and its dark side.

[ryannicholson]

fantastic piece here! As a Zero SR owner, it makes me sad to think we were so close to amazing electric dirt bikes... and now into the abyss.

[The.JZA.]

I wish you had another 100 videos because I can't stop watching and I've seen almost all of them!

[ib]

I wish I could give this video 1M 'likes'.... great info on what happened to Alta and motion picture quality as usual!

[BobPruett]

Imagine how Harley could have jumped light years ahead in the electric motorcycle market had they made an honest purchase of Alta! The combination of Alta's tech with Harley's name and resources could have moved them 20 years ahead of the competition.

[dennisbest]

I waited a long time for this one. You did not disappoint. I bet lawyers spent a good amount of time vetting this one. You are not a vlogger. You are a journalist. 👏

[dtbjason]

Dealership I worked for carried these, folks from MotoAmerica brought them in to us. I was allowed to escort test rides with the SuperMoto, that thing was wild and I remember trying to shift out of habit. Their goal of being able to compete straight up against the extremely competitive 250 class and not just against other electrics was astounding at the time. Wish I had one.

[KSMotoCafe]

Alta employees would be proud of this info episode. Well done Ryan

[cyrex]

Oh man, I remember a video of a pro on an Alta going to a random track and silently passing unsuspecting riders. I just love the idea of these for stealthily riding in places where you really shouldn't be riding. I guess this is another reason to hate on Harley.

[steelandglass]

Man you are never a disappointment. Your research people, wardrobe, lighting…. All of it, a fine team, congratulations and bravo. Don’t change a thing. ……If it’s all you sir… and there are no departments or some team of people…. then you are some kick ass piece of work …….. some network jerk is going to be stalking you with lots of money and an offer you can’t refuse. Im deep in the moto community and your name comes up consistently … no BS and interesting to watch, a little humor and a lot of facts, it’s good dude …don’t stop.

[tiagofigueiredo]

That RDR2 vibe with that scenery and music, Bravo my friend, Bravo. 👏👏👏👏