Electric Future?

Should your next bike be electric? What are the ups, downs and pitfalls?

- Peter Henshaw

Electric motorcycles. Ten years ago they were the preserve of a curious little start-up in California plus some home-brewed specials. Now, they lap the TT course at 121mph, have their own race series and e-scooters sell by the million in China. According to the MCIA, sales nearly doubled in the UK last year. Harley-Davidson has just launched its first (see pages 44-48 for our launch report), while BMW and Ducati are both working on one. I’d be very surprised if any of the other big name brands weren’t thinking very hard about doing the same.

So why are they taking off now, and why should we buy one? The real surprise is that it’s taken so long. There have been sporadic attempts at electric two-wheelers in the past, but they’ve only been practical since a new breed of lithium-ion and nickel-cadmium batteries appeared in the mid-1990s. Lighter and more power-dense than the old leadacids, these powered a new generation of cordless tools, but scaled up were ideal for bigger jobs, like powering a two-wheeler.

WHY NOW?

The trouble is, we all love the visceral feel of a petrol engine, don’t we? The sound, the vibes, the whole feel of a machine. Our attachment to motorcycles is based on emotion, and let’s face it, ours is the petrolhead generation which has known nothing else. The perception – mistaken or not – has been that a battery-powered bike just won’t have same appeal. However, motorcycling is also a collection of individualists, some of whom began experimenting with battery power in the mid-2000s.

The first obvious sign was the Isle of Man’s TTXGP (now renamed TT Zero). The electric TT garnered lots of interest, and the bikes evolved from purely college and private projects to include well-funded manufacturer teams such as TeamMugen – Michael Rutter now holds that 121mph lap record on one of their bikes.