Full charge for electric bikes - the 'Tipping Point'
By Ben Purvis
The trickle of new electric bikes is turning into a torrent, with major manufacturers committing to a battery powered future…
For years, the world's biggest bike firms have played a waiting game, showing off plenty of electric concepts and dabbling with the occasional small-run models, but holding off on mass-production electric bikes until the market matured.
Now we appear to be hitting that tipping point, with both Honda and Yamaha committed to electric bikes along with several European rivals.
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| Honda Benly-e |
Honda's company-wide pledge to electric vehicles includes the target of being completely carbon-neutral, as a company, by 2050. That includes not only a switch to electric power for its cars and bikes, but a shift to clean energy sources for its production facilities. The firm says 40% of its vehicle sales will be electric by 2030 and 80% by 2035, hitting 100% by 2040.
While most of those will be cars, the company's motorcycles are going in the same direction. Initially, the plan is to launch three electric models in the sub-125 cc class by 2024, all using the battery-swap 'Mobile Power Pack' system that Honda is dedicated to. A Japanese consortium of Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki and Kawasaki has already established a standardised battery specification to allow its future models to share common, swappable packs, almost certain to be based on the Honda-developed system, and a similar international consortium of Honda, Yamaha, Piaggio and KTM is also working towards the same goal.
Honda's business-oriented, Asian-market Benly-e and Gyro-e models already use the swappable packs, but the new models will be aimed at the consumer market. One will be a 50 cc-equivalent scooter, the second a larger scooter that approximates a 125 cc model. The third is an electric motorcycle in the 125 cc class. Beyond those machines, Honda says it will also launch an undisclosed number of electric motorcycles for leisure use, hinting that these will be larger, higher performance machines.
Husqvarna's 50 cc scooter, the Vektorr
Yamaha, meanwhile, is on the verge of unveiling the production version of its 'E01' electric scooter. Originally shown as a concept bike at the 2019 Tokyo Motor Show, the E01 is intended to compete in the leaner-legal 125 cc class. It uses a large, fixed battery instead of smaller, swappable cells. The firm has recently gained trademark rights to use the 'E01' name on a production machine and filed multiple patent applications that show a toned-down version of the concept, including production-style elements like road legal lighting and even a licence plate bracket. The bike won't be Yamaha's first electric offering - Yamaha has dabbled in the market in the past with machines like the EC-02 and EC-03, but the E01 promises much higher performance and range targets than its previous attempts.
Here in Europe, BMW is already established as an electric bike pioneer courtesy of the C Evolution scooter that it has sold since 2013 - and the soon-to-be-launched CE-04 that replaces it. KTM has also been getting busy in the E-space for some time too, and has recently started to do so with its Husqvarna brand.
Husky's approach is initially two-pronged, with a 125 cc-equivalent motorcycle - the E-Pilen - due to go on sale in 2022. At the same time, a 50 cc-matching scooter, the Vektorr, will also reach production. Both machines are to be manufactured in India by partner firm Bajaj, which will also use the same technology for its own range of electric models.
Like Honda, the KTM/Husqvarna/Bajaj trio have opted for a swappable battery system, using 48V packs that can be combined to add more range or performance. The E-Pilen, for instance, uses three of the batteries, mounted where the fuel tank would normally be.
The chassis comes from the next-generation KTM Duke 125, 250 and 390, which will also form the basis of the next Husqvarna Svartpilen and Vitpilen models, and by parts-sharing with conventional petrol-powered models, Husqvarna should be able to hold prices down.
The battery-swap system could also be used to reduce costs, potentially allowing the batteries to be leased rather than bought outright, bringing the initial purchase cost of the electric bikes down to match or even undercut petrol-powered equivalents.
Further Euro electric bike news comes from Dutch project EMX-Powertrain, a collaboration between engineering firm Dohms Projecten and battery specialist ELEO Technologies, with support from Yamaha Motor Europe.
The result so far is a prototype electric dirt bike, based on a Yamaha YZ250F chassis fitted with a purpose-made battery pack and a liquid-cooled electric motor with a single-speed transmission. The prototype took to the track for the first time in May. Although not the first to try, the project is intended to boost the profile and show the potential of electric motocross machines.
With noise issues regularly forcing motocross facilities to close down or forcing them to be established far from populated areas, the relative silence of electric bikes could open the sport up to a completely new generation - eliminating the major hurdle in the establishment of new tracks and allowing them to be more accessible. What's more, with relatively short races and a focus on punch out of corners rather than top speed, the sport is tailormade for torquey electric motors and small, low-range batteries.
Despite the positive moves towards electric bikes in Europe, China remains the hotbed of activity for the sector. With millions of riders already using cheap, low-tech electric scooters, battery power has already been accepted as a viable option by huge swathes of buyers there, encouraging the development of increasingly high-end electric models.
The result is the establishment of dedicated electric sub-brands from established players. CFMoto recently created ZEEHO as a platform for its future electric models and now Zongshen has followed suit by creating its own electric brand, Cineco.
Cineco's initial model range includes four moped-level offerings - the Honda Cub-inspired E-Classic, the Grom-style City Slicker and two conventional step-thru models, the ES3Pro and T3, all models that were previously offered under the Zongshen name in China, and under other brands elsewhere. In the UK, Lexmoto offers the ES3 Pro under the name Impulse, and the City Slicker as the Cypher.
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| Zongshen Cineco ERT3 |
However, Zongshen's latest Cineco offering is a much more ambitious machine, the ERT3, a battery-powered version of the firm's new 250 cc RT3 scooter, recently launched under the firm's high-end Cyclone brand. The ERT3 is powered by an electric motor that makes a nominal 8 kW (11 hp), which means it would fit into the learner-legal 125 cc class. However, it's actually capable of double that power for short bursts, putting its performance on a par with the 250 cc ICE model it's derived from.
At 207 kg, its weight is only a fraction higher than the petrol-powered RT3 (194 kg), and Zongshen claims the bike can achieve 200 km (125 miles) between charges of its 72V, 93Ah battery pack. A 0-62 mph time of 9.9 seconds is also claimed, along with an 81 mph top speed; not fast, but easily enough to keep up with traffic out of town as well as in urban areas.
The numbers are very close to those claimed for the original version of BMW's C-Evolution scooter, but where BMW's sales were hampered by a sky-high price, the Cineco ERT3 isn't likely to have that problem.
Since the likes of Lexmoto have already proved that Zongshen's machines can be accepted in European markets, the ERT3 is likely to appear here in the future, although it may not go under the same name.
