General Motors patents electric motorcycle design
By Ben Purvis
General Motors might be best known as a car maker – parent to an array of brands including Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick – but it’s made far more than cars over the years with a history that includes aircraft, tanks and other vehicles. It’s never made motorcycles but that’s something that might be set to change as GM has filed a new design patent showing a lightweight electric bike.
Car and motorcycle brands have long been intertwined. Companies like BMW, Suzuki and Honda all manufacture both, and history shows it’s a connection that goes back to the dawn of powered transport, with the likes of Rover, BSA and others building both cars and motorcycles as long ago as the 1900s. More than 100 years on, the concept of personal mobility means that, once again, car makers are looking to add two-wheelers to their lineups. VW’s subsidiary SEAT offers an electric scooter, for example, and MINI has shown multiple two-wheeled concepts over the years.
Meanwhile, Honda’s Motocompacto folding electric scooter is offered through its car dealers rather than motorcycle outlets in the USA, and a vast number of car brands have tie-ins with electric bicycle companies.
GM’s electric bike design is clearly at the basic end of the spectrum, but it’s very much a motorcycle rather than a scooter or a powered bicycle. The only clue to its possible branding is the word ‘PAK’ emblazoned on the battery unit, which fills most of the simple, square-section frame. The motor is mounted in the rear wheel’s hub, and the suspension comprises conventional forks at the front and a monoshock at the back.
A long, flat seat and wide, straight bars give a scrambler style, and there’s no sign of mirrors, indicators or a licence plate, suggesting it’s intended only for off-road use - the one segment of the ePTW market that does still appear to be viable at this time.
Scale is hard to judge, but the wheels appear to be smaller than a full-size bike’s, perhaps 14 or 16-inches in diameter, so the bike could be aimed at the youth off-road leisure market.
Around the same time, GM’s design department also filed patents for an electric side-by-side four-wheel vehicle, again the type pandering to the US market for leisure off-roaders, but there’s no information yet to show whether either the bike or the four-wheeler will get beyond the design stage.
