Electric bike history
Where did electric motorcycles come from, and what drove the development?
Electric bikes have been in the making for a long time. Here’s a quick look at some of the developments.
June 12, 2009 was an important day in the history of the electric motorcycle, when Rob Barber won the TTX GP race at the Isle of Man TT races, completing a lap of the infamous Mountain course at an average of 87.434mph on his Agni X01. It might not have seemed like much at the time. Thirteen bikes entered the race, nine finished – one taking almost an hour to complete the 37.73mile course. But despite the sniggers of the hardcore petrolheads, electric propulsion had started to enter motorcycling’s mainstream. Fast forward a decade and an electric bike class even takes place in support of MotoGP. Electric motorcycles are not the future, they are the present.
The actual genesis of the electric motorcycle is hard to pinpoint. The earliest patents for electrically powered bikes go back to the 1800s but, despite one-off projects over the years, electric motorcycles are definitely a child of the 21st century.
While those Isle of Man TT races have hardly captured the imagination (and ironically is currently halfway through a two-year hiatus) it has provided a good barometer for the rapid development of electric bikes. American rider Mark Miller won the 2010 event (now named TT Zero) at an average of 96.820mph on his MotoCzysz E1pc as lap times, for the top bikes at least, rose rapidly. Michael Rutter (also riding a MotoCzysz) won the race every year from 2011 to 2013, moving the record from 99mph to 104mph and 109mph. Japan’s Mugen outfit won each of the last six electric TTs, with John McGuinness lifting the lap record to 117.366mph in 2014 and Rutter (now also mounted on the Japanese machine) winning at over 121mph in the last two years – times that are comparable to those set by the 650cc twins in the Lightweight TT races.