Saturday, July 9, 2011

KTM Freeride electric motocross bike for the EICMA show


Electric motorcycles, until recently mainly made by the newer entrants into the motorcycling industry like Brammo and Zero Motorcycles, are all set to go mainstream as KTM readies up it’s first electric offering in the form of the Freeride electric Motocross motorcycle for the EICMA show scheduled for November, this year. Along with the KTM Freeride getting launched at EICMA, the other neat surprise the first electric motorcycle from KTM comes with is the price tag that the Frreride is expected to sport.

Under 10,000 Euros is what you will have to shell out for this electric motorcross motorcycle and that price makes it very attractive indeed. Over the past few years, four stroke motorcycles in motocross are slowly being questioned over cost of maintenance even as the cheaper two strokes make much more sense, considering their low cost of maintenance, lower cost of parts and fewer parts in the engine. Once the electric model from KTM will arrive, it could further trigger a paradigm shift in how Motocross motorcycles will be powered.

An electric motor replacing the conventional powered MX motorcycles makes a bunch of sense considering the fact that the battery stack of the electric MX motorcycles can be replaced after each race. This is exactly what KTM seems to be betting on with the Freeride Electric MX’er machine. Meanwhile, the KTM Freeride will produce a very useful 43 Nm of twist right from 500 rpm. This apart, the peak power that the MX machine is capable is about 30 Bhp, with a constant power of 11 Bhp possible all through.

While the peak power still has some catching up to do with conventional MX motorcycles, the torque figure will be what will really be the talking point of the lithium ion battery powered Freeride. Will the KTM Freeride manage to convert enough of the MX crowd to adopt electric power remains the big question that remains to be answered.

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Blog Archive