India’s fastest electric motorcycle prepares to go racing

India is not a nation recognised for motorbike racing – or indeed substantial-efficiency motorcycles. But Bangalore company Ultraviolette wishes to begin pushing the envelope, and it is declared its intent to go racing with its new F99 advancement platform.

As of 2019, there ended up extra than 220 million motorcycles registered in India, with that figure escalating at a rate of 15-18 million a yr. It truly is the world’s 2nd-largest market place for two-wheelers, powering China, but as with most acquiring nations, the vast vast majority of its bikes are scooters or small-ability, low-priced, simple getabouts.

It’s also not a region recognised for racing. In truth, according to Red Bull, there are only a few pro-typical race tracks serving the country’s 1.4 billion people, and only one Indian rider has at any time created an physical appearance at the major stage of racing – Sarath Kumar, who rode an Aprilia for three rounds of the 2011 125cc Planet Championship, failing to qualify twice and ending 24th in his last race.

So, in a place recognized for slow bikes, it can be pretty neat to see Bangalore company Ultraviolette coming out with a bicycle targeted on larger overall performance. The leading-of-the-line F77, introduced past month, offers a 30.2-kW (40.5-hp), 100-Nm (74-lb-ft) electric motor, a 10.3-kWh battery pack, for a projected IDC assortment of 307 km (190 miles) and a top speed of 152 km/h (94.4 mph), to go along with a rather neat semi-faired design. With created-in GPS and LTE connectivity, this bike delivers in-dash navigation, a car locator, geofencing, trip analytics, twin-channel Bosch Stomach muscles, and a 9-axis inertial measurement device.

That’s a ton of axes, and it can be not straight away very clear what they are for, specified that there’s no point out of lean angle-delicate braking or traction control of any variety. However, at a price of 550,000 Indian Rupees (US$6,800), the F77 appears to be like the kind of machine that could strike a sweet place with Western commuters if it could be exported at that sort of price.

And in a region not identified for racing, Ultraviolette has now announced a souped-up race bicycle it is calling the F99. Unveiled at final week’s Auto Expo in Delhi, the F99 boosts peak ability up to 50 kW (65 hp), and as a end result, the bike has now damaged 200 km/h (124 mph) in testing. The ergos are modified to be racier and additional “committed,” comprehensive with adjustable rearsets and bars, and Ultraviolette suggests it really is executed some “aerodynamic optimization” – even though this seems limited to it having a carbon race plate as a substitute of a headlight, an “aerodisk” in the rear wheel hub, and some distinctive winglets of doubtful utility on the aspect fairings and tail.

Overall performance-clever, Ultraviolette co-founder and CEO Narayan Subramaniam advised Vehicle and Bicycle the equipment has now damaged 4.5 seconds in a -100-km/h (62-mph) dash. The enterprise isn’t really specifying what is heading on with the battery pack, other than to say it can be jogging a new architecture. The F99 is now an R&D platform, effectiveness is expected to increase over the coming months, and while the bicycle is meant to “express [Ultraviolette’s] intent to get into electric powered motorsports,” you can find no word on exactly wherever the workforce strategies to race it, or without a doubt from what.

Nonetheless, it truly is a nifty-searching machine, and whilst this may be considered as a race bike in India, it basically seems like the form of mid-overall performance equipment that could do first rate figures as a zero-emissions bike for city commuting and additional-city enjoyable in Europe or the US if, yet again, it could be exported at the appropriate value.

Resource: Ultraviolette