Electric motocross pioneers aim to beat the best ICE street bikes
Electric bike specialist Stark Future has already found remarkable success with its Varg off-road machines in a tough market for battery-powered motorcycles and has now revealed plans to delve into the street bike market in the coming years.
A new YouTube video published by the company outlines its plans, starting with a supermoto version of the Varg, expected to be launched later this year. While that machine, previewed in the video, follows the usual format of adding 17-inch wheels and street tyres to an existing enduro model, the company’s next steps will be more extreme.
In the video, company founder Anton Wass speaks about an upcoming range that starts with an adventure bike targeting the 800cc capacity class – presumably including the likes of Suzuki’s V-Strom 800, Honda’s XL750 Transalp, BMW’s F800GS and Yamaha’s Tenere 700 – with plans for “50% more power at lower weight, and a charging time as fast as you can drink a cup of coffee.”
Called Älg – Swedish for Moose (following on from the off-road Varg, which means ‘Wolf’) – the adventure bike is intended to compete head-on with combustion-engine machines, without the weight, range or cost penalties normally associated with electric models. Stark ambitiously believes that hitting those targets will be the recipe to make it the best-selling adventure bike in the world.
It will be followed by a sports model, using the same powertrain, called Lo, which means ‘Lynx’ in Swedish. It’s previewed with a café-racer-style styling buck in the video, complete with a bullet-shaped nose cowl.
That will be followed by a more mainstream offering, targeting Asian markets, as a platform to compete in the 100cc-500cc classes, again using an electric powertrain. It’s further in the future, and the plan is to combine an aggressive price with better performance than equivalent ICE bikes, along with ultra-rapid charging.
Other plans include a ‘freeride’ bike and, further in the future, an electric ATV.
