The coming of the electric motorcycle

Electric Motorsport's Supermotard and GPR Road Racer

Electric Motorsport sells a range of electric two wheelers from the likes of Currie Technologies, Oxygen, Vego and EVT but by far the most interesting machines they offer are significantly modified Derbi motorcycles.

Derbi is one of the great names of European motorcycle racing, having won 85 Grands Prix and eight World titles, all of them in the 50cc, 80cc and 125 cc classes, and hence having expertise in building exquisite small capacity motorcycles. Last year the marque won three 125cc Grands prix, including the Dutch TT at Assen.

Derbi makes a range of small-capacity (50cc), high-performance, road-registerable motorcycles in both roadrace replica and supermotard replica configurations and Electric Motorsport modifies these machines to make them electric motorcycles and sells them to the public.

“The Derbis come with 50cc two-stroke engines with a six speed transmission,” Kolin told Gizmag. “They come in supermotard or road race replica versions and we’ve now done a few supermotards and they work really well.”

“We pull the 50cc motor and transmission and sell it and then install an electric motor, the batteries and the controller. There’s a lot of other minor work. We change the throttle, do some major frame modifications, cut out some things and weld on others. Do a lot of metal fabrication on the frame and then repaint it.”

Reworking the Derbis works well for Electric Motorsport as it enables a motorcycle with an exceptionally high quality to be produced, with superb running gear, suspension, brakes, electrics and all ancillaries. “If we were making a bike from scratch, we’d need to go through a lot of hoops to get it Department of Transport certified as street legal”, says Kolin, “and we’d also need to become licensed as a manufacturer, so by doing a conversion, we don’t need to do that.”

When we speak to Koiln he is highly enthusiastic about the new supermotard.

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