1895 to 1950
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Patent drawing for an "Electric Bicycle" (1895)
The early history of electric motorcycles is somewhat unclear. On 19 September 1895, a patent application for an "electrical bicycle" was filed by Ogden Bolton Jr. of Canton Ohio. On 8 November of the same year, another patent application for an "electric bicycle" was filed by Hosea W. Libbey of Boston.
At the Stanley Cycle Show in 1896 in London, England, bicycle manufacturer Humber exhibited an electric tandem bicycle. Powered by a bank of storage batteries, the motor was placed in front of the rear wheel. Speed control was by a resistance placed across the handlebars. This electric bicycle was mainly intended for racetrack use.
The October 1911 issue of Popular Mechanics mentioned the introduction of an electric motorcycle. It claimed to have a range of 75 miles (121 km) to 100 miles (160 km) per charge. The motorcycle had a three-speed controller, with speeds of 4 miles (6.4 km), 15 miles (24 km) and 35 miles (56 km) per hour.
In 1919, Ransomes, Sims & Jefferies made a prototype electric motorcycle in which the batteries were fitted under the seat of the sidecar. Even though the vehicle was registered for road use, it never went past the trial stage.
In 1936, the Limelette brothers founded an electric motorcycle company called Socovel (Société pour l’étude et la Construction de Vehicules Electriques or Company for research and manufacture of electric vehicles) in Brussels. They continued production during the German occupation with their permission. Due to fuel rationing, they found some degree of success. But after the war, they switched to conventional models. The electric models remained available until 1948.
During the World War II, compelled by fuel rationing in the United States, Merle Williams of Long Beach, California invented a two-wheeled electric motorcycle that towed a single wheeled trailer. Due to the popularity of the vehicle, Williams started making more such vehicles in his garage. In 1946, it led to the formation of the Marketeer Company (current-day ParCar Corp.).
1950 to 1980
In 1967, Karl Kordesch, working for Union Carbide, made a fuel cell/Nickel–cadmium battery hybrid electric motorcycle. It was later replaced with a hydrazine fuel cell, giving it a range of 200 miles (320 km) per gallon and a top speed of 25 mph (40 km/h).
In the same year, a prototype electric motorcycle called the Papoose, was built by the Indian Motorcycle Company under the direction of Floyd Clymer.
In 1974, Auranthic Corp., a small manufacturer in California, produced a small motorcycle called the Charger. It had a 30 mph (48 km/h) and a 50 miles (80 km) range on a full charge.
In the early 1970s, Mike Corbin built a street-legal commuter electric motorcycle called the Corbin Electric. Later in 1974, Corbin, riding a motorcycle called the Quick Silver, set the electric motorcycle speed world record at 165.387 mph (266.165 km/h). The motorcycle used a 24 volt electric starter motor from a Douglas A-4B fighter plane. In 1975, Corbin built a battery-powered prototype street motorcycle called the City Bike. This motorcycle used a battery manufactured by Yardney Electric.
In June 1975, the first Annual Alternative Vehicle Regatta was held at Mt. Washington, New Hampshire. The event was created and promoted by Charles McArthur, an environmentalist. On June 17, Corbin's motorcycle completed the 8 miles (13 km) uphill course in 26 minutes.
1980 to 2000
In 1988, Ed Rannberg, who founded Eyeball Engineering, tested his electric drag motorcycle in Bonneville. In 1992, the January issue of Cycle World carried an article about Ed Rannberg's bike called the KawaSHOCKI. It could complete a quarter mile (0.25 miles (400 m)) in 11–12 seconds.
In 1995, Electric Motorbike Inc. was founded by Scott Cronk and Rick Whisman in Santa Rosa, California. In 1996, EMB Lectra was built by Electric Motorbike Inc., which used a variable reluctance motor. It had a top speed of about 45 mph (72 km/h) and a range of 35 miles (56 km). About a 100 of these were built.
In 1996, the first mass-produced electric scooter, Peugeot Scoot'Elec, was released. It used Nickel-Cadmium batteries and a range of 40 km (25 mi).
2000 to present
On 26 August 2000, Killacycle established a drag racing record of completing a quarter mile (400 m) in 9.450 seconds on the Woodburn track in Oregon. Killacycle used lead acid batteries at a speed of 152.07 mph (244.73 km/h).Later, Killacycle using A123 Systems Li-ion nano-phosphate cells set a new quarter mile record of 7.824 seconds breaking the 8 seconds barrier at 168 miles per hour (270 km/h) in Phoenix, Arizona at the All Harley Drag Racing Association (AHDRA) 2007, on 10 November 2007.
On 4–5 April 2009, Zero Motorcycles hosted the "24 Hours of Electricross" event in San Jose. It is considered the first all-electric off-road endurance race.
On 14 June 2009, the first electric Time Trial Xtreme Grand Prix (TTXGP) all electric street motorcycle race took place on the Isle of Man in which 13 machines took part. Rob Barber riding a motorcycle built by Team Agni won the race. He completed the 37.73 miles (60.72 km) course in 25 minutes 53.5 seconds, an average speed of 87.434 miles per hour (140.711 km/h).
In 2010, ElectroCat, made by Eva Håkansson, set the record time for an electric motorcycle to climb Pikes Peak. The motorcycle, ridden by John Scollon, completed the 12 miles (19 km) course in 16 minutes 55.849 seconds. ElectroCat uses batteries manufactured by A123 Systems.
On 26 June 2011, Chip Yates broke ElectroCat's previous record at Pikes Peak. He completed the course in 12 minutes 50.094 seconds. On 30 August 2011, Yates riding his prototype SWIGZ.COM electric superbike established the official Guinness record of the fastest electric motorcycle. The motorcycle clocked a speed of 316.899 km/h (196.912 mph) at Bonneville.
In 2012, Paul Ernst Thede set an SCTA record run of 216.8 miles per hour at Bonnevile Salt Flats, Utah. This did not qualify as a Guinness World record as it wasn't timed by the FIM timing association.
On 30 June 2013, Carlin Dunne riding a Lightning Motorcycle-built electric bike beat conventional motorcycles at Pikes Peak. He clocked a 10 minutes 00.694 seconds at the 12.42 miles (19.99 km) course.
Vectrix in 2006 introduced the first commercially available high performance electric scooter, the VX-1. Following insolvency and initial bankruptcy reorganization, the Gold Peak battery group purchased the company in 2009. Vectrix expanded product lines, offering the VX-2 and the three wheeled VX-3. But Vectrix ceased operations in January 2014 and filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation, with its remaining assets auctioned off the following June.
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Since 2016, technology has evolved, and electric motorbikes & scooters are now the present, not the future.
by Gabe Ets-Hokin
Interest in electric motorcycles is growing; clean, silent and maintenance-free vehicles that offer the fun and freedom of gasoline-burning motorcycles, without paying $5 a gallon should be an easy sell. So where are all the heavyweight electric motorcycles? To answer that question, you should know abit about the history and technology that goes into the machines that will someday, somehow become the future of motorcycling.
No, Benjamin Franklin didn't invent or discover electricity In fact, archaeologists think even the ancient Persians and Romans may have had batteries, perhaps to use in electroplating. Other than as a novelty or cool party trick (“hey Hesperus! Watch me make the cat dance!”) it wasn't until the 1740s that experimenters showed they could generate an electromagnetic field with an electro-chemical reaction and cause a mechanism to spin or move. Cool story, bros, but it was still almost another century before something recognizable as an electric motor was powering crude models and carriages capable of (slowly) carrying a human passenger.
The introduction of the clean, reliable and powerful DC motor in the late 1880s changed transportation forever, freeing people from walking and stepping in mounds of horse poop. Electric streetcars, trains and cars quickly became part of the urban landscape, along with the modern safety bicycle and...hey! Are you thinking what I'm thinking?
Well, so did several inventors, with patents for electric bicycles going to at least three of them in the 1890s. This led to the mass adoption of electric motorcycles, and after a century of development, a cheap, affordable, high-performance electric motorcycle is in every motorcycle enthusiast's garage.
Yeah, not! Just like with cars, in the early 20th Century there was a three-way wrestling match between cheap, power-packed gasoline, cumbersome (but incredibly powerful) steam, and simple, clean, reliable electricity as the preferred power source. And also like cars, gasoline won out: the easy refueling and more-than-adequate power-to-weight ratio of the gasoline engine (especially after the technological leaps in aircraft powerplants during World War I) left its competition in the dust.
Even as the modern world, with its filling stations and thousands of miles of pavement, took to gasoline-powered cars and motorcycles like Goldwing riders to all-you-can-eat pancake buffets, there was still some limited applications for electric motorcycles. The Autoped, which triggered a post-WWI mobility craze with its cheap and easy-to-ride stand-up scooter design was sold in an electric version by battery maker Eveready, but was greatly outsold by the zippy two-stroke gasoline model.
Perhaps the best known production electric motorcycle was the Socovel, built in Belgium during the German occupation of World War II. With heavy lead-acid batteries, a range of about 30 miles and a less-than-impressive top speed of (maybe) 20 mph it beat walking in a time when gas was unobtainable, but as soon as the war ended demand for the vehicle (unsurprisingly) disappeared.
The Arab oil embargoes of the 1970s sparked spurred interest in electric motorcycles, and there was a spate of electric minibikes with deep-cycle marine batteries. Chopper builder Mike Corbin built a commuter he called the City Bike around 1970. Wrapped in svelte Corbin bodywork it looked fast but in fact could only muster about 30 mph, with a 40-mile range, but it was probably the first street-legal production (ish) motorcycle in the US.
To protect his bad-boy chopper-builder rep, Corbin built a streamliner to race at Bonneville—equipped with high-tech (for 1973) silver-zinc batteries and dual Navy jet starter motors, the bike set a record top speed of 165 mph (Corbin claims it did an unofficial run at over 200 mph), a record which stood until 2012. Corbin told The Vintagent blog he had to charge the bike directly from the high-voltage power line near his motel with jumper cables, as EVGo was still decades in the future.
The pinnacle of lead-acid electric motorcycles was the EMB Electra. The Santa Rosa, California manufacturer built about 100 of these from 1996 to 1999, which were (kind of) price competitive with gasoline bikes and could go up to 51 mph with a range of 30-ish miles. Regenerative braking and a four-hour charge time were features years ahead of the times, but it was just too slow and expensive to be a thing.
Corbin's speed record made it clear that electric motorcycles could be competitive with gasoline burners with the right technology. Luckily, we have NASA, which funded a huge body of research into non-combustion power systems for aerospace applications. Nickel-metal hydride and later, lithium-ion batteries, with energy density many times that of even the best deep-cycle marine batteries made the dreams of a long-range, high-speed electric motorcycle plausible, if not immediately possible—that kind of battery tech was only affordable to the military, astronauts and researchers.
That changed when laptops hit the market. There was enormous demand for lithium-ion batteries, which led to economies of scale, which meant a clever bird could affordably wire together a bunch of these to make a lot of storage capacity and on-tap torque. French scooter manufacturer Peugot may have been the first to market with nickel-cadmium batteries in the Scoot'Elec of 1995 (followed up with lithium-ion models in the early 2000s), and the Tesla Roadster of 2006, though a mere car, showed a future with high-performance, long-range EVs was possible.
The start of the modern e-moto era is likely 2009. Two models, the Zero S and Brammo Enertia, hit the market this year, both of them mass-produced, street legal and available to the public. The Zero was based on an electric motocrosser and looked like it, but offered a 70 mph top speed and 50 miles of range (at under 20 mph). The Brammo was a much more polished product and was $1,000 less at $7,995. It only had a 60 mph top speed and maximum range of 30 miles, but it was available at Best Buy, getting in front of millions of buyers. Sadly, it didn't catch on.
Electric motorcycles evolved greatly during the second decade of the new millennium, but success was still elusive. By 2020, Brammo was out of the game, as were several other e-moto startups like Alta and Mission Motors, but Harley Davidson, the best-know motorcycle brand for heavyweight motorcycles, entered the fray with its LiveWire, with an engineered-in distinctive turbine-like whine taking the place of Harley's signature rumble.
Italian manufacturer Energica makes a high-performance sportbike with a 150-mile top speed and range exceeding 100 miles. And Zero had come a very long way from its crude 2010 S: the 2020 SR had a maximum city range of almost 200 miles and a price that hadn't changed much adjusting for inflation. Still, very few electric motorcycles were sold compared to their gas-powered siblings.
In the United States, street-legal motorcycles are only about half the market, and electric off-road motorcycles have become very popular. Clean, silent and easy to ride, small electric motos are popular for getting small kids on two wheels. And in the trials segment, which prizes controllable power and a low center of gravity over top speed and long range has seen several electric motorcycles from European manufacturers like GasGas, Beta and Oset.
Speaking of Asia, if anything with an electric motor and wheels is an electric motorcycle, e-motos are already a serious player in the global motorcycle market.
Electric motorcycles have made amazing progress since riders wobbled slowly around Belgium on their Scovilles, but are (sadly) a long way from completely replacing dino-burners. It's counter-intuitive, given the success of Tesla and other EV makers, but aerodynamics, cost and weight are the main factors preventing electric motorcycle from dominating the long-range, heavyweight market. Most riders in the United States and Europe want a motorcycle that has 200 or more miles of range, recharge times akin to a quick gas-station fill up, and a price that's about the same as an ICE bike with similar performance.
That's a big ask. Because the rider acts like a huge sail, motorcycles have worse drag coefficients than semi-trailers; unlike cars, the streamlined bodywork needed to maximize range would be weird and unpalatable to most motorcyclists. Additionally, while the 800 pounds of batteries a Tesla Model 3 needs to go 270 miles don't make it that much heavier than the average sedan, a motorcycle with 300 or 400 pounds of batteries would be unwieldy; such a bike would probably only appeal to long-distance touring riders, a shrinking demographic. Barring a huge technological leap—solid-state batteries, for instance—a truly competitive, long-range and affordable electric motorcycle is still some years away.
But there's fuel for optimism. Keep the weight and speed of a motorcycle below 50 or 60 mph and the aerodynamics issue goes away, meaning a small and lightweight bike can go a reasonable commuting distance with a far smaller battery pack. That means a much lighter and cheaper motorcycle, something more like a powerful electric bicycle or moped than a traditional motorcycle.
Anyone that's walked around a large city on Earth lately has noticed the swarms of “e-mobility solutions” flitting about, from e-bikes to scooters and stand-up contraptions like the Autoped of yore. Some e-bikes priced under $3,000 (less than a decent gas-powered scooter) can hit 50 mph and have ranges exceeding 45 miles, and thanks to confusing and lightly enforced laws relating to bicycles, are accessible to anyone. More and more people are realizing electric bicycles are a cheap, convenient and fun way to get around even a hilly city like San Francisco.
The massive popularity of these small electric vehicles is likely the way electric motorcycles will eventually dominate the market—from the bottom up, introducing new riders to the awesome thrill of motorized two-wheel life, and selling them bigger and more capable vehicles as their experience grows and technology advances.
A final note: Yes, you'll still need top-quality hearing protection like you'll find here at Earpeace as part of your motorcycle gear. Our motorcycle earplugs cut down on the wind noise that damages hearing more than the roar of internal combustion. So gas or electrons, whatever you're burning we'll be (literally) along for the ride.
Gabe Ets-Hokin has been writing about motorcycles, cars, electric mobility and the gig economy in print and online since 2004. He lives in Oakland, California with his family and a burdensome cat.
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