A team of British specialist engineers at Arc have built a new intelligent electric motorbike, which has already been hailed as perhaps one of the advanced motorcycles ever made. The staff at Arc have impressive credentials, from working within big names such as Land Rover, Aston Martin and Jaguar, to designing specialist vehicles for emergency rescue services and even Bond movies.
Priced at £90k, the Arc Vector comes with an intelligent biker jacket, which can actually digitally connect the rider to the road. The innovative jacket, named Origin, can send alerts to the rider in regards to any dangers that may be close to them and provide dynamic feedback. It’s inbuilt human-machine interface (HMI), and its audio-type haptic amplifiers, work together like the vibration notifications on a smartphone. The alerts then connect to and are displayed on the Heads-Up Display (HUD) in the Zenith helmet.
The state-of-the-art helmet uses an Iron Man-esque visor display, to show the rider everything from the speedo to the sat-nav. It also has a live rear-view camera encased within it, which allows the rider to see directly behind the bike without having to turn their head. As a bonus, the jacket also plays music and can inform the rider if they are pushing the motorbike close to its limits, by looking at how hard they brake or open up the throttle.
Milan’s EICMA Motorcycle show was the setting for the launch of the futuristic electric motorbike. It was here that the motorcycle world first got a glimpse of the stylish Arc Vector, with its lightweight chassis and distinct carbon components. The whole bike only weighs in at 220kg, even though it houses a bulky electric power plant onboard. It also includes other exotic parts that you’d expect to find on a top MotoGP bike, including BST wheels and Ohlins suspension.
The motorbike apparently has a range of 200 miles when fully charged, but this applies to urban use only. The range when travelling on the motorway will be around 120 miles according to Arc. This still puts the bike ahead in terms of efficiency, over other electric motorbikes currently on the market, by around 30%.
The founder of Arc, Mark Truman, was quoted as saying:
“We felt that there was more one could get out of motorcycling which no one was tapping into… This is about using technology to strip back the experience of riding a bike.”
‘’The HUD and haptics of the helmet and jacket work in tandem with the Vector bike to remove distractions and emphasise the joy of riding.”
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