Recent history is littered with well intentioned start-ups who make big claims about revolutionising motorcycling with their innovative electric motorbikes, only to disappear without a trace or leave the world endlessly waiting for their wares. British company Arc and American brands Brammo and Lightning are three innovative companies that spring to mind when thinking about those who promised big but delivered little, and the internet is full of other plucky underdogs who discovered that the world was not yet ready for their revolution.
The latest tech company to throw its hat into the ring is Vancouver’s Damon Motorcycles, who are taking deposits for their ‘convertible’ motorcycle, called the Hypersport.
Like Arc and Lightning before them, Damon are throwing around some pretty impressive numbers for their bike, like 200bhp, a 200mph top speed and a 200 mile motorway range, and one of the most innovative design features is the shape shifting ergonomics package, which moves the screen, handlebars and footpegs at the touch of a button, allowing the rider to go from a sit up and beg riding position to a crouched racer set-up on the fly.
Damon says that its mission is to cause a paradigm shift for smarter and safer motorcycling and the prototypes are full of technology designed to achieve that.
Where the market leading, commercially available, electric motorcycles from Energica, Harley-Davidson and Zero are all relatively conventional in their approach to motorcycling, Damon appears to be taking a page out of the now defunct Arc’s playbook by reinventing the essence of what a motorbike is.
Just like Tesla brought previously unheard of technology to the car world, the Damon has a suite of artificial intelligence technology designed to make it safer and more connected to the rider.
The bike is fitted with cameras and sensors to give a 360-degree ‘radar’ to identify safety threats and potential accidents, which are relayed to the rider through onboard cameras, LED lights and vibrations through the handlebars. Damon says that this is a learning system, which starts to understand your riding style and identifies traffic patterns based upon the experience of all Damon riders.
Damon was founded by former snowboarder Jay Giroud and has a credible team of people behind it, including Alta Motors co-founder Derek Dorresteyn. Alta went to the wall at the end of 2018, but its range of fully-electric motocross bikes were widely acclaimed and performed well against comparable petrol-powered bikes.
Three versions of the bike are promised, and the company say that they can produce 1500 units a year – with the order book for 2021 already full.
The first version is the exclusive ‘Founders Edition’ which is reserved for the first 25 customers. The two ‘standard’ versions are the Hypersport HS, and the Hypersport Premier – which features higher component chassis components including suspension from Ohlins and brakes by Brembo.
Damon would appear to have addressed the three major objections to electric motorcycles, namely range, price and recharge time, although how they are able to make all the numbers add up remains to be seen.
Naturally the big range figure comes courtesy of having the biggest battery in the class. Damon are claiming a 21.5kWh battery, the same as Energica have introduced on their Ego superbike this year, and that’s 50% bigger than Zero’s new SR/S sports tourer. The Zero’s motorway range is around 120 miles, which would suggest a real world range of around 180 miles from a 21.5kWh unit when ridden sensibly. Damon say that the Hypersport can run for 201 miles when ridden at a steady 60mph, although should the rider use all of the 200mph/200bhp capability, it’s hard to imagine the range getting anywhere close to three digits!
Despite the huge battery, a claimed 200kg weight makes the Canadian bike lighter than the competition, while a sub-three hour charging time is possible through a standard level two charger, with the possibility to juice up to 80% in 20 minutes using appropriate public rapid chargers.
The bike was formally launched at Las Vegas’ prestigious CES tech show earlier this year, where it reportedly sold all 25 ‘Founders Edition’ models and took home the ‘Best in Innovation’ award. The company is already far down the road in development and is planning to have various police forces trial the machine this summer ahead of public sale.
Perhaps the most impressive stats are the prices. It’s not yet clear when or if they will be available in the UK, but US prices are $24,995 for the standard model and $39,995 for the Premier. That’s still a lot of money (£20,000 to £32,000) but by electric bike standards they would sit between the Zero SR/S and Harley-Davidson LiveWire on pricing, both of which would appear to have lower specifications.
Whether you’re excited by electric motorcycles or not, the tech on offer is interesting and could no doubt be applied to bikes with petrol propulsion as well as battery bikes.
If you’re tempted by a Damon, it’ll be at least 2022 before you can get one and you’ll need to order one direct. Go to www.damonmotorcycles.com for more information.
