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Quiet Riot
If I remember correctly, it was about a year ago today that KTM revealed their Freeride Electric concept at the EICMA show. This bike was KTM’s foray into the growing field of electric motorcycles.
What was different was that instead of the e-bike being produced by a company that was built from the ground up to make a motorcycle, KTM is a company, that after being established in 1934, has been building motorcycles ever since. So, instead of having a bike that rides horribly in the dirt (we’re looking at you Zero Cycles), you have a bike that has an off-road pedigree from the get-go!
Well, the Freeride E (as they’re now calling it) is no longer a concept and during this year’s EICMA show, they released the following video to illustrate what the electric vehicles team has been working on over the last year.
After watching the video, the only thing I can think about is how much hooliganism could ensue with a bunch of these bikes around. Us local guys have been known to terrorize the local business parks with a KTM 690 Duke, 450 SMR, 530 EXC and a Suzuki DRZ 250 in something we called Urban Assault. During Urban Assault we’d wheelie off docks, down stairs, bunny hop over parking barriers, back it in through plazas and gardens and pretty much run amuck until someone who lived close by called the cops or the cops followed the sounds of 4-stroke off-road exhaust and kicked us off the property.
If we could do the same, but in total quiet… Oh man! Trouble, trouble, trouble!
Pulling specs from the Wired article (May 2010), the bike weighs in at just under 200 lbs, has a range of 90 minutes and a price target of $13334. Oh, and if you read the article, Wired does start to bag on the KTM in favor of the Zero X e-bike but they’re just looking at stats: When Brian Catterson of Motorcyclist Magazine took the X out, he broke two engines and they claimed that it wasn’t a dirt bike, just styled like one. (You can read that DirtRider post yerself!)
No date yet as to when the Freeride E is expected to hit the streets (if at all in the U.S.) but I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for it.
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