BRD is an American “team of racers, riders, designers, engineers, makers, builders, thinkers, mechanics and troublemakers” who “build electric motorcycles because it’s what we were born to do” in San Francisco.
They announced their plan to build electric motorcycles (battery powered bikes) designed to “outperform gas equivalents.” BRD Team unveiled last week in San Francisco a pre-production version of an electric motorcycle. Called RedShift, their motorcycle is slated for mass production in 2012 to come in “dual-sport” and “urban” variants, both with promising performance as the gas-powered 250cc.
Having 40 hp and 5.2kWh battery capacity on a range of about 50 miles per a charge, its price around US$15,000 seems to be relatively expensive. As BRD Team stated, early adopters are often willing to pay a premium and there are lots of reasons to like these motorcycles – they’re zippy, fun, quiet, require very little maintenance and they don’t produce emissions at the tail-pipe.
Range anxiety and twiddling your thumbs while waiting for the electric motorcycles to recharge are the clear downsides, but improved battery technology and designs that allow batteries to be swapped over should help address these issues moving forward.
Chief Design Officer, Jeff Sand said that “we’ve developed a completely new method for manufacturing motorcycle frames that allows us to build a competitive chassis right here in California.”
BRD Team is definitely putting the focus on the performance. “We just want to make faster motorcycles” said CEO, Marc Fenigstein. “We’re a team of riders and racers with high-performance gas machines in the garage. We’re building the bikes we’d rather be riding.”
Let’s keep an eye on them…
It’s a very impressive technology innovation, with electricity but does not rule out the possibility for high performance in driving.