As the availability of electric vehicles gains momentum it is perhaps no surprise that custom builders would start to appear on the scene.
Luckily, despite being behind the world in the uptake of electric cars and motorcycles we are blessed with a growing number of clever, entrepreneurial individuals who are determined to bring style and performance to the world of electric motorcycles.
In fact, when I did some digging recently, I discovered that there are at least 15 companies or brands of electric two wheelers available in Australia already. Whilst it’s a tiny niche, there is actually a remarkable choice of new bikes available and small flow of second-hand bikes.
You can already get a two-wheel drive farm bike from Ubco, a number of budget Chinese made commuter bikes or one of Fonzarellis’ highly popular scooters. Sweden’s quirky but stylish Cake motorcycle brand is listed, the WYLD electric mini chopper is out there and there’s the promise of a number of other bikes from existing brands.
Moving up the power range, Evoke have a growing presence here which we featured recently, Savic motorcycles are plugging away at their stylin café racer release and pioneers like ELMOFO and Catavolt continue to beaver away too.
Move up the range and we have KTM’s Freeride, the promise of the pending release of an updated maxi electric scooter from BMW and of course, the king of the electric motorcycle crop in Australia, the Harley Davidson Livewire.
If that’s not enough for you, in great news a new partnership recently launched down under called GRID Cycles, who have a mission to “Get more riders excited about electric motorcycles”.
They are doing this by blending the evocative styling of classic bikes with modern technology and if their first two creations are anything to go by, they might just be onto something.
Tom Gilroy from Purpose Built Moto is one of the best-known custom motorcycle builders/film makers in Australia and has partnered with Tech Founder Tobin Page to create Grid Cycles.
As they said to me: “Most electric motorcycles on the market don’t look great. Grid are taking the best electric motorcycles out there – Zero, Livewire, Energica then giving them upgraded components and iconic custom bike looks.”
They have begun importing new and ex-demo Zero and Energica Motorcycles from Europe with a range of late model bikes due to land soon. For the discerning buyer, you’ll no doubt have the option to wheel it into the workshop and have them create a custom bike, dripping with personalised custom goodness for you.
Their first two creations – the Street Tracker and Scrambler epitomise the vision.
The Street Tracker is based on a Zero SRS platform, but the team have totally updated the styling to “nostalgic street tracker” with all new bodywork, custom wheels and a bunch of very tasty after-market components.
There other creation bike is the Scrambler, this time based on the KTM Freeride. The Freeride was designed as a shorter range, higher performance bike and has a strong reputation for being a very serious off-road fun machine.
Again, the team did some clever and very stylish customisation to convert a typical off road looking KTM into a classic styled scrambler, complete with surfboard racks and a swag full of tasty high end components to complete the transformation.
As I’ll endlessly tell anyone who’ll listen, electric motorcycles are a “low cost, EV gateway machines” – they are cheaper than electric cars and, in many cases, have vastly superior performance levels.
The diversity of bikes already available, now seductively expanded with the addition of Grid motorcycles customs, can only be good news for Australian buyers.
Grid Cycles have a range of electric motorcycles and services available now and are taking orders for new models arriving soon You can contact Grid Cycles here.