Whenever a journalist speaks to a dealer about electric bikes, they are often told that we’ll need a ‘big player’ to launch a battery powered bike before it can take off properly. And now the biggest of them all – Honda – has entered the scene, with its first production electric two-wheeler to go on sale in the UK and Europe.
But this big moment is centred on a small bike. The new EM1 e: (that’s the official title, not the cat walking over the keyboard) is a small, lightweight moped-class electric scooter, with one of the new Honda removable lithium-ion batteries. The power output is modest – 2.3bhp – as is the range – 25 miles. Weight is just 95kg though, and top speed is the limited moped 30mph. Price and availability is still to be confirmed as we go to press.
The importance of the EM1 e: isn’t just in the physical bike itself of course. Rather this could be the start of a more mainstream environment to support electric power on two wheels, with an infrastructure to support removable chargeable batteries, and nine more models on the way from Honda. Other makers, including KTM, Yamaha and Piaggio, are also backing the universal swappable battery scheme.
We’re still a long way from affordable battery-powered equivalents of Fireblades, Africa Twins and CB1000 Rs. But as with the first Honda bikes, which were treated as a joke by many when they arrived in the 1960s, this may well be where all those machines will come from…