We’re not particularly ecologically minded at Rescogs. We love the smell of fossil fuels exiting a combustion engine, adore two-strokes, and when we’re not riding, we’re often in a van transporting bikes around the country. But as electric bikes start to get better and better, it’d be stupid to ignore them, and some recent moves by Brammo really could give a huge boost to biking, whether it’s powered by petrol or an electric motor.
First up is the news that Brammo has raised $28 million in investment funding – business news isn’t necessarily exciting, but consider that more cash means more improvements to the bikes, and also more people with a vested interest in promoting them. If investors see electric bikes as a huge growth market and are putting their cash into it, then it’s potentially a good sign for the future, and shows how electric-powered two-wheelers could become fashionable. Just look at the whole fashion for owning a Prius made people actually pay attention to electric cars.
And here’s the really cool bit:
More important to us is the fact Brammo has bought Quantyaparx, which is a chain of European off-rad tracks launched two years ago. The company has 16 dirt bike tracks in Austria, Germany, Spain, Sweden and the UK. They’ll now be called BrammoParx, and let you ride the Brammo Engage and Encite dirt bikes for an hourly fee. The cost is about £60 for an hour at the moment.
Remember that electric bikes don’t have any pollution or noise issues, and that electric go-kart tracks have been springing up all over the UK. Now picture being able to nip along for an hour or two off-road riding in the centre of your local town, or being able to get teenagers onto an off-road track without having to buy a bike, a trailer and driving to a track in the middle of nowhere every week.
“These bike tracks are in urban corridors, where people can ride more often and you don’t have to make a journey out of it,” Brammo founder Craig Bramscher said. “It allows us to get a lot more people on the bike and get more information back from customers. Essentially, they will be able to ride the bikes for a few hours or days instead of making a long-term commitment.”
The plan is to grow to 100 locations in mainly large urban areas, licensing to local operators, and aim to expand the idea to the U.S.
You could nip out for an off-road ride during your lunch hour, or get your colleagues in the office to try them out as one of those ‘team-building’ things we used to have to do sometimes before we started Rescogs.
And don’t forget – one of the biggest reasons for the success of Italian riders in racing comes from the huge boom in minimoto years back, where tracks sprang up in every town, and riders like Rossi and Melandri got their start at an early age. Expand that to a range of electric off-roaders and we could see more British riders becoming successful, as well as the potential that someone getting a taste of an electric bike might stay with plug power, or switch to a petrol engine depending on what they’re after in the future.
Now who is going to open up a track in our town, or are we going to have to do it ourselves?
Leave a Reply