These New Electric Motorcycles Can Be Recharged in Just 10 Minutes

Bryan Hood
·2 min read
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Lightning Motorcycle’s new electric bikes are intriguing for a number of reasons, but what has really caught our eye are their batteries.

The California-based company has announced that its upcoming LS-218 superbike (pictures above) and Strike sportsbike will be available with Enevate’s fast-charging battery packs, according to New Atlas. Because of this, the bikes can be recharged in about one-third the time it takes to fill up the battery of one of their electric peers.

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Enevate’s super-high-density silicon-anode batteries might be efficient enough to do away with some of the range anxiety still attached to electric motorcycles. You can choose to upgrade Lightning’s new models with a 24 kWh battery pack from the brand, which, because of the density of its cells, is the same size as the 20 kWh battery the manufacturer normally use. The LS-218 and Stirke are among the first EVs to use the technology.

Lightning Motorcycles Strike electric motorcycle
Lightning Motorcycles Strike

The extra 4 kWh of power gives both bikes an impressive range boost. Lightning CEO Richard Hatfield told the website the company was able to achieve “150 to 170 miles of range at 70 miles an hour” while testing the bikes on California’s Interstate 5. More impressive, though, is the fact that when the battery is running low you can refill it to 80 percent capacity (or about 135 miles of range) in just 10 minutes compared to the half-hour it would take to do the same with another electric bike.

There’s a catch, of course. You’ll need a Level 3 charger to take advantage of the battery pack’s fast-charging ability. If you do have access to one, though, you have yourself an electric bike that you can recharge in not that much longer than it takes to fill a traditional motorcycle’s gas tank.

You can reserve Lightning’s new models through the company’s website now (both bikes require a $10,000 deposit). Expect the Enevate battery packs to add about $8,000 to the price tag of each motorcycle, according to New Atlas. That pushes the LS-218’s price to around $46,000 and the Strike’s to about $28,000.

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