Another indicator that gadgets, technology, and motorcycles are on some horrible collision course.
Agility Saietta electric sports bike eyes-on: "
We came, we saw, we took pictures. A London-based startup by the name of Agility today unveiled its first and only product, the
Saietta electric sports bike, and we just had to pop out to the MCN Motorcycle Show in its hometown to peep it for ourselves. Well, what is there to say that the pictures don't already? We should probably start off with that massive hump you see up front. At first glance it makes the bike look extremely front-heavy, but it is in actual fact mostly a shell -- made of a lightweight composite material whose ingredients we were not allowed to know -- which channels air into the areas that need cooling and, more importantly, optimizes the hell out of this two-wheeler's aerodynamics. There's an exposed double wishbone suspension system, just some of the eye candy on this extremely reflective racer, and the weight balance is, contrary to our first impression, almost perfectly even. This is due to the
battery packs being stashed in the center, just in front of a
brushed DC motor with 90+ percent efficiency (Agility tells us the whole roaring machine has an 83 percent throughput efficiency).
There will be a choice of body panels, we saw a highly reflective chrome one, but a tamer red version is also available. Speaking of colors, the
tiny speedometer lights up in a snazzy blue for night riding. We were looking at only the company's third production prototype, but pre-orders are already being taken -- at prices of just under £10,000 for the S model with a 50-mile range and just under £14,000 for the R variant that has a twin battery pack and, correspondingly, can stretch out to 100 miles -- for an April delivery. US pricing is said to feature a "slight" premium, but Agility hopes it may be able to build some of these Saietta bikes over on the West Coast, potentially cutting into the expense of selling them in North America. The only thing our pictures don't reveal is how a bike with instant torque and a four-second 0-60 acceleration (on the lighter S model, the R does it in five) feels like, but if we're really good over the next few weeks, we might just get a chance to ride one and find out for ourselves.
Agility Saietta electric sports bike eyes-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Feb 2011 14:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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