India's top mid-size motorbike manufacturer, Royal Enfield starts a collaborative with a newly founded Swedish/Spanish e-motorbike maker...
India's top mid-size motorbike manufacturer, Royal Enfield starts a collaborative with a newly founded Swedish/Spanish e-motorbike maker Stark Future SL in an effort to co-develop for Indian market.
And as part of the deal Eicher Motors, RE’s parent company will gain a board seat of Stark Future. This collaboration brings benefits across both the entities, necessary to stay in business for a longer run. Making an initial equity investment of €50 million (Rs 439 crore) as declared in a statement by Eicher Motors, which translates to a 10.35 percent equity stake in Stark Future SL.
The historical & established brand RE will gain all the necessary intellectual data to develop their own electric motorcycles of their own, while Start Future will enjoy the much needed funding & manufacturing support from a veteran manufacturer in the motorcycle world.
Stark Future recently launched its first high performance electric motocross bike, the Stark VARG, which received an exceptional response from global media, professional riders and dealers.
Eicher Motors is in a severe market pressure to venture into electric vehicle space for its motorcycle company Royal Enfield, as the Indian & Global market trend is moving towards electrification. To achieve this Eicher Motors will be signing for a strategic investment in European electric motorcycle manufacturer Stark Future SL.
This investment will pave the way for a long-term partnership in collaborative R&D in electric motorcycles, technology sharing, technical licensing, and manufacturing for Eicher Motors,
the statement added.
Royal Enfield will support SF in the manufacturing process, which in turn will help gain on intellectual properties from SF in lightweight components and also both the companies could also plan to share EV architectures in the future.
Speaking about Stark Future and this partnership, Siddhartha Lal managing director of Eicher Motors’ says, he loves the vision, passion and focus of the team at Stark Future.
“Leisure motorcycles do not easily lend themselves to EV technology at this stage, due to challenges like the battery range, packaging, weight and cost. This has resulted in stunted growth of this segment till now. Stark Future has been able to understand and harness the potential of EV technology by dramatically outperforming ICE offerings, without compromising on range, weight, packaging and cost,”
says Lal.
CEO of Royal Enfield, B Govindarajan adds up,
“We see immense synergies in this partnership. While they are scaling up and planning their market entry soon, we will support Stark in the industrialisation process. While they are thought leaders in EV technology, particularly in light-weight components and innovative solutions, we at Royal Enfield will draw on these capabilities for developing our EV platforms and will also plan to share some EV platforms in the future”
Anton Wass founder and CEO of Stark Future, explained how he works closely with Siddhartha Lal, Govindrajan and his team for the few months. Impressed on with how Royal Enfield has progressed in the past 2-3 decades and their continuous focus to build and develop more products into the future of sustainable motorcycling, he said;
“With the Stark VARG we believe we have a launch model that will reset benchmarks, so to know that the bike’s technical basis will spread much further and filter into more machinery and products is another source of pride for us. It has been a short, intense and incredible journey for us so far but our link with Royal Enfield and what lies in store in the coming years are brilliant signs for the future,”
Wass adds up.
“To now partner with one of the very first motorcycle brands in history, and be part of their journey towards sustainability is a huge inspiration for us at Stark,”
Said that, Wass explains his aim was to challenge and inspire the motorcycle industry with the creation of the Stark VARG and by bringing its electric technology from the drawing board to reality. He hopes that more traditional manufacturers would adopt the electric revolution sooner than later.
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