DERBI GPR EV Geared Up To Shock The Competition
Last month a video of the DERBI GPR EV showed up on YouTube. It was posted by someone who appeared to be working with Sevcon and it was hard to tell if Derbi was behind the bike. I recently found the blog of Derbi Project Manager Carles Carrera. And guess what, he has a detailed picture of the Derbi GPR EV front and center.
Carles describes the ground up development methodology DERBI and their partners used in designing and building the bike over the course of 3 months. He cites flaws in Brammo, Zero, Quantya, Vectrix mentioning thier “poorly developed mechanical platform” and saying they fail to deliver an electric motorcycle that has all drive components communicating in an orderly fashion.
The electric Derbi was engineered to have it’s batteries, motor and controllers to work together like a tradition ICE motor’s carburetor, engine and fuel system. The GPR EV even appears to utilize some sort of transmission and has a traditional gear selector. The left hand lever could be a rear brake or a clutch lever.
UPDATE: Carles informed me the bike has 2 gears.
One thing that has me scratching my head is “Benelli” etched into the frame spar. As far as I know Derbi and Benelli have no current affiliation. I could be wrong about this. Anyone know the connection?
No mention of racing in TTXGP or ePower but Carles might (hope, hope) be hinting at it in his last paragraph, last sentence…
And what the hell is Vema-Vogt-Perm-Sevcon-DPS? They are a group of companies working together to integrate it’s own world class product into a world class drivetrain. DPS is in charge of the batteries, Sevcon is in charge of the controller, Perm for the motor, Vogt for the engineering and Vema for the integration on coordination. And it proved to be a winning team.
Source: EF Motion
In: Derbi, News · Tagged with: Carles Carrera, Derbi, Derbi electric motorcycle, Derbi EV, Derbi GPR EV, DERBI Nacional Motor, Derbi Product Manager, EF Motion, gearbox, geared electric motorcycle, pictures, transmission
on January 22, 2010 at 12:52 pm
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sounds typical of some startups….. slam other manufacturers and hope that people buy your stuff…..
I figured Derbi was better than that….
on January 22, 2010 at 1:24 pm
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Well, Scoop McScooper, you should be proud of yourself. As for the “winning team” = racing connection, I want what you’re smoking. LOL
on January 22, 2010 at 1:30 pm
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Yeah, I like to scoop. :D Yeah, guess that was a stretch at the end. I should have said I really hope. How could they not?
on January 25, 2010 at 11:03 am
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[...] published an article on Friday, January 22, about a blog post by DERBI project manager Carles Carrera, detailing the [...]
on October 21, 2010 at 3:13 pm
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[...] to be a European hotspot for electric drive two wheeler development. Rieju’s Spanish neighbor, Derbi, is experimenting with an electric sportbike and the 2010 TTXGP final is being held this weekend approximately 350 [...]