The Quickshift
- High-performance electric motorcycles are taking the world by storm
- The Vector-ST from Electric Superbike Twente is a notable example of this.
- It’s a fully electric superbike that was built by a team of students from the University of Twente and the Saxion University of Applied Sciences
High-performance electric two-wheelers always excite me. This is especially true when they’re born on the race track, as a lot of the technology we take for granted on our daily machines were first used in racing.
And while lots of big manufacturers are investing heavily in the EV space, it’s always a good thing when developments surrounding EVs come from students and young professionals who really believe in what they’re doing. After all, nothing can beat the hormone and caffeine-fueled passion of youth, right?
This is exactly what gave birth to the Electric Superbike Twente, a student racing team hailing from Enschede, Netherlands. Their goal is simple: build a fully electric superbike entirely from scratch—well, pretty much from scratch.
The team first opened its doors in 2017, and since then, has developed quite a handful of high-performance electric track beasts. The team is made up of students from the University of Twente and the Saxion University of Applied Sciences, both of which are headquartered in the Netherlands. And in 2018, the team had its first taste of success when its Liion-GP race bike bagged the European Championship in the MotoE.
Fast-forward to the present, and Electric Superbike Twente’s still very much at it, with its latest creation, the Vector-ST, putting down a successful test run at the TT Circuit Assen.
The newly developed electric superbike did this during Jack’s Racing Day 2024, one of the largest combined car, motorcycle, and kart racing events in Europe, sharing the track with a whole bunch of high-performance two- and four-wheelers.
As for the bike itself, well, it’s nothing short of an engineering marvel, and the fact that it was built by a bunch of kids makes it even more badass. For starters, it has a top speed of 300 kilometers per hour (188 miles per hour), and rockets from zero to 60 miles per hour in under three seconds. It does this through a custom-built 160 kW PMAC electric motor with 625 Nm (463 pound-feet) of torque to the rear wheel. The entire bike tips the scales at a fairly modest 200 kilograms (440 pounds), pretty impressive, considering it’s rocking an 8 kWh modular Lithium Polymer battery pack.
The bike is underpinned by a custom chromium-molybdenum steel frame mated to a swingarm from a Honda CBR600RR. The team fitted a set of Öhlins front forks, as well as a custom-built rear shock.
As for the way the bike rides, well, it’s clear to see from the testing video that this thing is a capable machine. It sounds pretty sick, too, with an electronic spaceship-like sound replacing what would otherwise be an exhaust note.
At the end of the day, there’s no denying that projects like the Vector-ST are laying down the groundwork for the future of racing, which would eventually influence how the bikes we ride on the street are made. It’s certainly way different from what any of us are used to, but if this is what the future of high-performance superbikes looks like, well you might as well count me in.
