At the end of May, 2022, Triumph announced that it had completed testing on its prototype TE-1 electric motorbike. As the first-ever electric motorcycle to come from Hinckley, quite naturally, expectations are fairly high. While motorbike passions obviously vary between riders, it’s difficult to say that Triumph tends to do anything by halves in the modern era.
What did Triumph learn from all of its TE-1 testing? That, the OEM said, would be a story for another day—July 12, 2022, to be exact. Since that’s today, here are all the details the team has revealed so far.
First of all, power. Peak horsepower is a claimed 175, alongside 80 pound-feet of torque. That’s all well and good, but you may wonder what it weighs at the curb. That number is 485 pounds, in a bike that Triumph says has “a physical size and scale comparable to a Street Triple, but with the ergonomics, geometry, and weight distribution of a Speed Triple.”
Gallery: Triumph TE-1 Prototype - Track Testing
What about range? That’s a claimed 100 miles on a full charge. As with all electric bikes, that number will vary based on a number of factors. Riding the bike hard, fast, aggressively, and constantly up hills should yield different results than if you take a leisurely ride in the country, with few elevation changes and not wringing every ounce of power out of that throttle.
The TE-1 also set an official zero to 60 mph time of 3.6 seconds, and managed zero to 100 in 6.2 seconds. No official top speed figure is listed at this time—but Triumph lists another type of impressive speed figure instead. If the team’s report is accurate, charging time to 80 percent of full is just 20 minutes.
Now, we’re not certain what type of charger was used to achieve this result. It’s presumably a DC fast charger of some type, but does it involve a proprietary plug? What’s the time to 100 percent? How robust are the power cells, since fast charging is usually harder on them than, say, slow charging overnight? We, uh, have some questions.
In the TE-1's final testing phase, Triumph invited Daytona 200 champion Brandon Paasch to help in evaluating the motor, as well as track testing the final TE-1 prototype. He summed up the experience as follows:
“The throttle response on the TE-1 is kind of incredible, it’s very torquey and when you first touch the throttle it’s instant power, which is obviously what I love as a motorcycle racer – I love when it’s super-torquey and picks up right away, so for me it was a really great experience. I got to peg this thing all the way from zero to 100% throttle and it’s unbelievably quick, it pulls like crazy.”
Now that prototype TE-1 testing is complete, we’ll have to wait and see when a production version shows its face—and what changes may be made. The styling on the prototype was extremely well-received, so hopefully it won’t change much. Then again, Triumph’s touch with styling is remarkably consistent, so we’d be surprised if they take any hard turns away from giving the public what it wants in that area.
