Mike Brown

Tech

Novus' lightweight e-motorcycle is priced like an SUV

This futuristic bike is sleek, innovative, and totally unaffordable.

Meet the Novus. It's an upcoming electric motorbike, with a lightweight carbon-fiber monocoque frame that looks more like a standard bicycle than your typical crotch rocket.

The bike blends bicycle and motorcycle design to create something novel. It weighs just 165 lbs (75 kg), but offers 18 kilowatts of peak performance and a top speed of 75 mph.

3 secs

Is all it takes for this motorcycle to accelerate to 30 mph.

It still, however, manages to achieve some pretty great endurance. The Novus offers up to 62 miles of battery range when driving in a city.

The frame itself weighs just 15 pounds, but it can support a single passenger with a maximum payload of 276 pounds. The frame is where all the other components are housed.

You can also attach a smartphone to the bike that displays vehicle information via the Novus app which can change the bike's settings and enable various features.

The team, based in the German city of Braunschweig, is led by founder and CEO René Renger. He started the company last year after working as a car designer for Volkswagen.

The end result is a machine the team claims is "faster than other motorcycles with the same weight," but "lighter than other motorcycles with the same power."

The Novus starts at €46,284 ($54,630) for standard color and rims with a 7-kW motor and a top speed of 27 mph.

This rises to €49,197 ($58,056) for the 11-kW motor (56 mph top speed), and €51,094 ($60,295) for the 18-kW motor with a top speed of 75 mph.

The company plans to start "hand-building" their electric motorcycles in 2022 but pre-orders are now being offered through the companies website (with a €1,000 deposit).

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