Is This The Future Of Electric Motorcycles?

The Johammer J1 is an Austrian designed and built all-electric motorcycle that's perfectly capable of cruising along at highway speeds and traveling up to 125 miles. In other words, it's probably the most important motorcycle of 2014. If you're looking for a commuter bike, this is your two wheeled Tesla. So it begs the question: is this the future of electric motorcycles?

Well, maybe. To some, sure, it looks like a fancy electric pizza cutter, but underneath the skin, it's really an ingenious bit of engineering.

Rather than simply put an electric power plant on a normal bike, they've designed everything from the ground up, all centered around the all-important battery pack.

That enabled them to locate all of the moving drivetrain bits out back by the rear wheel. It's a design that's efficient both from a visual and a physical standpoint. Better yet: easy maintenance.

When designing the suspension, they were able to depart from industry norms and mount the springs and shocks within the frame, since they weren't working around traditional mechanical elements.

From the "why aren't more bikes doing this anyway?" department, crucial data, like speed or time left on your charge, is displayed on the rear view mirror so you can check everything while also ensuring you're not about to get hit.

Johammer claims it's perfectly balanced, and they're taking orders now, but you've gotta be willing to part with $35,000. That's a lot for a just bike, but then this isn't really just a bike, is it?


Aaron Miller is the Rides editor for Supercompressor. He's looking forward to the future of motoring, and honestly doesn't know what the roads will look like in 2050.