Hero MotoCorp confirms electric motorcycle is on the way

It looks like Hero MotoCorp is preparing to fire on all cylinders in the EV segment. After the eMaestro electric scooter, we can now confirm that electric motorcycle is in the works from Hero MotoCorp.

This has been confirmed by Dr Pawan Munjal, Chairman, Hero MotoCorp in an interview with ETAuto. Hero’s electric motorcycle will compete with its cousin AE-47 from Hero Electric and Tork T6X, both of which are lining up for launch soon. Hero MotoCorp will be looking to match or better the specifications of these electric bikes, as well as the Revolt RV400.

While the AE-47 returns a range of 85 km in Power mode and 160 km in Eco mode, the T6X offers a range of 100 km in a single charge. The top speed is 85 km/h and 100 km/h for the AE-47 and T6X respectively. Like its competition, Hero will also be equipping its electric motorcycle with a digital instrument cluster and a mobile app for accessing various information of the e-motorcycle.

Here are some excerpts from the interview:

What is the vision for the next 10 years for Hero MotoCorp?

Pawan Munjal: There is a huge transformation right now from BS4 to BS6. The engineers and the entire R&D have been extremely busy switching from BS4 to BS6, and we have shown a big range of BS6 products. We have, for some time back, already started work on different technologies and among those technologies, there’s a huge focus on electrification. As you know, we have invested in Ather and we have almost 30 per cent share in Ather. We have clearly shown our direction in which we are headed for the future.

Other than that, we also have our own Hero Hatch. We have a couple of batches of our very young engineers, who have taken up different topics. We are working on electric products, we are working on pre-owned vehicles and recently we have new batches working two new products. Within our own R&D at CIT, there is work going on in electrification. We also showed one of the scooters, eMaestro, where we actually try to show the electric technology in the products we will be designing going forward.

Is there a possibility of electric bikes? Maybe a Splendor with a different brand name?

Pawan Munjal: Oh yes, there will be electric motorcycles as well. Not just scooters.

A few years back, Hero started an ambitious project with LEAP. How has LEAP gone forward?

Pawan Munjal: LEAP has been a very successful project. We had consultants working with us for a few years helping our teams on Leap and we actually have brought down our costs tremendously. Thereafter, LEAP has become a part of every engineering, every design, every component. LEAP is something which is very helpful in our margins.

Image of the Hero XPulse used for representation.

[Source: YouTube]