Ultraviolette’s second product likely to be another motorcycle

While Ultraviolette Automotive, the Bengaluru based company that has raised money from TVS Motor, gears up to unveil its first creation – the F77 performance motorcycle – tomorrow, that promises to disrupt the ‘sporty’ bike segment of India, the company has one eye on expanding its product offering and going much beyond.

In fact in the press release issued a few weeks ago announcing the soft launch date, the company said that it is “developing India’s first ecosystem of high performance electric vehicles and future-ready energy infrastructure.”

We asked the company’s CEO Narayan Subramaniam about the electric scooter spotted under the “Coming Soon” tab of Ultaviolette’s company website and that if we wouldn’t be wrong to assume that a high-performance scooter would be the second product:

I would not make that assumption because for now all the focus is on the F77 and the motorcycle segment. For the foreseeable future, the focus is on performance motorcycles.

Ultraviolette’s immediate challenge will be to demonstrate that an electric motorcycle can outperform IC engined counterparts in performance and cost of ownership. The founders wish to instill a pride of ownership with the F77, and it hopes that the aircraft-grade design and technology clubbed with 450 Nm of torque, a figure that would otherwise be regarded as a typo on a two-wheeler’s spec sheet, can help to accomplish this feat. While the price of the bike is under wraps, anything above INR 3 lakh barrier would make it exorbitantly expensive, and ideally the second product would have to be in a lower price band, accessible to a much larger base of customers.

Currently the Indian market has no recognizable brands selling electric motorcycles. In the performance scene, startups Emflux Motors, with the 200 kmph Emflux One, and Tork Motors, which has just received an investment from Mr. Ratan Tata, with the 100 kmph T6X are the future rivals that Ultraviolette would have to contend with. For now, it seems that Narayan and his team (if you set aside Revolt Motors) will become the first Indian startup to send a locally designed & developed electric motorcycle into series production.