Electric motorcycles provide designers with a whole new set of possibilities such including different materials such as this Phillipines-made Banatti Green Falcon made with bamboo.
The designers also took advantage of the electric bike’s quiet drive to install a JBL sound system in the bike that they call a “Rocking raptor”.
The Banatti Green Falcon is the product of Meep Inc (Modular Energy Efficient Portage), led by creative designer and CEO Christopher Paris Lacson.
Only 111 will be made at a price of $US21,000.
Bamboo Green Falcon
Bamboo is a very promising material to use in electric motorcycles as it is light, very strong, flexible and easy to work with. It also fits in with the environmentally friendly nature of electric motorcycles (if you can source clean electricity).
Hence the name “Green Falcon” for this bike.
Bamboo is eco-friendly because it doesn’t require a lot of water to grow, it regenerates quickly after harvesting and it absorbs the same amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as it releases when harvested.
The Philippine government plans to plant millions of hectares of bamboo over the next three years and has encouraged engineers and designers to find interesting uses for the material in their Bamboo Extreme program.
Christopher has come up with a way to weave bamboo to make it as strong as steel yet lighter than fibreglass.
Green power
Banatti comes from the Filipino word “banat” which means to go fast, hit it, or push it.
Yet the Green Falcon only achieves a top speed of 100km/h with 45-50km of range.
Although they say it will wheelie thanks to its unspecified light weight and 150Nm of torque.
It currently only uses a small 3.3-kW (4.4-hp) electric motor and a small 48-volt lithium battery, but MEEP plans to use more powerful motors and bigger batteries in the future.
Unusual materials
Another electric bike that uses non-traditional materials is the Rocsie which is made of leather and wood.
Rocsie wood E-motorbikeThese bikes show the potential to use different materials on an electric bike that doesn’t weigh as much as a traditional motorbike or produce as much heat.