As someone who loves electric motorcycles, they have a big problem: range. While electric cars and trucks can hide range issues with larger and larger batteries underneath the floorboards, the same can't be done with electric motorcycles, where weight and size come at a premium. There's just no room for big batteries.
So, since their inception, electric motorcycles have had to make do with abysmal range, which has caused their popularity to basically be nil. I mean, I hop onto a motorcycle for the freedom of the open road, not to plan a 25-stop slog-fest while hypermiling to the next town over. It's why I think, at present, the only EV motorcycles that make sense are dirt bikes where range doesn't really matter past 100 miles.
But Stark Futures, the folks who make the Varg dirt bikes, and have teased a host of upcoming on-road bikes, want more for the future. The company wants real-world on-road electric motorcycles that don't suck the joy out of motorcycling. They want a fast-charging, big-range, real motorcycle, and the company is partnering with a Chinese battery company to bring that future to reality.
According to the press release, China's Wanxiang A123 has entered into a partnership with Stark Futures "to industrialize the 26120 cylindrical lithium-ion battery cell for next-generation electric motorcycles." These cells, according to the companies, are able to store more energy in a smaller space, which allows for more energy-dense batteries to be built, and thus provide more range. Moreover, the 26120 battery cells also allow for ultra-fast charging, which is something that Stark's CEO, Anton Wass, stated was a priority of his with the brand's upcoming on-road bikes.
"Something like a 10-minute charge is what we are targeting," Wass told our friends at Cycle World last year. So these cells are hugely important in achieving that goal. And that's exactly what Wanxiang A123 and Stark say in their joint release.
"Unlike conventional 21700 automotive cells, the 26120 geometry leverages motorcycle chassis width to maximize volumetric efficiency while reducing module complexity. The result is lower mass, simplified pack architecture, and cleaner thermal pathways. An aluminum cell enclosure further enhances heat transfer while reducing weight, enabling sustained high-power operation across off-road and street applications. Target performance includes approximately 330 Wh/kg energy density and 10–15-minute ultra-fast charging, setting a new benchmark for premium electric two-wheelers," states the presser.
We still haven't seen what these batteries are likely to go into, though we have seen the teasers the company has shown in its Stark Files YouTube series. There's a cafe racer-looking bike, an adventure bike that seems a little more fully baked, and even an ATV, which would make a ton of sense given the brand's dirt bike lineup. As for when we'd see these 26120-celled motorcycles, that's still up in the air, though given the teases, sooner is more likely than later.
