Greetings and welcome back to the InsightEV Weekender. Here, I like to focus on things we did not cover during the week.
This week, we concluded (for now) our Brazil coverage with dialogues with two different startups. Mileto is renting motorcycles with fixed batteries to the security patrol market in the country. The target audience may not be delivery riders, the hardware may still be coming in a container from China, but these early steps are promising.
Brazil: Rentals are a More Feasible Alternative for Fleet Operators…
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Mileto has bigger plans. The motorcycles would get local inputs, manufacturing is moving to Manaus, and more products are coming, including a dual-sport motorcycle, a form factor that is popular in Brazil.
Vammo Runs Battery Swapping
At the other end of the spectrum is Vammo, a much-talked-about battery swapping player in São Paulo. They are renting motorcycles along with swappable batteries. The early hardware came from Vmoto, but Vammo is spreading its wings and looking at hardware independently. They are also open to the future shaping up differently and offer multiple charging/swapping options and plans.
LATAM is a Motorcycle Form Factor First Market
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Since this was the last piece in our Brazil coverage, we kept the story free.
Bajaj Now Controls KTM
In the middle of the week, we received the much-anticipated and completely expected news release from India-based Bajaj Auto. The core:
In short, Bajaj now controls KTM. This comes with Stefan Pierer moving out of the scene completely.
Bajaj stepping in should provide some respite to KTM, and their financial crisis would be over. However, in the mid and long term, the impact would be profound. We expect cost-cutting measures, product realignments, a complete move away from CF Moto, and maybe moving production completely from Austria.
We have an analysis on Bajaj-KTM coming next Thursday, where we will also analyse how this impacts KTM’s electric programs (if you still hold any hope), CF Moto’s European future, and the setback to Zeeho.
Niu’s Results Keep on Improving
Niu has been on a comeback trail, and the previous annual results indicated that the company is sacrificing some margins for an anomaly, as volumes rebounded sharply. This week, the company announced its Q1 2025 results and reported a bump in revenues, riding on a 57% jump in retail sales. Gross profit also improved, even though Gross Margins took a modest hit.
Niu Q1: Sacrificing Margins for Volumes is Working for Now
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FIAT has a Three-wheeler
carmakers making three-wheelers and quadricycles – we see this as an emerging trend, and more and more mainstream car manufacturers will enter the micro-mobility segment with three-wheelers and quadricycles. This is needed as buying habits change across the world. Early this year, Hyundai unveiled two micromobility concepts at the Bharat Mobility Expo in New Delhi.
This week, Fiat Professional unveiled the TRIS, an electric three-wheeler. This is not the first L-category vehicle from the Stellantis group. The Citroen and Fiat brands already have quadricycles – the Ami and Topolino, respectively.
But the Fiat TRIS would be the group’s first electric three-wheeler. It looks good, packs a 6.9 kWh battery pack, and a 9 kW motor. We appreciate that the specs have been kept basic and practical. This doesn’t need to win any races. Top speed is 45 kph, and the TRIS claims a 90 km range.
If the 6.9 kWh pack sounds familiar, it is the same one that goes into the Topolino.
The TRIS has a 540 kg payload and would be available as a Flat Bed, a Pick-Up, and a Chassis-Cabin configuration. The company plans to roll it out first in the African and Middle Eastern markets.
Comprehensive Improvements to Ducati V21L
The Ducati V21L is the electric superbike in the single-make Moto-E championship. The season has started, and Ducati unveiled the new motorcycle for this season. It’s a comprehensive improvement over last year’s model.
The new V21L comes with better cells with an ‘advanced cell chemistry’. The new cells pack higher energy density, improving from 4.2 Ah to 5.1 Ah. This is a big jump in energy density, and allows Ducati to actually reduce the number of cells in the pack, from 1152 to 960.
This reduces vehicle weight by 8.2 kg, improving the power-to-weight ratio. Ducati says the new V21L is shaving off 0.2-0.3 seconds from its lap timings.
On the mechanical side, there is a 4mm longer steering bushing and an interesting height-adjustable swingarm. The swingarm allows fine-tuning of the drivetrain without affecting chain drag, a nifty feature on the track.
GM filed a patent for an Electric Motorcycle
Last week, Rideapart pointed us to this GM patent for an electric motorcycle.
While we cannot speculate if this would turn into a production program or even a concept, GM going this far is interesting.
The concept is built around GM’s new prismatic cells battery pack, co-developed with LG. The battery uses a Lithium Manganese Rich (LMR) chemistry that makes them more energy dense than the prevalent LFP cells while keeping the costs at the same level. This makes them very interesting for powersports applications – the current performance motorcycles all suffer from high costs due to the popular NMC chemistry. Moving to LFP lowers costs but compromises on energy density. LMR solves for both, GM says.
The motorcycle patent (above) indicates a bare-bones flat-tracker/cafe racer designed for solo riding. There are no details, but we welcome a new entrant in the North American electric performance motorcycle market, especially one with deep pockets.
MV Agusta Closes the Legendary CRC
Then it didn’t!
Over the years, MV Agusta’s legendary design studio Centro Ricerche Castiglioni has made a name for itself in carving out epically beautiful machines – Superveloce and F4 Brutale. News came last week that they have closed the CRC, and everyone speculated it was a measure of financial prudence, considering MV Agusta is no longer part of the KTM Group and has gone back to the previous owners.
However, MV Agusta has clarified that they are only relocating the studio closer to the production line for efficiency. They also emphasised that 2024 was the brand’s best year ever (and so we should not speculate about bad times), with sales of more than 4,000 motorcycles, more than doubling the 2023 numbers.
That’s a wrap for today. This newsletter will be back next Sunday. The posts on the website are more frequent. This is your editor, and you may view my LinkedIn profile here.