Open Google Maps for the city of Bangalore, India, and you will find that Ultraviolette offices are only five kilometers away from Ola Electric offices. However, ideologically, the two companies have always been poles apart. As long-term observers of the Bengaluru E2W start-up scene, we have always looked at Ola Electric as the fable fabricators, Ather as the serious engineers, and Ultraviolette as the cool mad-hatter in the room that everyone aspired to be. Or as Narayan, the Ultraviolette CEO put it yesterday...
...a collective group of geeks that are obsessed with design, tech, performance...
Ultraviolette defined and designed things their way. Everything was inspired by and referenced cutting edge space and aviation tech. So the F77, their existing motorcycle, drew inspiration from fighter jets, the F99 from even faster jets, and so on. The aviation obsession went beyond the design inspiration - the dealerships are called Hangars. Their riding community is the Squadron.
That Squadron name also indicates their numbers, as we shall see.
The flight bits were not just limited to design, Ultraviolette backed it up with engineering. Though the company worked slowly, which is not bad when it comes to engineering, they delivered consistently. The F77 sells poorly, but we haven't met people with product glitches or heard of any kabooms. The F99, which remains experimental for now, sports a 400V system and hit 265 kph in test runs.
Being cutting edge, and experimental, is awe-inspiring for enthusiasts. That doesn't pay bills very well. In terms of the market, a developing economy like India does not have many well-heeled enthusiasts who would like to experiment with a fast electric motorcycle. This is an INR 299k -399k (USD 3500 - 4650) motorcycle. That's a highly rare zone in the Indian motorcycle market, and it would always be difficult to find a lot of customers there.
F77 sales remain slow.
So the geekery as mentioned above has to be supported for a long time before there's light at the end of the tunnel.
As Trump told Zelensky...
I have empowered you to be a tough guy.
Enter the investors, the saviors.
But private (or public) money for electric performance motorcycles is not easy. Energica is still struggling to find a buyer at an auction with a base price of EUR 5.7m, and Damon is struggling to keep its market cap above zero.
So the geekery has to come down the pedestal and translate into more mass-market products. Ultraviolette needs to change tracks, and yesterday's media event indicated that the company is changing its frequency. The ideological differences with Ola are a thing of the past. Like their neighbours, the Ultraviolette guys now seem willing to spin a yarn, if one needs to be spun.
Moving to a BoM+ strategy
There are two ways in which a product sells. There is the 'Pull' way, which means that the product attributes are enough to create an intense desire in the targeted customers that they are willing to mortgage a kidney to acquire. Every brand desires to have a Pull. Apple does it well.
The Ultraviolette F77 follows this strategy, with little success. It's not a product problem, it's the TAM. Too low.
Then there is the 'Push' way, which means the product is supported with aggressive, often unbelievable, pricing. We call it the BoM+ strategy, and funded startups (or those seeking funds) are very tempted to follow it. Here you take the input cost (Bill of Materials) and price the product to just about meet it. This fuels the "Gross Margin Positive" narrative to be fed to investors even though EBITDA suffers. Everyone believes that the volumetric efficiency multiplied by the VaVE efforts would eventually print money as scales improve.
The Tesseract and Shockwave pricing indicates that Ultraviolette has fallen into the BoM+ pricing temptation well.
Nothing much wrong here - it was one of the more logical ways out. It's just that the lower, mass-market segments are a tightrope walk for any OEM. Now Ultraviolette has to walk the walk.
The displays on the stage were likely studio mock-ups, as was evident by the way Niraj (the CTO) carefully touched the Tesseract when posing for pictures for the media. Frankly, they did not claim otherwise. In launching what essentially are WIPs today, Ultraviolette is doing what others have already done in the past.
The Products: Tesseract
Ultraviolette revealed two new products yesterday. The first is a large sporty scooter, they call the Tesseract.
Geometrically, a Tesseract is an octachoron shape. Don't wrap your heads around what an octachoron is. We know there's only one Tesseract, the mavericks at Ultraviolette would know of - in the MCU universe, the cube carries the Soul Stone and is a source of devious energy, the one that powers Hydra weapons.
Ohh!
Frankly, the Ultraviolette Tesseract is a pretty good looking premium scooter loaded with high-end features, in a sizeable sporty package. There is a 20PS (15 kW) mid-drive motor and Ultraviolette plans to offer three different battery packs - 3.5kWh, 5 kWh and 6 kWh.
With the top pack, the company claims a 261km IDC range. In our experience, we have found the Indian Drive Cycle (IDC) that the Indian agencies use for homologation purposes as overtly optimistic. But apples-to-apples, this would make the Tessarect 6kWh one of the highest range scooters in the world.
However, Tessarect does not exist as a developed product. Development is still going on and Ultraviolette would only start deliveries in Q1 2026, about 10-11 months from now. So, the 261 km range, much like Ola claimed with the S1 Pro (with 4680 cells), is an Excel sheet calculation.
Not much wrong here - Ultraviolette is just changing frequency. As we discussed earlier, it needs to.
The 15 kW motor gives 125 kph bragging rights and the 14" wheels are much needed. Any rider would feel calmer at 120+ on a 14" sports scooter than on a 12" commuter scooter.
But the Tesseract's main talking points are the radar front and back that warn of obstacles and the blind spot detection warning neatly integrated into the rear view mirrors, a la Ducati Multistrada. The radars provide a 360-degree sense to the rider at all times.
There is also a dashcam which the company says detects weather, reads terrain, and fine-tunes the scooter’s setup for maximum control.
The bold text would be interesting to check when the Tessarect hits the road.
On the styling front, the sharp angles and creases would make the Nighthawk proud. We like everything except the mud-slapper mounted rear turn signals - too low and prone to being slapped by mud.
The Tesseract goes into a segment that does not exist today - sporty, slightly large format, slightly premium, performance oriented scooters. Ultraviolette knows that and the pricing has been kept very aggressive. The first 10k customers get it for INR 120k (we are sure for the smallest battery variant) and then it jumps to INR 145k.
At 120k, it is unlikely that the Tesseract would be contribution margin positive, not with the sensors, radars, and camera it has to pack. Other heavy lugging components include the battery, the motor, the 7" capacitive touch, and the projector LEDs. Ultraviolette is a low volume, niche manufacturer with no vertical integration on the manufacturing side. Driving down BoM costs is challenging.
But at INR 145k, we do start seeing green.
So, that INR 120k is actually a brilliant strategy. People need to see scooters on the road before they buy one, and the first 10k customers getting this cheap would do that job.
The Products - Shockwave
The Shockwave is an enduro. We don’t know how they arrived at the name, but looking at the universe from which Ultraviolette pulls out their names, the only reference we get is of the one-eyed Decepticon, which made its appearance in 'Transformers: Dark of the Moon.' He was ugly, yet impactful.
Ironically, the Ultraviolette Shockwave is not ugly. It's quite good looking, though we find the front a bit messy. Throughout the Shockwave presentation, Ultraviolette focused on light motorcycles bringing the fun back to motorcycling - they drew parallels with the Yamaha RX 100 of the 1980s.
A fun-filled light electric motorcycle is not a bad product strategy. In the Indian market, it is a complete whitespace as every 'market leader' and followers just took ICE motorcycles as a benchmark and have been working on similar priced, similar specced, similarly targeted electric motorcycles.
In that sense, the Shockwave is a shocking breath of fresh air.
The CEO Narayan put the Shockwave as a cross between a fun sports machine and an off-road machine. The stress is on fun and they named the program, and the platform, the Funduro (BMW says Hi!).
While Ultraviolette has been working on being an important player in Europe, the Shockwave is unlike the electric motocross machines that are sold in Europe - Sur-Ron Ultra Bee, Talarias, Niu XQi, etc. It would have a different product targeting.
First, unlike the Niu and others, the Shockwave is relatively fast. Ultraviolette said the top speed is 120 kph. With 505 Nm at the rear wheel (double stage reduction, we infer) it would also be quicker than any of the European motocrossers. However, at 120 kg, the Shockwave would also be far heavier than the international electric motocrossers.
A different segment it would be.
The Shockwave's weight problems come from having a conventional tubular frame. We don't expect any exotic materials or even Chromoly steel to bring the weight down. The tubular frame would get the BoM costs down. In India, conventional tubular motorcycle frames cost around USD 60.
The choice of a right-side-up front fork is also driven by BoM cost.
At just below 11 kW, the choice of motor indicates that Ultraviolette has European markets in mind, after India.
At 4 kWh, the battery is adequate for 165 km range, again IDC, so it doesn't matter.
Like the Tesseract, the Shockwave also hits the roads in Q1 2026. Like the Tesseract, there is an introductory price. The first thousand customers get it for INR 150k. Then it jumps to 175k. We think that at even 150k, the Shockwave should have a positive contribution margin.
The Big Question
So is the F77 too expensive or the Shockwave too cheap? Put them next to each other, and they are very different bikes. But any machine is the sum total of its parts. Between the F 77 7.1 kWh variant and the Shockwave 4 kWh, there is a price difference of about INR 149k. Going by the present pack prices, the F77 would add about 30k more cost on the pack. The motor should add another 10-15k. The frames are different but both are tubular steel and even though there are likely more welds on the F77, the cost delta cannot be more than 1-2k on the frames. The bodywork definitely is a big gap area and we count another 10k on that. Then we reckon, the wheels, brakes, and USD forks would add another 20k in terms of cost advantage to the Shockwave. That still leaves about 75k of an unexplained costing gap. So if the F77 prices are honest, then would the Shockwave be sold at negative contribution margin?
Or is it simply a case of F77 remaining a Pull product while the Shockwave becomes a Push product.
The Future
Perhaps the most important part of the presentation was Ultraviolette giving a glimpse of its future model programs.
Of the above, the F Series already exists with the F99 (bottom) still in concept stages.
The S Series is the Tesseract, and they are hinting at least two more models.
The L Series is the Shockwave and they hint at least two more models.
The X Series was unveiled as the Concept X at EICMA 2024 (below). It is essentially an off-road version of the F77.
Finally, there is the B Series of which nothing is known. We think it would be a range of road-going everyday use machines.
Challenges?
Plenty! New model concepts are great, but Ultraviolette remains a very small volume manufacturer with no volume efficiency. Even with the three models and multiple variants, at least three different motors are sourced. With no internal manufacturing, cost optimisation remains a challenge.
Same goes for the battery pack. Between the F77 (two packs), the Tesseract (three packs) and the Shockwave (one pack), Ultraviolette would end up producing at least six different packs. That is not easy, or efficient, for a small volume manufacturer.
