Photo: BRD Motorcycles
Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard has joined the advisory board for BRD Motorcycles, a San Francisco-based electric motorcycle manufacturer that makes some incredibly mean two-wheeled machines.
Eberhard was Tesla’s first CEO, leading the automaker from 2003 to 2007 before his controversial ouster and subsequent lawsuit against Elon Musk in 2009. An EV advocate and one of the masterminds behind Tesla’s battery systems, Eberhard took a position at Volkswagen working out of the automaker’s Palo Alto, California research lab until the two parted ways in 2010.
BRD has been in operation since 2010, but didn’t really begin to gel until last year when it raised $850,000 in seed funding to produce its two RedShift electric bikes: the dirt-focused MX and street-oriented SM.
When WIRED spoke with CTO and co-founder Derek Dorresteyn last year, they were beginning to take preorders for both bikes, with the MX priced at $14,995 and the SM starting at $15,495.
The two electric motorcycles each feature a 5.2 kWh lithium-ion battery pack good for a claimed 50-mile range, with a custom electric motor putting out 40 horsepower and 33 pound-feet of torque. And unlike offerings from Brammo, Zero, and Mission Motorcycles, the weight of the RedShifts are low: between 250 and 265 pounds, helping the BRDs hit a 0-60 mph time of 3.3 seconds.
The news of Eberhard’s position comes at the same time as BRD raised another $1 million in funding. According to the Wall Street Journal, after BRD redesigned its battery packs from pouch to small format cells, the company asked Eberhard to take a look at the design.
He was impressed, telling the WSJ, “They are not trying to cobble together parts or buy their tech from Chinese or Italian motor suppliers. They have a world-class battery, one of the best I’ve seen. And they treat safety as a religion.”
BMW Motorcycles of San Francisco have signed on to carry BRD’s line of bikes when sales begin next year with a limited run of 1,000 units slated to be produced mid-2014.
Correction 6:51 PM EST 10/11/2013: An original version of this article misstated BRD’s battery pack change from small format to pouch cells. It was the opposite.
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