Triumph have been developing an electric bike for a while now, and today I received an update email to say that they've completed Phase 4 of the project, which is the testing phase. Leaving aside the disappointment that they moved the goalposts mid-project and built this bike as a prototype, rather than develop it into a production bike, there's one pretty exciting result to come from the TE-1.
Triumph cite four main achievements of this project; a 100 mile range, 130kW peak motor power, 20 minute charging and 220kg total weight. From my perspective three are almost irrelevant, and one is very notable: a 20 minute charge to 80%. That would actually live up to the PR's department's hype by being a 'game changer'.
All of the current Energica, Zero and Livewire bikes can achieve a 100 mile range, either through a WLTP assessment or if ridden appropriately in the real world. So range isn't something to shout about. And 130kW is a higher power output than a Zero or Livewire, but only a handful of kW more than an Energica Ego+ or Ego RS. Which combined with the 220kg weight claim are only incremental improvements over other bikes.
But, fast charging from 0 to 80% in 20 minutes is transformative. That's about half the time any other electric bike can achieve, and indicates that Williams Advanced Engineering have made a step forward in electric bike battery design. I'd hazard a guess that this step is thermal management, something that no other electric bike does. Without thermal management of the battery pack everyone sticks to charging rates below 1C (i.e. the charging power in kW is smaller than the battery capacity in kWh) so as not to overheat the pack during charging. Even in electric cars where battery packs are thermally managed charging rates are generally maxed out at around 2C. And even then, that would be peak charging rate rather than constant. What that leads to is pretty consistent charging times of 30 to 45 minutes for a charge to 80% across almost all vehicles.
The exceptions to this rule are the latest generation of 800V battery equipped cars, which can achieve 3C charging rates. Triumph, or Williams, haven't confirmed the battery size on the TE-1 but a 20 minute charge to 80% is in the 3C league. I'd be amazed if they've been able to achieve this without thermal management of the pack, which is impressive in a 220kg bike. They may have also upped the battery pack voltage from the usual 400V, which would leapfrog all of the current electric bikes on the market.
Finally it is worth noting that the TE-1 project is tax payer funded, via the UK Government's Office for Zero Emission Vehicles (OZEV), and delivered through Innovate UK. Trying to find out how much you and I have supported this project is somewhat tricky, as I can't find it in the list of Innovate UK projects.