Parent company of Royal Enfield, Eicher Motors has entered into a strategic partnership with Spain-based Stark Future to accelerate its electrification plans.
As part of this collaboration, Eicher Motors will invest 50 million euro (Rs 440 crore) to pick up around 10.35 percent equity stake in Stark Future.
With this investment, Eicher Motors will get a seat on Stark Future’s Board, and will explore further opportunities to collaborate in the space of electric mobility.
This investment the company says has a strategic significance for both Royal Enfield and for Stark Future, as both partners are keenly invested in creating innovative and sustainable solutions in global mobility.
Stark Future recently launched its first high-performance electric motocross bike, the Stark Varg at $12,900 (Rs 10.63 lakh). In terms of specs, the Varg produces 80HP of power, 938Nm torque, weighs 110kg, offers more than 100 ride modes, claimed riding time up to 6 hours and takes upto 2 hours to be fully charged. The deliveries for new orders are said to be June 2024.
Siddhartha Lal, MD, Eicher Motors said, “We love the vision, passion and focus of the amazing team at Stark Future. Leisure motorcycles do not easily lend themselves to EV technology at this stage, due to challenges like the battery range, packaging, weight and cost. This has resulted in stunted growth of this segment till now. Stark Future has been able to understand and harness the potential of EV technology by dramatically outperforming ICE offerings, without compromising on range, weight, packaging and cost. They have created an astounding motocross motorcycle – the Stark VARG as their entry into the EV world. We believe that Stark Future has the highest potential for real breakout growth in the EV leisure space with this model, and the potential to use this strong base to extend into other contiguous segments and beyond.”
B Govindarajan, CEO, Eicher Motors stated, “In addition to the sheer potential of Stark Future, we see immense synergies in this partnership. While they are scaling up and planning their market entry soon, we will support Stark in the industrialization process. While they are thought leaders in EV technology, particularly in light-weight components and innovative solutions, we at Royal Enfield will draw on these capabilities for developing our EV platforms and will also plan to share some EV platforms in the future”
Anton Wass, Founder & CEO, Stark Future added, “We aimed to challenge and inspire the motorcycle industry with the creation of the Stark VARG and by bringing our electric technology from the drawing board to reality. To now partner with one of the very first motorcycle brands in history and be part of their journey toward sustainability is a huge inspiration for us at Stark. We have now worked closely with Sid, Govind and the team for a few months, and have been deeply impressed by what they have created in the past 25 years, as well as the mindset and focus to continue to build and develop Royal Enfield into the future of sustainable motorcycling.”
“With the Stark VARG we believe we have a launch model that will reset benchmarks, so to know that the bike’s technical basis will spread much further and filter into more machinery and products is another source of pride for us,” added Wass.