Triumph’s prototype electric bike revealed! [Exclusive interviews]

Hello, welcome to Bike Social. I am Michael Mann. Now, in May 2019, Triumph announced its plans to develop an electric prototype motorcycle known as the TE1, working in conjunction with several other huge great British powerhouses of engineering on a great big project. Fast forward two years and here we are sitting in the visitor centre at Triumph Motorcycles and we're going to learn all about phase two of that project. You can just see it over my shoulder here where it's the current state. So, I'm going to be talking to Steve Sargent from Triumph Motorcycles. He's their chief product officer and I'm also going to be talking to Deirdre Dasch from Williams Advanced Engineering about the state of the project so far and what the next steps are. Steve Sargent, chief product officer for Triumph Motorcycles. Hello, welcome to Bike Social. Thank you for having us. No problem, Michael. Perhaps, Steve, you'll start with a little overview of the project so far. So, we're about two years on, almost two years, I think, from the first announcement of the project Triumph TE1 but perhaps you'd like to bring our viewers up to speed with what that actually is. So, we kicked off in May 2019. It's basically a two-year project that we're doing funded through Innovate UK. So, obviously Innovate UK are quite keen to bring the UK up to speed in terms of capability with electric vehicles. So, we kicked off a project partnering with Williams and Integral Powertrain and the purpose of the project is to basically develop the technology for a powertrain platform that Triumph can use and develop in the future to go into electric vehicles. And what's happened in the two years since? What's happened is partly what you can see on here and basically a development of a battery and motor and the control units that go with that. So, the battery management unit and the vehicle control unit. We're at a stage now where we can put that into effectively a mule bike and start getting out there and riding the thing and developing it and getting it to handle and feel and do everything that you'd expect a Triumph electric bike to do. Just rewind a bit, Steve. Where did this project come from? Did you just feel as though Triumph ought to be involved in this electric future? How did the collaboration with these great sort of pillars of British engineering come about? Did you have a sort of WhatsApp group and went, I know lads, we've got an idea? In terms of why it came about, obviously everybody can see where the trends are going in vehicles and in technology and, you know, some of the legislative pressures there are around vehicles moving to greener solutions and obviously you keep an eye on Car World, you see what's going on in Car World, so you can see the trends that are coming towards you. So, we've been very conscious as a brand that at some point we needed to move into starting to understand more about electric vehicles and we started having some discussions with people like Innovate UK around what funding is available for, you know, companies in the UK to start looking in this in this field, because quite honestly, you know, it's difficult at this point in time to justify investing the amount of money you need to develop something like that for a product that I would say at the moment is difficult to make a financial model that makes sense. So, I think the UK government has been quite smart to say to kick start this off and give everybody a head start, there has to be some kind of collaboration between governments and private companies. Was it always an intention to end up with something that looks as sporty as it does? I mean, you know, before seeing these today I wondered whether it was going to be more, I don't know, Street Twin or Trident or even, I don't know, Rocket 3 based, you know, was it always this kind of sports to roadster? So, we didn't start off with any preconceptions really in terms of what the bike was going to be, where that's really come about is from talking to customers and understanding how people use their bikes, what they expect out of their bikes, not what they expect out of an electric bike, but what do they expect out of the motorcycles, how do they use it, how long do they ride it for, you know, what kind of riding do they like doing and then what we really tried to do is to study a use case where we thought actually the technology of electric vehicles suits this kind of riding and this kind of bike and, you know, that took us really in the direction of what you see here which, you know, as you can see is kind of a naked sports bike. It does look very Triumph, if you took the badges off the side I think people would say clearly it's a Triumph. Well, I'm glad to hear that because, you know, that's obviously been the intention in terms of the styling. We see a lot of kind of prototype electric bikes out there that are almost different for the sake of being different, you know, people play around with, you know, what a seat looks like, what handlebars look like, I mean you've even seen bikes out there that look like a corrugated horse. It's a hubless powered one isn't there from Sweden. There's all kinds of stuff out there but at the end of the day the reason why the ergonomics on a motorcycle are how they are is because over years and years of development that is what works. People expect a vehicle that is attractive to look at and something that they want to be seen on so, you know, we've just evolved what we do in terms of ICE engine motorcycles and said well let's reimagine what we do today in terms of an electric vehicle. Geometrically it works doesn't it and, you know, it gets around corners and it goes fast and it's, you know, it's a pleasure to be on. And that's a huge part of this project really is, you know, to make this bike handle and feel like a motorcycle that you or I would want to get on and ride. So it's obviously, it's clearly got Triumph's badge on the side of it. Does that mean that you've been the leader in the project in terms of setting objectives, setting things like, I don't know, power, range, weight, charging time, all those things or you must have relied to a degree on those other partners to kind of bring their expertise to the to the party? We've certainly relied on Williams and IPT in terms of bringing their expertise in terms of how we get to where we want to get to but in terms of the overall objective of what the bike needs to be and, you know, the performance, the weight, the power, you know, the charging times, all of that has been driven by Triumph and we are the the main kind of coordinator. And how about the power? Have you got any kind of figures that you can share with us at the moment? Yeah, certainly. So in terms of the motor, it's 130 kilowatts peak power, which we have to think in kilowatts these days. So just to convert that into something that is more familiar to both of us really, 177 PS. So if you look in terms of a comparison to that, that's pretty close to the 180 PS on the new Speed Triple. And with an electric motor, you're gonna have all that torque available instantly. And it's instant, you know, that is the one thing about electric bikes is that kind of instant torque, that instant power and the acceleration that you get off of an electric bike is awesome. I'm assuming therefore you've got electronics and rider aids that include wheelie control. So we have wheelie control, we have traction control, we have all of the ABS. Obviously, the additional thing that you can play around with is regenerative braking, and that kind of stuff. So yeah, you've got all of the technology on the bike that you'd expect that, you know, helps you really kind of maximize. It's a fascinating future, Steve. How far away are we from from seeing a transfer of a sketch to a tangible thing? So in terms of a tangible thing, this will be built as a motorcycle. So in October this year, we will have a complete motorcycle that we will start doing our road testing, if you like, and track testing and all those other kinds of things. And it's fully our expectation that we'll be able to get the likes of you guys on this bike, probably spring next year. And is this, am I right in thinking, this is what your vision is as a production machine? Or is this simply a prototype to demonstrate the power of British firms coming together and saying, this is what we can do? So this is very much a prototype. This is all about developing the technology and the capability. You know, a lot of people will maybe look at this and say, I wouldn't be great if we had that on the road. We're not here today to indicate that this is what the final vehicle is going to be. It's obviously a demonstration that this is what we could produce as a vehicle. But it's by no means an indication that this is what's going to happen. It's fair to say that you guys have been particularly busy over the last 6-12 months in terms of announcing models to the public. How has this kind of project affected that? Clearly it hasn't affected that because you're keeping busy. Have you had to take on more resource? Have you got a dedicated electric motorcycle division now? You know, is the future, the future is clearly electric power. You must be thinking about building your team here into developing the skills to make something like that. So we have a dedicated group of people who've been working on the project, absolutely. Generally over the last few years we've expanded our electrical team and our electrical capability anyway. A big part of this whole project is developing that capability, getting the understanding, getting all of the learning, particularly about things like the control systems and how what we do on a petrol engine with an ECU effectively, how do we translate that knowledge into what is basically a vehicle control unit on an electric bike to give that kind of power delivery and that feel and integrate all of the other systems into it. So a big part of this is about developing that capability. We don't at Triumph have specific, this is the electric division, this is the speed triple division, this is the Bonneville division, because we employ some of the best engineers in the country and what we like to do is to give them a challenge. So we like to be able to move guys around from one project to another just to keep them engaged. So it's not a question of we've got an electric division or this division or that division, we've just basically built up our capability in the design department in Hinkley over the years and this is an additional kind of string to the bow really. So it wasn't like names in a hat? No, it wasn't names, it was more like people putting their hands up saying I want to be involved. Good on them, that's the people you want in there. At the moment in terms of production electric bikes available right now, it seems to me as there's two very very sort of far ends of the spectrum. You can buy your Super Soccos and your Neos for two, three thousand pounds and you can, at the far, at the other end of the scale, there's the Energeekers at fifteen, twenty, twenty-five thousand pounds. There's nothing in the middle, is that your aim? Is that your, you know, perhaps longer term objective to fill that gap? Well we will basically go wherever there is a market demand for a product and where we think we can satisfy that at a price that people are willing to pay and the reason why you see those big gaps between those products at the moment is that obviously if you're building a small capacity motorcycle, maybe an equivalent to a 125cc bike where you're only going to be commuting maybe 25-30 miles, then quite clearly you can build that to a certain price and to build a larger capacity motorcycle you're really looking at something, technology wise it's significantly different and it's significantly more expensive which is why those larger capacity ones tend to be pushed more towards the top end of the range because genuinely they are very very expensive to make and you have to be able to hit a certain price point. Of course and then you've got all the components to add into that if you're partnering with Rolins and Pirelli and whatever else. Final question Steve, we've seen recently a news story where four major manufacturers have kind of signed a letter of intent to use swappable batteries, what's your view on that? I think it's an interesting development, it's something that has been seen as being successful elsewhere in the world, so for example if you go out into the far east there are scooter companies who have already got swappable batteries and there are certain cities in the far east, Taipei for example, where if you go around you'll see these battery swapping stations where you can just pull up on your scooter, pull a battery out, stick it in, pull a fresh one out and put it in. I think it's a great solution to one of the issues around range and charging and all those kind of things, it's not necessarily the kind of thing that's going to be a solution for this kind of bike. What happens next, what do you do now after this interview with this project or what are you guys working on right now? So what's going on right now is basically the powertrain is being built into a mule bike down in our design department, they're making really good progress with that, had a look at that yesterday, looks absolutely fantastic, it looks like this, you know that's super exciting, once you actually start seeing something physically you know that's like oh I'm going to be able to ride this fairly soon, so you know that that kind of gets the hairs stuck up on the back of your neck. In the late summer, early autumn of this year we'll have a bike that we can go out and we can start doing all that work on, a lot of software development to be done on that in terms of the vehicle control side of things, a lot of stuff to do in terms of the regen braking and all that kind of stuff, that will probably take the best part of the end of this year before we're in that kind of state, then hopefully we'll be in a situation where we can get people outside of the company to have a go on it. Fabulous, when do you get to go on it, have a go? Hopefully in a few months time. Are there many components shared with that Mule bike that's perhaps existing already, chassis, subframe, wheels and so on? So you might have noticed in terms of the swing arm, that's actually a Speed Triple swing arm and back end on the bike, that's pretty much it, some of the suspension components are shared with some of our other products but the rest of it is all new. We shall wait and see. Thank you Steve, thanks for introducing us to the project and for bringing us up to speed on what's happening. Dirk Adash, Senior Commercial Manager, Williams Advanced Engineering, welcome to Bike Social, thank you for your time, thanks for joining us. Thanks, nice to meet you. Dirk, can I start with a little bit about you and your history first of all with WAE, can you just tell us about the role that you play at the company first? Yeah certainly, absolutely, so I'm head of the Automotive Business Development team at WAE, what that means is pretty much anything that is transportation on the road, hence the reason why I engaged on a two-wheel product. I got involved at the very early stages actually on the programme, actually on the submission to the UK government for the programme, so since its inception I think we started discussions at the back end of 2018, it's been quite a progressive journey since then. Already over two years, of course it was almost two years since the announcement of the project as well, and does that mean that it takes up a lot of your life, is your role dedicated to this particular project? So I sit at the sort of oversight of the project now, the engineering team, the programme management team sort of deliver the programme, but I am in regular reviews on the delivery making sure that we are meeting all the specifications that were laid out through the programme. Do you want to tell us a little bit about how the project started, who approached who and how did you, I mean was it an exciting opportunity personally? Absolutely, it was a collective sort of ring round of the four partners I think, it's one of the great things about the sort of collaborative nature of the partners, it really truly is a great British sort of collaboration. I think there was definitely a bit of a dream team put together, if you were to put together a sort of electrified motorbike in the UK, I think you'd select the partners that you've got in the collaboration, so I think really exciting. It really is a celebration of British engineering isn't it? Without question, I think companies that have delivered quite a lot in the past but also very well positioned for the future and I think the product is one of those sort of technology sort of pieces that will allow us to sort of progress into the future. It's fairly evident from the sticker that's on that particular part on the carbon cover there, but again perhaps you could just talk us through the dedicated role that WA has had with this project? Certainly, so we've been responsible for the design and development of the battery which is part of that carbon structure there and actually you can see that integrated very prominently into the frame of the bike. What we've tried to do is really push the boundaries of the technology that we could apply to a motorbike and consider all of the sort of know-how that we've gleaned from the number of years of electrified sort of motorsport and automotive product development into integrating a really, really class-leading product. So this is a completely bespoke battery? This is a bespoke battery for this project. We are using our next generation sort of module technology which is in development for applying to this product, but it is very much unique and that's one of the key things that is required for this particular project because of the levels of integration required to make it work within a bike to make sure that the mass is correct, the centre of gravity is correct, the power, the performance is all against, is meeting the requirements that we laid out initially with Triumph at the beginning of the program. Does that mean that it's very different to what exists already? Did you kind of have a benchmark with other products that were on the market? So we did I think quite a bit of benchmarking initially on the initial phases of the program against existing technology and also ICE equivalent sort of bikes to make sure that we were meeting the expectations that the customers will want. Obviously Triumph have led that part of it, they understand the motorbike much more than we do, but we've obviously then brought our sort of system level technology and experience into that discussion. Would you say that it's lighter, has more range, is it better to charge, does it hold its charge, it's performance wise, how would you mark it? If we were to look at that existing technology I think in across all of those areas I'd say it would be class leading. It's difficult to absolutely be comparable on every single bit of specification but if we were to look at, if we're looking at range it's certainly from the testing that we have done to date would suggest it's going to be better than anything on the marketplace. It's also got a lot of power, the key point for us here is that it's not only the power, it's harnessing the power and making sure that for an electric product that the power maintains throughout the state of charge as much as possible and for as long as possible. So I guess they're the sticky points aren't they? If you talk to any motorcyclist, any hardcore ICE motorcyclist right now, then it's all about weight and it's power and it's in its charge and it's kind of length of charging, sorry charging time and then length of availability of power. I guess you must have addressed all those issues. Have you done any kind of customer research with existing riders? Absolutely and at the beginning of the program it was very collaborative in trying to understand what those specific requirements were. We obviously took, as I say it was quite collaborative with the different partners, Triumph bringing their experience of what makes a really good motorbike and we brought that system level capability to sort of influence some of the direction and push the boundaries of the technology. Later phases of the program, the project will also address some of the specific customer sort of requirements and needs as well. A couple more questions to you if you don't mind. Firstly you mentioned motorsport and your motorsport experience, particularly with WA. Is there any crossover here between this and your Formula One division? What exists inside there? So I think the key thing with WA, Williams Advanced Engineering, the history of the organisation comes from our motorsport and F1 heritage. We have probably applied a lot more of our own Williams Advanced Engineering technology in this specific product based off of our experience in supporting the first few seasons of Formula E and really it is taking a lot of the learning from motorsport but also our experience from road car applications and other transportation as well and we're in a very advantageous position that we have the breadth of product and we take experience from each one of those and try and feed them into future programs and I think this is a product that really sort of encapsulates that. So from your side there, what happens next? Is your work done? Certainly not, we've still got some work to do on the program. It runs for a few months yet. We're certainly excited to sort of build the prototype bike up and certainly test that and get the feedback from Triumph and the rest of the partners and fundamentally fine-tune that so that we are really sort of delivering what we set out to do at the beginning of the program. I'm interested in finding out a bit more about the sort of the performance figures here. How do you test, I'd love to be able to see it, but how do you test something and go oh yes it makes xps or performance or range or... Absolutely and it's quite an interesting, there are similarities with internal combustion engines but clearly there would need to be specific dynos for electric motors and batteries as well. We actually utilize our own test facilities internally within WA which is on the same site as the Formula One team. We've gone through already quite a lot of intensive testing to make sure that we are meeting the expectations from an energy perspective and also from a power perspective. One final question, recently there was a news article about several other major motorcycle manufacturers kind of signing a letter of an intent, there was Honda, Yamaha, KTM and Piaggio I believe, about swappable batteries. Now I appreciate from a business perspective you spent oodles of resource and time and money investing yourselves into this project, is that something that you perhaps consider in the future, perhaps not with this project but you know getting involved with Triumph on that kind of... So we clearly, it was a really interesting sort of press release by those four companies. I think the product that they are targeting with those swappable batteries is a slightly different type of product that we're seeing in front of us on TE1. I think those are going to be more urban orientated smaller product but it's certainly an area of growth and certainly we would look at any technology sort of opportunities for us in the future. Fantastic, thank you so much for your time. No problems, thank you. Brilliant, we now know all about the project Triumph TE1, well as much as we can do at this stage, there'll be more to come I'm sure. Thank you for joining us, any questions let us know below, don't forget to subscribe, tell all your friends and we'll see you next time. Cheers. Well at least you've taken the lens cap off. Happy? Yeah. Great, and I'll edit that there. All I'm going to do is just say yeah, just say thanks for joining us. Keep rolling, then I'll just, I'll do another one.