BMW Partner TVS Developing Electric Motorcycle

TVS is India’s third-largest motorcycle maker—approaching four million bikes produced last year—and has already dipped a toe in the electric-bike market with a pair of battery-powered scooters. Now a new patent shows it has a full-size electric motorcycle in development.

While TVS concentrates on the Indian market over exports, it’s responsible for manufacturing bikes that end up in BMW dealers all over the globe. The G 310 single-cylinder range and BMW’s CE 02 electric scooter are all manufactured in India by TVS, and the company enjoys a symbiotic relationship with its Bavarian partner, selling its own G 310-based bikes in the form of the Apache RTR 310 roadster and Apache RR 310 sportbike. As such, it’s no surprise to see that the electric motorcycle in the company’s new patent features certain design similarities with BMW’s battery-powered CE 02 and CE 04 models.

While BMW’s CE machines are scooters, the TVS design is intended to be a motorcycle. TVS already makes two electric scooters under its own brand (TVS X and the TVS iQube) but they have swingarm-mounted motors. The new design mounts its motor in the chassis, with a belt taking power to the rear wheel, and the patent text makes it clear this is a “motorcycle type electric vehicle” and not a scooter. In fact, the effort to keep the motor and transmission narrow, so the rider’s feet can sit either side of it, is the main focus of the design.

The TVS-made BMW CE 02—a design that blurs the line between scooter and minibike—also has a frame-mounted motor, belt drive, and a single-sided swingarm, as seen in the new patent, but there are distinct differences. In particular, the patent makes it clear that the reduction transmission used in the CE 02, which has a short belt to take drive from a small pulley on the motor (itself actually a repurposed alternator from a BMW car) to a larger pulley, before the final drive belt gives a second reduction stage, would be too wide for the new TVS design, thanks to the larger motor it uses. As a result, it swaps that belt-based first-stage reduction gearing for a pair of helical-cut gears, which is a solution that’s more akin to the design used on BMW’s larger CE 04.

The chassis and battery layout are unusual when compared to other electric bikes. While most either opt for a mid-mounted battery case for swappable battery packs, or use a fixed, larger battery pack as a structural component in the chassis, the TVS has a central, spine-style frame—it could be alloy or welded from sheet steel—with a large-but-slim battery pack slung on either side. It’s an unusual format for a motorcycle battery, but a lot of electric cars already use low-profile batteries made of multiple modules under their floors, and the units on the TVS electric bike look very much like the same type of module, flipped up into a vertical orientation.

The motor itself looks very similar to the 11kW (15 hp) unit used by TVS’ King EV Max (a battery-powered version of a three-wheeled tuk-tuk), and if it really is the same unit, that means it’s a permanent magnet synchronous design putting out 29.5 lb.-ft. of torque. In the heavy, 1007-pound tuk-tuk it’s enough for a 40 mph top speed, so putting the same motor into a motorcycle at perhaps a third of that weight should promise a genuinely usable level of performance.

As to whether there will be a global, BMW-branded version of the bike, it’s too early to say. BMW’s own electric motorcycle plans appear to be in limbo at the moment, faltering as the electric motorcycle market in Europe has gone into decline, but the company’s own IP filings include a whole array of trademarks for “DC”-branded electric motorcycles to sit alongside its CE scooter models. Since 2020 BMW has owned trademarks rights to the alphanumeric combinations going from “DC 01″ to “DC 09,” indicating intentions to make a wide range of electric bikes at different performance levels. An affordable, 11kW, TVS-made machine with 125cc performance levels might be the ideal basis for a DC 01 or DC 02 in the future.