Royal Enfield Ramps Up Electric Motorcycle Plans

[advrider]

Royal Enfield is reportedly planning to put a big push on its plans for electric motorcycles, reports the moto-press in India. Instead of a 2026 launch (which was our most recent proposed timescale), moto-journos and business reporters from India now say the plan is to reveal the bike in 2025. To that end, it’s started testing prototypes already, and is pouring a lot of investment into this project to meet that 2025 deadline.

That’s not terribly far away, and even if the work is already begun, it means Royal Enfield has a lot of work ahead, if it plans to launch an electric motorcycle into the same market segment that its motorcycles occupy. At this point, Royal Enfield focuses exclusively on motorcycles in the 350-650cc range, all reasonably priced, with MSRP below their Japanese and Euro counterparts. Most of Royal Enfield’s bikes have performance specs that lag behind their more expensive competitors, but the Indian manufacturer compensates with attractive paint options and on some models like the Himalayan adventure bike, a decent outfit of accessories included on the stock machine, adding on racks and other parts that would come at extra expense from other OEMs.

This business model isn’t really going to work well, if Royal Enfield goes electric, and currently, nobody else offers a reasonably competent electric motorcycle for a price tag in the $6-8000 USD range. Most electric motorcycle owners are concerned with range figures and charge times, and improving those numbers is expensive. But, while Royal Enfield’s bikes are premium products in its own market, it doesn’t have that same position in North America and Europe, which would likely be a large percentage of sales for the new EV. So what’s RE to do?

Perhaps we shall see a halo bike offered at premium pricing, similar to what Harley-Davidson did with the initial LiveWire release. Or maybe we’ll see a budget-oriented EV, which is what many other manufacturers are working towards. Honda’s swappable-battery scooter is the perfect example of where the market is headed here. Royal Enfield doesn’t currently play in this segment, but maybe it’ll head there?

Probably not, as there’s been no indication of that. So far, we’ve seen hints at a retro-styled machine from Royal Enfield, and that’s it.

We also saw reports about this project as far back as 2019, with suggestions from the company that we’d see the new bike before too long, perhaps by 2022. Of course, COVID-19 no doubt interfered with any program, but even still, 2025 is a long way behind when we originally expected to see this new battery bike released.

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