The breeding ground of young petrolheads is under threat fellow…um…petrolheads. There’s an electric dirt bike on the market.

Known by most as a “scrambler”, you’re looking at the tool of education used by many a wanna-be stunt driver to get to know how an internal combustion engine works, why bikes are more fun than cars and also what a broken bone feels like. But now that’s all under threat thanks to BRD Motorcycles new RedShift MX, an electric motorbike made specifically for lite class racing.

But as we’ve learnt from F1, racing is often the breeding ground for new technologies that will filter down into consumer vehicles, and that’s very worrysome for the reluctant 16-year-old who gets shoved on the back of a 125cc the moment he’s road legal and his parent are sick of doing the school run.

The good news is that because it’s electric, there’s min maintenance, and the power kicks in the minute you touch the throttle. Top speed of 128km/h and a battery-life of 2 hours or so.

Thankfully at the moment this is just way too expensive a joke for most two-wheel junkies. at more than R150 000, it’ll be a while before this becomes “public transport”. But give it a few years and we may very well see South Africans riding to work on two-wheels rather than in the back of 4-or sometimes 3-wheeled taxis.

Get it: R150 000
From: www.faster-faster.com/index.html