Royal Enfield's electric future: Parent company invests €50 million in Spanish EV firm

Royal Enfield’s parent company Eicher Motors Ltd are stepping up their plans for electrification with a €50 million investment in Spanish plug-in off-road firm Stark Future SL.

Around a 10.35% equity stake in the company, the cash injection will be used to aid research and development in future electric models, as well as technology sharing, technical licencing, and manufacturing, too.   

“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,” Eicher Motors Ltd Managing Director, Siddhartha Lal said in a statement.

“They have created an absolutely 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.”

If you’ve not heard of Stark, the company produce an electric motocross racer called the VARG (‘strong wolf’ in Swedish) which weighs a claimed 110kg and produces around 78.9bhp. Said to outperform the 450cc petrol competition, you also get a 6kWh battery pack capable of up to six hours of easy trail riding and over 100 riding modes to mimic the characteristics of a number of combustion engines.

“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,” Stark Future Founder and CEO, Anton Wass said.

“It has been a short, intense and incredible journey for us so far but our link with Royal Enfield and what lies in store in the coming years are brilliant signs for the future.” 

According to a news release from Stark, Royal Enfield have ‘several ideas in advanced stages of testing’ when it comes to electrification. This tallies up from reports in India, with several outlets claiming to be in possession of a battery-powered concept called the Electrik01, complete with girder forks and classically styled lines.

Royal Enfield CEO, B Govindarajan added: “While they are scaling up and planning their market entry soon, we will support Stark in the industrialisation process.

“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.”