Few words about my day with Stark Future.
In the morning, we had a small briefing at the HQ we were received by Seb Tortelli, CCO Olle Olsson, and our regional sales manager Oskar Henriksson. I was accompanied by our pro racer Erki Kahro, who is currently sits in fourth in the Estonian Championship and has scored points in both the MX2 and MXGP classes. In 2019, Erki also participated in the AMA Pro Motocross Championship at Pala with a borrowed stock bike, where he finished 19th with a results 17-20. I invited Erki along to get expert feedback, because of health problems I last rode a bike some 20 years ago.
After the initial introductions and an overview of Stark Future's vision and plans, we went on a factory tour. The overall layout of the new factory building is 20,000 m2, which was impressive. Everything is automated and operated by robots with surgical precision, as expected in a modern factory. It should be noted that this was my first visit to a motorcycle manufacturer, but I have been to large production factories before. The factory has enough space to accommodate two additional production lines, which will help achieve the planned production capacity in the future up to 150,000 bikes per year.The whole office floor has a pleasant startup and progressive atmosphere.
Little sneak peek to office (this part of the department is mainly for additional manpower in the near future). In general, we were not allowed to take pictures in the factory, which is understandable. This image is published courtesy of Stark Future.
Next, we were served lunch at HQ, and then came the sweetest part of the day, The test ride.
When we arrived to the Stark compound, all the bikes were lined up and ready to go, and Seb introduced more precisely about how to configure the different settings and ride modes. There was no time pressure for testing because we had a full three hours at our disposal, which was great.
I was also lucky to meet Stéphane Dassé ( the owner of Bud Racing), who was invited by Stark Future at the same time as us. Very cool and friendly person, with whom I also had longer chats on the side of the track.
I had no chance to skip this part, and was ready to go.
As for my personal observations, the power that Varg provides is hard to describe; you have to experience it for yourself, but everything Bryan described is true. Btw, he is definitely not a Stark paid vlogger, I specifically asked that for some Vital members. Stark's team rather holds their breath, waiting to see what he comes up with next.
I'm not the right guy to describe specifics how the Stark Varg behaved differently on a test ride compared to an ICE bike because my last race was on aboard a KTM 520 for the reasons mentioned above, but one thing is for sure. That power and handling what Stark delivers is just Wow and Woww 
. These things are as different as night and day in terms of power and handling.
I'm not posting pictures of riding myself because of obvious reasons, those are embarrassing
, but I have some of Erki. Btw I'm as bad a cameraman as I am a rider.
Everything I had read so far had turned out to be true, but the real feedback came from Erki and he didn't hold back. His initial skepticism turned into a broad smile. After riding the bike for a few laps he said it was absolutely incredible, and his comments after he tried the Alpha version were that it was 20 hp too much
Stark's team then helped him fine tune the settings to his preferences. While the Alpha version has a maximum power of 80 hp, Erki drove 65 hp on this track, choosing an engine braking percentage of 86%. It is important to note that this is a professional rider. Seb uses the same setup on this track and that's why this mode was chosen. Given more time to test, Erki would no doubt have tweaked the settings to maximize his comfort. Nevertheless, this maping worked perfectly for him. While the full 80 hp could be used on a sand track like Lommel, on Stark's test track, which can be considered a hard surface track, it turned out to be more than enough. The rear brake under the left hand was a very positive experience, and Erki, who was initially skeptical about it, ended up using only the hand brake for the rest of the day. His only comment was that both foot and hand rearb brake should be have an option to use them together because the body position shifts backward during braking, and it's difficult to reach the hand lever. As for the weight, at least for me, the bike seemed really easy and light to ride. The only time the weight was noticeable was when lifting the bike onto the stand. The battery lasted long enough I didn't measure the exact time how long it lasted because no one really rode for more than 5-6 laps at a time. I also asked Seb how long the battery lasts at full speed, and he confirmed that he gets around 35 minutes of riding, but in MXGP, the battery life would likely be insufficient because they are not like us, village pros
So, at every national championship event, you can easily ride 20 minutes + 2 laps, and there is enough time to charge the battery between the two races. Another interesting thing is that since we arrived in an electric car, I asked if it's possible to charge the Varg from the car. Many electric cars have that capability, and for example, the Ford Lightning has enough power to charge three Stark Vargs at once. Therefore, in terms of the future, there may be no need to bring a generator to the track because you can charge the bikes from the car you arrived in.
If you want more detailed comments with a video, stay tuned. As I said, I will post link to Erki's vlog under the same topic as soon as the material is edited.
Thanks to the Stark team for the invitation and greetings to Oskar.
Will continue
Keino
Thank you for your info! Its cool to read these firsthand accounts of the Stark experience and I’ll readily admit that “yeah, I am JEALOUS”! 🤪 I would SO love to have the same opportunity that you had and get to meet/ride with Seb Tortelli one day! Looks like you had a fabulous time and a killer experience! Cool pics too! 😎 👍❗️
More photos of girl in skirt…less of guy with man bun…..so…. Are these available for purchase yet?
Extremely flashy for such a new company.
https://www.instagram.com/_lilimd/?hl=en
The Shop
DeCal Works Huge Plastic Inventory of UFO and Polisport kits.
Luxon 4-Post Bar Mounts
$189.95 - $239.95
Haters claiming Stark paid you to say that they don't pay Bryan in 3...2...1...
"no pictures of the production line per Stark" - anybody else put their tinfoil hat on?? Otherwise, thanks for hte write-up.
lol - getting downvoted. I smiled at your comment. between sweater neck guy + man buns, this company is definitely "progressive" (per the description from OP)
There's now a couple guys here, including myself, who have seen the assembly line in person and know that it exists, what more do you want or are we all just liars? There's a lot of proprietary methods and materials present in their facility right now and it's very reasonable for them to want to keep that under wraps for the time being.
Keinz, awesome write up and great to read about your experience, looks like you really did it right and enjoyed every bit of it! The Stark team really is amazing and I hope this all pays off big for them.
Why does Vital bother to have an e-bike sub-forum when it's not used ? Serious question.
I was surprised that there was a Varg post that was 2 hours old and it did not have any of the classic "paid shill" comments yet. Goldmember is slacking....
The Varg is not an Ebike. It is a Motocross bike that happens to be powered by electricity that was designed to compete head to head with the gas bikes of today. No different than posting about a 2 stroke or 4 stroke. Moto related is not a GAS only section is it? I would say it is Moto related. I might agree a little if you posted this on one of the threads about Sur-ron's. Since those are not really Motocross bikes. Moto Related is pretty vague, and since these threads seem to stick around I'm guessing that the moderators are OK with them being put here.
In all fairness Bryan hasn't been in here yet so Goldmember hasn't had a reason to come in here.
Electric Motocross Bike
Electric Bike
E-Bike
Partitioning sub forums never works so this is probably why they allow Varg posts on Moto Related
He might be busy somewhere right now trying to convince Austin Powers that an electric toothbrush is a terrible idea!!? 😝 🤪 👍❗️
How many of you have seen Yamaha production line and new 250f -24 models coming out or Triumph production line?
So I skimmed through the write up. Did you take the bike home or has it shipped?
There was also no mention that there were, or were not bikes being assembled on the production line?
Pit Row
Yah exactly. Electric motocross bike, = Moto related. If an electric motocross bike is not Moto related how is it a Motocross bike?
Hey, in my eyes it has a place in both Moto Related and E-Bike. I’m not disagreeing with you that it belongs in Moto Related, but it also belongs in E-Bikes.
Now my issue, just like the Suzuki threads, is that we have way too many for the Stark and Suzuki. Should easily be down to two threads max.
Ahh finally we have our point of argument. 🔥 away boys.
It was previously posted Stark are currently capable of manufacturing 10 bikes per day, their battery assembly line should be capable of producing 50 bikes per day.
@JM485, @keinz I'm sure you can't comment on the proprietary methods used in Stark's factory, but can you comment on the current rate of production?
I was just going to ask those questions…
How many bikes have shipped? How many are built and ready to ship?
I agree on the Suzuki threads, same thing over and over and as a result I stopped clicking on them. And somewhat on the Varg as far as numbers of them go. But based on the title of the most recent threads , I could see more of a reason for somebody to start their own Varg thread if they went and rode the bike, or are somebody who gets one delivered. With so much of the useless info posted and silly arguments ( I know I am a part of that problem) I'm less likely to click on a Varg thread that has gone downhill like the one that had gone off the rails and was talking about snakes and houses. I'm still kinda new here, so maybe that's just normal. But I think a Varg delivery at this point in time still deserves its own new thread.
Perhaps the next person who takes delivery can start a Varg deliveries thread and people can just add to that. But it seems like there are 5 threads about Jett Lawrence, a handful about Deegan , really anything that has a lot of attention on it seems to result in multiple threads.
I have no idea what their current production rate is and I don't want to speculate, I just know that there were bikes being built on the line when I saw it. Those numbers sound reasonable to me based on what I saw, but again I have zero info regarding production output so don't place any judgement on that. My main point was this is not the elaborate facade many seem to think it is, there are bikes being produced and my guess is the hold up at this point is last minute software updates, not physical production. Again, just a guess, I have zero inside info about how many bikes are built or ready to ship at this point, Keinz may know more than me if he was there more recently.
Bikes were assembled on the assembly line
Yep, just finished counting the money
And the answer about deliveries. I have the same information as every other customer, bikes are delivered on an ongoing basis, but this much was said that 1000 bikes should be ready in September.
How many different threads are needed to say the same things about the same bike?
Now we know where US dollars have been going...Estonian!
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