Stark Vargs (as in plural)

I kinda think that most people doing that "style" of riding are not going to care about making noise and they are doing it for attention.  The wheelie boy type of riders that is. I'm in a more rural area that is on the edge of a small city. We have our own mini wheelie boys group here . They are out trying to be noticed , riding wheelies head on at traffic, in the middle of a double yellow line, etc. Most often with louder than stock bikes. 

I've watched some of the Sur Ronster videos and I think he knows electric powered vehicles  kinda well, but most are pit bike sized and he rides mostly on streets.I saw him ride a track that was in an overgrown field  that was pit bike/ BMX sized.  Maybe he will have an alter ego  Vargster now? I'll have to watch the video and see what he thinks of it. I would guess he would say its amazing compared to the  stuff he normally rides. But who knows.   

If You have one on order , maybe they will honor what they told you back when You put the money down?  Did you try emailing them and asking about the change?  If You do , post back with what they say.  It might help people out to know .  

Ahem...

https://www.vitalmx.com/forums/Motodrive/Electric-Bikes,48

Not much negativity over there....post the topic here, you're going to have all kinds of opinions about it.

If you're curious about the battery removal and installation here is Stark tutorial.

It's nice to see a manufacturer producing such detailed videos to help users with maintaining their bike.

Not that you should really need to do this procedure anyway (they have lots of other tutorials on their YT channel) but it's nice to know it has been well thought and designed. I quite like that the hefty 32 kg battery stays balanced on the stand by itself so it won't suddenly drop from the frame onto your feet.

Not even that much effort. Would be easy for a race team to switch to fresh and cool battery between motos.

Damn, the fit and finish under plastics looks really good!

WOW that bodywork comes off easy ! I've seen photos of them removing it before, but seeing a video , it looks  so fast. I had to rewind it and see what I missed. Cool what is possible when You reduce the amount of parts needed, lets You be creative like they were. This bike looks fun to work on.  It looks like they could   swap out to a fresh battery  in 5 or 10 minutes if needed to and it was Factory level techs like you would have on a Factory race team .  Thanks for posting!

easy as pie.

‘Acceptable’ is when the quality is consistently high.  
 

the only comparison in the EV startup space us Tesla. And their ramp up has been abysmal and their quality is even worse. And they have a huge number of workplace injuries, overworking and anti union… so they are quicker than the equivalent and hopefully much better quality control… 

so speed for a startup manufacturer is absolutely completely fine.  

Somewhat interesting to me that the varg can repeal the laws of physics! So the bike is 260 so say 264 with tubes that work. Then add about 25 lbs.of chocolate cake dirt on a perfect day here in Indiana/Ohio etc. You now have a 290 lb. bike. When you are upright and going through stutter bumps, small whoops etc I can't really believe it "feels like a 125" If you are going down a really steep hill that say is a bit slimy, I don't believe it "feels like a 125" Gravity is gravity and you have to control the mass with springs and damping. I know this as I did own a XR600 for a few years. And for me, this bike is a non starter as we have a rule when we go to Colorado trail riding that you have to be able to go 100 miles on a tank.(not too hard at elevation). But for it's intended purpose, motocross, it could be brilliant. I can see how it would "feel like a 125" as you bend it into a corner, or flick it left to right as there is hardly any gyro from crank, clutch, etc But I would have thought that a modular battery pack would have been way better as most local moto races are 15 minutes and this is where the majority of vargs will be raced. So a 235 lb varg sounds like a secret weapon for armature racing. I do really want to see how the varg performs in heavy dirt or in wet conditions. Everything I have seen so far is on hard pack conditions where the wheels roll easy.

Lots to like about having amazing torque at 0 RPM and the ability to be able to program your own power band, traction control etc.And I assume those things are coming soon. Not having to repack a muffler, clean filters, or do just abut any motor maintenance is pretty appealing too.When you compare it to an ICE engine it is sooo simple,the ICE engine looks like a rube goldberg machine. But they have had 120 years of development and the early ICE engines had total loss oil systems! So for what its intended purpose is, I think it will be really good but you are still going to be about 25 lbs heavier than a moto bike with 1.5 gallons in it. At best that's still a big ask and I think it will be better in some places and conditions and worse in others. But  it will be interesting to see and it does look the part with great styling. Great to see a start up creating a new market too. Not a hater by any stretch and hope Stark does well.

There's a new review, from Enduro Austria 

https://www.enduro-austria.at/news-2023/stark-vark-test-in-osterreichis…

They are very positive, and in their Enduro tests they used 41% battery in 1h30min which would translate to more than 3h range (with power set to 50 hp). They also highlight the easy routine maintenance, basically wash the bike, lube the chain and that's it. There was en Enduro race and a rider discovering the Stark in this very day finished third, not bad!

More than enthousiast, they boldly claim that 9 out of 10 riders would be faster on the Varg than on their own bike after 15 min to adapt to it. 

It’s low center of gravity with motor placement is what make it handle so well. 
 

it’s the same concept with eMTBs. They weigh more but handle great in turns and jumping. 
 

Low center of gravity is the key. 

Can you quantify the COG position on the Stark versus a couple of 450s?

I don’t think the Varg has a significantly lower center of gravity and I also don’t think it’s the center of gravity that make the bike handle better. The little inertia of the electric motor and that the heavy components of the bike are very close to the center of gravity (in marketing terms: mass centralization) make the bike handle better. I was fortunate enough to ride all KTM models (2T and 4T, EXC and SX) at a weekend and the difference in handling from heavy crank to light crank are very noticeable.

So having a backwards spinning electric motor mounted in the COG is the secret sauce. However, the goal for the Varg 2.0 should be to loose weight!

When silicone battery technology became viable (read affordable) for consumer products, it can carry twice the capacity of current li-ion types, so a 77 lb Varg battery pack now weighs 38 with the same capacity  - a 222 pound Varg potentially. 

Add 20 pounds more battery for that ; ' 30 minute +2 & a red flag restart at Lomel ' & you still have just a a 242lb machine.  

It likely will happen, & soon as the world is now embracing electric powered everything, & the markets always respond to demand where there's money to be made.  

And how would I be able to do that?🤡

So if I can’t do that then I cant make a post using my opinion from experience with other bikes. 
 

Ride a MTB vs a eMTB. 

How much more expensive is that type of battery?  People spend 1000's on Ti.  mod motors can be 10K plus.   maybe there will be an aftermarket lightweight battery , or Stark could offer it as an option?  If the bike keeps getting all these rave reviews and starts smoking gas bikes in the local Vet races, I bet You would have vet riders lining up for $10K batteries. Or are we talking way more than that?   

I know it sounds crazy to talk about a battery costing that much. But again, there are people out there spending similar amounts on gas bikes already. Its not going to be everybody that buys one.  But  like VCR's , DVD players and other electronics, the cost should come way down  as time goes by. And I think long term, electric powered MX bikes end up costing less in 10 years.   

Are those numbers for real? 200 units per MONTH? That's it? For the most expensive dirt bike prices on the planet, they should be pumping out 1000 per week. Only 9 bikes per day assembled? That's truly underwhelming, especially for a company trying to pose as the Tesla of motocross.

Another Varg got delivered, this one belongs to a certain Joshua Hill.

It's definitely not a review, you won't learn much except that he never owned a torque wrench (before he got the Stark toolbox delivered with the bike).

Enjoy 10 min of goodness, see what the Varg can do with a pro rider onboard!

Of course everyone is looking for info about the range, here he got 1h15 riding using 76% battery at max power without regen.

who could downvote this video?  that woods course was insane.

Its slowly ramping up. a month or 2 ago they were only getting what they make a day now, done in a week .  In an interview Anton said that the factory should be able to produce 150K bikes per year .  They have a long way to go to get to that number.    

Damn, this step-up into the shark fin is bonkers!!

I wasn’t wrong hyping this thing up over the last year.. turns out this thing really is the game changer!

That track, and trail setup that Hill has is wild!  He's combining MTB stuff with dirt bikes.  And an hour and 15 minutes on the highest power setting no regen, it looked like he was aggressively on the power too in some sections. That is solid runtime.  Pretty fast trail riding . 

Should be fun seeing what Josh does with his Varg in future videos .  Seeing what he can get for runtime on a MX or SX track for runtime will be interesting,   he was pretty consistently in the mains and top 10's towards the end of the SX season.Could see how realistic it is to run a Varg on a single battery for a supercross program.  I hope he does some lap times comparing  his SX bike from 23 to the Varg on a SX track.  Be interesting to see how they compare before he changes anything on the bike. Maybe  put some SX suspension on the bike so its safe on an SX track.   

47 years old Fin veteran enters the chat

About the range:

He gets over 1 hour on hardpack MX track (before battery gets to 15% and reduced power).

30 min deep sand outdoors track.

1.5 - 2 h on single track enduro

For MX he uses about 1.5% per min of riding, (and can charge at 1% per min on 220 V), here are 3 scenarios to show what this range would mean in the real world:

1. if you don't ride much, say 3 times 20 min sessions (or 4 times 15 min) you don't need to charge at the track.

2. if you do 30 min sessions and rest (charge the battery) for 45 min after every session you always start from fully charged battery so you can ride all day (with generator or outlet at the track).

3. say you do 30 min sessions then only rest for 30 min you could easily do 5 times 30 min before lunch break (1h15 min to get back to 100%).

As always, your mileage may vary, agreed the gas tank is a great analogy, depending on terrain, riding style and skills you may use more or less battery, just like your buddy may empty his tank sooner or later than you.

Hang on, this thing is real and has performance and fun to boot?

”but where are the pictures of production line” 🤡

You need to factor in that Josh was airborne and/or going down hill for half that ride!

He was actually only putting power to the ground for about 40 minutes  :-)

Interesting new video.

As far as I'm aware that's the first quality control issue reported on the Varg. The bike was working fine for a few days then started to turn off whenever he turned the throttle hard.

We can only assess how statistically significant this or other issues are when they'll ship thousands instead of hundreds of bikes (and if they can prevent such issues if reccuring). As the owner says, unfortunately one can expect a few "growing pains" when buying the very first bike of a brand new start up. 

Bummer but here comes the cool part: Stark was able to remotely access his bike, study logs, and found that the inverter was faulty. So they sent him a brand new motor and inverter under 4 days after he notified them of an issue with the bike ! Remember the Varg is under warranty for 2 years. I doubt they can stay THAT reactive once they deliver thousands of those but that's some serious customer service.

He did the swap, basically removing almost everything then putting it back on, in about 4 h.

Enjoy this video, his next one will be about range testing (but if you're curious you should check out Enforcer Enduro on YouTube, direct link earlier in this thread)

Version 1.0, they should have the problems sorted by version 3.0!

New video from 913 trail riding in the woods.

I can see how not using a clutch (and even going for the left hand rear brake) could help you focus on your riding and use your legs just for that. And also not stalling if you get surprised by an obstacle or a slope steeper than you thought.

Here the lack of noise opens new opportunities, and adapting the power delivery and engine braking with the flick of a switch comes very handy (if you don't want to kill yourself with 80 hp in muddy trails).

Got to do 15m two sessions on the Varg yesterday in Sandy Oregon. Rode the Grey Model with the 18" rear wheel and side stand. The Red Model has a 19" wheel and no side stand. Other than that same bike. Both bikes were present. On IG search Rory Sullivan and Joey Landcaster for vids. I have a Freeride and a E Pure Trials bike so after a lap or 2 I was comfortable with the response and overall feel. The bike was just how it came out of the crate in reference to suspension settings. Rory did set the tire pressure.

We set up the power 1 with 25 HP, P2 with 36, P3 with 44 and P4 with 55. It was a tighter track on 3 acres in a rural area of 3-to-10-acre parcels with horse people in the neighborhood. Some jumps (I chose to roll them - 72 years young) and 3 long straights with some technical lefts and rights all with some elevation changes. 

With in a few laps, I was into P4 where I preferred the power. The bike wanted to be ridden way forward in the seat and while standing for me and my skill set. Getting to the forward seated position was super easy and came quite naturally! Also, it was easy to keep one’s feet on the pegs in most corners as it was very easy to steer with back end with the brake and power. This will make a great bike on fast and open trails IMO. I did a slow speed fall over in a right tight corner when the bike oversteered. Picking it up - well the weight was obvious

Acceleration is off the charts and braking feel is exceptional. You are going to need the brakes. If you broke the front brake lever, well that would suck!

All in all, it was So Much Fun!  

Would/will I buy one? Yes, tomorrow, not sure as I have several bikes and also have a shifter kart the I drive every week in the summer. If I lived on some acreage in or near built up areas - I would place my deposit tomorrow! I would get the rear brake on the bar as that is how my Freeride and MTB are and I'm used to that as my right leg is 1 1/2" shorter and not as flexible. 

Loads of fun!  Rory made a short video for me and he is editing it - so I'll post that in a few days.

2 Demos at Wilson’s Powersports Madera California