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TBH it was mentioned in the article 2 posts above yours, and I did not want to overload you with Stark good news.
So Taddy B finally got his Enduro debut with Stark.
Got 3rd in the straight rhythm prologue, (more like super enduro)
Then he got 7th in the 3 h race. First race, his job is to develop the bike for Enduro, we will see how he progresses.
He did race for 3h40min, how come? One battery swap after 2 laps (the bike was not designed for that).
So now we know the battery can last 90 min with Taddy B racing hard enduro at great pace (4th place after 2 laps), and Stark must be considering quick swap batteries for the Enduro version or maybe Varg 2.0. Quite likely they will try to engineer faster battery swaps for Taddy already this year.
Obviously with a $7 000 spare battery, that would only be interesting for official riders, mere mortals will probably have to contend with 120 min races (if Taddy has some juice left after 90 min you can probably ride a tidbit longer than that).
https://enduro21.com/en/racing/latest/5-minutes-taddy-blazusiak-talks-s…
We should also see him racing Spanish enduro which will be more in the Varg intended use than 3 h races.
WOW that's impressive runtime !
I wonder if they would be able to get the price down some if You were to buy 2 batteries when You buy the bike? At some point when they have the bike designed to be swapping batteries during a race or between motos. If they sold the quick swap version with 2 batteries standard , maybe that extra volume could make the numbers work out so You get 2 for 5K each . or 6K , some sort of discounted rate.
I wonder if VP will be offering batteries at some point in the future. Or if some of the current battery manufacturers will try and offer aftermarket batteries for the Varg and other bikes as they come out. I think some sort of lease program would be the way to go. So You have a fixed payment each month and You can have 2 or 3 batteries and not put out all the cash at one time. And then if there is an issue they would swap out the battery, or if the range dropped below a certain % you could swap out the battery. And then they could rebuild batteries and offer them at lower prices.
It's interesting Stark are advertising their battery supplier...
They hadn't previously publicly stated who their battery supplier was, it validates the speculation they are using the Molicel INR-21700-P45B...
https://www.molicel.com/wp-content/uploads/INR21700P45B_1.2_Product-Data-Sheet-of-INR-21700-P45B-80109.pdf
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That's been the case in AX UK as well
The range is better than expected it would appear.
But is this the same battery that is fitted to production bikes ?
Or is it a better, more expensive battery ?
Is the whole bike standard ?
For SX/AX they started racing with a bog standard bike, played with suspensions and in the end removed some cells to get lighter battery for 10-15 min races. A lot of development goes into refining electronics (throttle response, energy management...) and is later sent to customers via monthly updates.
No details yet for Enduro, that was just the first race with an official Stark rider.
Why would the bike be standard? It's a factory effort.
Right now, the second battery is 8000$, it's a very fair price.
Exactly, it's a factory bike, so it could well be non-standard.
This is important to know as if it is a non standard uprated battery, then Stark Customers with a standard bike/battery, may not get that longer range
So , no good thinking-" Taddy did 90 minutes, therefore an ordinary rider could do more ?"
this needs clarifying, as it's not an ICE bike where extending range is a simple 10 minute/$300 job of fitting a bigger tank.
A 200% mark-up seems fair enough to me. After all Turtlenecks ain’t cheap. I am sure they won’t be more than $10K in a few years when everybody will need one or two.
Right now (2 days after the first race), we don't know if Taddy was using a standard battery or not.
Go on YouTube, you will find many videos with Varg owners riding or racing over 90 min enduro, that might be more representative of the range for amateurs than anything Taddy can do on the official bike.
We will get more "standard bike range data" with GNCC racing, starting next weekend
For a us customer the price is showing as $6998.90.
As they finetune the process of building and see how they last in the real world. Higher production speeds and the other things that get cheaper as You do more of them , could result in lower prices. Right now only people who want a second battery will be buying one. So That will result in very few sales and the cost per unit sold will be much higher for Stark.
My main printer's print heads were $5k each when the printer was new. Now years later when people are actually needing to buy them in larger numbers the heads are now $1800 or less each. I see the battery price staying the same or dropping for the current batteries, as long as inflation doesn't get wildly out of control again. Prices for Lithium batteries have been going down since 2013. I would bet that the price increase that happened this year was from the Covid increases and it will continue the downwards trend in the future.
They just released new firmware with efficiency update, improving range/ride time. Some Facebook group said rumour says 15-20%, well, if it's even only 13% I'm impressed... that is probably enough to do a restart and be stuck in San Francisco mudder
https://youtube.com/shorts/snJY6gMGJRY?si=jjBcwxa1uAPeyZ2I
Stark is using the Molicel INR-21700-P45B, there is nothing else on the market, that has that discharge current, with a higher capacity.
Until something else comes to market, all stark can do is improve battery management, and remove batteries to reduce weight, but decrease range.
It will be interesting to see what manufacturer utilizes solid state first.
My money's on Honda in 2028.
I'd rather see Varg VS CR-E VS YZ450F VS 450SXF on a SX track...
but since Honda strategy does not seem to include competing with ICE more regularly, the first Varg VS CR-E showdown will happen on FIM explorer cup's tiny little endurocross tracks.
Very short tracks and races, still will be interesting to see if the Honda prototype is on par or better than a current production bike.
Riders for Honda factory team are Tosha Schareina and Francesca Nocera, Robbie Maddison Racing will race Stark Vargs with Jorge Zaragoza and Virginie Germont, starting this weekend in Japan.
The week after it will be double points on offer for AXUK finale in London so things are far from settled in this series indeed.
Pit Row
"Our ambition is to prove our bike is superior by lining up on the start gate with the gas bikes. We want to race in MXGP and AMA supercross. (...) We would look at doing some races in 2022, but full-time in 2023. Everyone believes the electric bike is the future and our ambition is to race MXGP in 2023."
Anton Wass
2024 FIM e-xplorer cup, here we go!
If the FIM let them, they would race MXGP, they might not finish, but they would race.
What's your point? Stark aren't afraid, the AMA and FIM are.
Yeah, and if the AMA let me, I'd show that Jett guy a thing or two.
You realize that isn't Stark fielding that team right? It's a private operation.
"at 40 hp I feel like I just had a cap on what I could do"
Carry on mate, you might be onto something
Seriously though I don't know how much faster than Alex Martin he's supposed to be, might be due to the track? Alex used 62% riding 10 laps at Millville on 50 hp, that's about 17 min.
Pros probably can't race MX for 30 min on the Varg, real world testing is happening in outdoors with amateur racers around the world, 2024 MX season in France and Australia will give a better idea of the MX range for regular guys.
20 minute E-MX motos to differentiate from real motocross
Yeah, right, it's not like Zaragoza and Stark have had a privileged relation for a while...
And I'm sure Tortelli's girlfriend is going there on her own...
Play with words all you want, I still find it pretty funny for a brand which kept on saying over and over it had no interest in racing against other electric bikes...
I'm sure you'd immediately find good excuses to cover up the fact that the guy was way faster on his CRF, misses his clutch and gearbox and found the bike "boring" since there's "nothing to do"...
Oh man, there's one guy on the internet that rode the Varg and didn't like it, I'm devastated
I know you need the comfort, not gonna spoil it for you, enjoy.
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