Erik Buell is known for a number of ventures in the motorcycle space, starting with making sport bikes with Harley-Davidson engines, under the Buell Motorcycle Company brand, with Harley-Davidson as a majority stakeholder. Then Erik Buell went on to establish Erik Buell Racing, which also closed doors last year. EBR had an India connection with Hero MotoCorp acquiring 49.2 per cent stake in 2013, but EBR's fortunes also nosedived, with the doors of the EBR factory being shut down for good and all assets liquidated.

But now, Erik Buell seems to be getting into a new venture, and this time, it's going to be electric bikes! The new company will be called VanguardSpark with Buell being just one of three partners in the venture. The other two are F-X Terry, the head of New York-headquartered Vanguard Motorcycles, and Frederic Vasseur, founder of Spark Racing Technology. Spark Racing makes Formula-E racing cars.

VanguardSpark will begin with two new models, and so far, the firm has only revealed sketches that show the 'design direction' of the bikes, rather than delve into details and specifications. The first model will be a pedal-assisted electric bicycle, called 'speed bike' but it's more of an electric bicycle than an out and out electric motorcycle. The second model, to be called 'Commuter' will be an urban electric motorcycle 'capable of 150+ km before recharging."

The sketch shows what appears to be a carbon fibre monocoque shell encasing the battery pack, and a hub-mounted electric motor on the rear wheel. The Commuter isn't expected to be a high-performance electric motorcycle and will be positioned as an urban runaround electric two-wheeler. Four more patent applications have already been filed and prototypes from VanguardSpark are expected in a few months. The firm is currently working on two new machines as a part of their first line-up of products. The first will be a pedal-assisted bicycle named Fluid while the second will be an electric motorcycle equivalent of a small-displacement bike that will be called Flow. 

The electric motorcycle will be offered in two tunes, an 11kW model that will fill in the moped market in most international markets while the more powerful 35kW model will be a more conventional urban motorcycle. The motorcycle will feature a hub motor mounted on the rear wheel which has the added benefit of clearing up integrated storage space of 50 litres. The company has claimed a range of 125 miles (201 km) on a full charge for the Flow. The company has also mentioned that the battery, chargers and wheel motors are upgradable, thereby allowing owners to customise their motorcycles as per the requirement.

Currently, Fuell has no plans of entering the Nepalese market.

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