Walter Roehrich knows how to build fast motorcycles, having won the Battle of the Twins with his impressive 1250sc. Now he’s turned his attention to the burgeoning e-moto scene with not one but three electric crotch-rockets.

The Roehr Motorcycles e-bikes join the MotoCzysz E1PC, the Mavizen TTX02 and the new Brammo Empulse in the growing stable of lustworthy electric rides on the steep side of the development curve. They’re handmade to order and expensive as hell, starting at $16,965. They’re also heavy.

But damn they look good.

All of the bikes use twin-spar steel frames with AC induction motors and lithium iron phosphate batteries wrapped in sleek composite bodywork. The range starts with the eSuperSport, which weighs 395 pounds goes for $16,965. It has a single 36 kilowatt 48 horsepower motor that draws juice from a 5.8 kilowatt-hour pack with range of 60 to 80 miles.

The e-SuperBike gets a pair of motors good for 96 horsepower and a 7.7 kilowatt-hour pack good for 80 to 100 miles. An Ohlins shock joins the same 41 mm inverted front fork found on the SuperSport, but the bike gets Brembo brakes. Claimed top speed is 135 mph and the bike weighs 500 pounds. You’re looking at $27,595 to put one in your driveway.

Topping the range is the flagship eSuperBike RR. Although it’s street legal, Roehr Motorcycles will offer a track-specific machine clearly aimed at the TTXGP electric motorcycle grand prix. It’s got the same drivetrain as the SuperBike, but the forks are 43 millimeters, the calipers are radially mounted and they clamp down on bigger rotors mounted to lighter wheels. It goes for $34,495. Pricey, yes, but less than the Mavizen TTX02.

No word on recharge times.

The bikes are built to order with a refundable $2,000 deposit. Roehrich told us in January he hopes to build 50 a year. As for his transition from gas to electricity, he says it’s “really cool.”

“It’s acceptable, unique and gives a really different feel of riding,” he told us. “It has a future and that’s the exciting part about getting involved. You don’t have to be a multimillion-dollar engine manufacturer to make a competitive vehicle.”

Photos of the eSuperBike RR: Roehr Motorcycles

See Also:

• An All-American Sportbike Goes Electric
• New Brammo Electric Motorcycle Is Fast Enough for Trouble
• The Motorcycle of the Future Has Arrived
• Watch the Entire Electric-Motorcycle Grand Prix Right Here …
• Yes, the Mavizen Electric Superbike Is Hot
• Video: Mission One Electric Superbike at 150 mph

We don’t think Azhar Hussain ever sleeps. In addition to pretty much starting the whole electric motorcycle racing scene, organizing races in five countries and staring down the FIM, the guy has signed a deal with ESPN to air races in the U.K.

ESPN joins networks in the United States, Italy and Canada in airing the TTXGP championship series. The one-hour shows, which begin next month only in the UK, will include behind-the-scenes looks at the technology, interviews with riders and, of course, the races. It’s essentially the same deal TTXGP has with Speed2 here in the United States. The programming starts with a feature on the 2009 TTXGP on the Isle of Man.

“ESPN is one of the world’s leading sports distribution platforms,” Rupal Patel, head of new biz development for the TTXGP, said. “The inclusion of the TTXGP into the top tier of world sports distribution confirms TTXGP as the first and leading platform for zero carbon motorsports.”

We were front and center for the first race of the North American season at Infineon Raceway and can say the race was far more exciting than you might think. The level of technology and the quality of the bikes is impressive, and the racing was closer than we expected.

TTXGP promises more info on the ESPN coverage soon.

Photo: Photo: Mike Doran / D & W Images for Infineon Raceway

See Also:

• Watch the Entire Electric-Motorcycle Grand Prix Right Here …
• TTXGP Electric Motorcycle Race Becomes a Dogfight
• Electric Motorcycle Racing Becomes a ‘Race to Own’ Co-Op
• If Yamaha Went Electric, It Would Look Like This
• Electra Racing Goes Old-School With an Electric Norton

A small DIY, low-buck grassroots motorcycle racing team wants to make a run at the TTXGP electric motorcycle championship but needs help to get there — and the deadline is just days away.

Jennifer Bromme and the crew at Werkstatt Motorcycles — a small San Francisco shop founded and run by women — is scrambling to raise the cash to get a Mavizen TTX02 electric superbike to the states in time for the TTXGP California race at Infineon Raceway. It’s a long shot, because they’re well short of the $21,000 they need. But they aren’t giving up because they’re committed to seeing electric motorcycling succeed in the States.

That’s where you come in. You could get a chance to ride the bike of the future.

Bromme hopes her fellow riders, EV advocates and anyone interested in cool technology, motorcycle racing or just helping people achieve a goal will donate money.

“I know $21,000 sounds like a lot of money,” Bromme told us. “But if 210 people donate $100 each, it’s not such a big number.”

The Werkstatt team is not a school of squids. They know how to ride, they know how to wrench and they know how to race. Bromme has been riding for 22 years, and she opened Werkstatt 16 years ago. She’s raced 750 superbikes and motorcycle sidecars, and she currently races a vintage Honda CB160.

“I’m perfect for the Mavizen because I’m really good at having to maintain my cornering speed on a bike with low power from racing the CB160,” she said with a laugh. The Mavizen sports a pair of Agni 95 motors for a total of about 60 horsepower continuous and 97 horsepower peak.

She’s got a solid crew backing her up. Carolyn Coquillette owns Luscious Garage, a San Francisco shop specializing in hybrid repair and plug-in hybrid conversions. Anton Bertraux is “a mechanical wizard” handling the wrenching duties. And Twitter’s Jeremy LaTrasse is onboard as well.

Bromme’s first goal is to help electric motorcycling gain a foothold in the states. Although she loves her vintage Rickman and that old CB160, she’s convinced the future of the sport is electric.

“It’s pioneering,” she said. “It’s very exciting to be part of something new.”

But she’s more than an altruist looking to usher in a new era. She’s out to win, and if she gets a look at the grid and thinks she’s outgunned, she knows a lot of seasoned American Motorcyclist Association racers who’ll be happy to take over riding duties.

Bromme had hoped to build an electric bike of her own but ran short of time, so she’s worked out a deal with Mavizen to rent a TTX02 for the season. She needs $21,000 to cover rental for the season, shipping the bike to California from England and getting on the racing grid for the first race May 14 to 16. If the team makes a good showing at Infineon, Bromme is confident it can get the support needed to compete in the rest of the American electric grand prix series and vie for a spot on the grid at the world championship race in Spain.

Time is running short, because Bromme’s got until Friday Sunday to show she can raise the money. To encourage people to chip in, Bromme says anyone who donates $500 or more gets to ride the Mavizen. Once the bike arrives in the states and people see it, she’s confident the team will line up more donations, if not a sponsorship.

“Once we get the bike here and people can touch it and sit on it,” she said, “we can build some real excitement.”

Click here to donate.

UPDATE 11:15 p.m. Eastern April 22: We’ve just received word that the deadline has been extended until Sunday.

Photo: Jim Merithew / Wired.com

Michael Czysz and his crew were the talk of last year’s race, which was known as the TTXGP before the Isle of Man told race founder Azhar Hussain to take a hike. Czysz rolled up with a race-ready ride that looked like something ready for MotoGP.

Speaking of MotoGP, that’s Valentino Rossi, a man who knows a thing or two about motorcycles, checking out the Czysz E1PC during last year’s race. It was an impressive machine indeed, but not enough to take the title. Rider Mark Miller didn’t finish the race around the 37.7-mile Mountain Course.

They’re headed back this year with a bike much improved over last year’s ride. It will feature the team’s proprietary electric motor, which Czysz promises will offer “the highest torque/density electric motor in the industry.” The team is the early favorite to take the £10,000 prize — about $16,024 — promised to the first rider to post a 100-mph lap.

“We are very excited to be returning to the Isle of Man to compete in the 2010 TT Zero,” Czysz said in a statement. “The fact that electric motorcycle racing has been elevated to an official class within the TT shows the commitment of the Isle of Man government in providing the low emission pioneers with a world stage to demonstrate their solutions. This may end up being one of the purest prototype classes left in racing.”

Czysz knows how to design a motorcycle. The C1 990 is a sweet machine with a carbon fiber frame. The bike puts down 220 horsepower and weighs less than 350 pounds. It was designed for MotoGP until the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme changed the displacement from 1,000 cc’s to 800. MotoCyysz plans to offer 50 replicas of the bike at $100K a pop.

The E1PC electric bike built upon the C1 and in many ways looks just like it. Czysz claimed the bike could do zero to 120 mph in 7 seconds, putting it firmly in literbike territory. It used three motors and 10 lithium-ion batteries in the pack. Motorcyclist called it “the most impressive machine entered in the event” and declared, “this is not the last you’ll see of this bike.”

Indeed.

Photo: TT Zero

See Also:

• Electric Motorcycle GP Calendar Shapes Up Nicely
• More Suds In Electric Motorcycle Racing Soap Opera
• Electric Motorcycle Racing Hits the Big Time
• It Wasn’t Even Close For Green Grand Prix Winner
• Zero to 120 MPH in Seven Seconds, Silently

If there’s one thing we love more than Italian cars, it’s motorcycles. Or maybe it’s the other way around. No matter, because this wild machine joins our two passions in an Alfa Romeo-powered custom named, appropriately, Alfabeast.

This insanity is the work of Chris Barber, who we describe with utmost respect and admiration as a raving lunatic. There’s no other way to describe a guy who would pull a 156-horsepower 2.5-liter V6 out of an Alfa Romeo and stuff it into a hardtail frame with a four-speed Harley-Davidson gearbox. Crazier still, you’ve got to kick start this beast. Yes, those are Weber carbs poking through the fuel tank, and yes, the bike has six individual tailpipes with no mufflers. We’d love to hear this thing at wide open throttle — from a block or two away.

Barber is the one-man-band at Crossbreed Cycles in the U.K. It’s a fitting name, given some of the other bikes he’s building. If an Alfa isn’t your thing, perhaps you’d like a Maserati V6 instead. No? How about Desmohog, which features a Harley engine with desmodromic heads pulled from a Ducati 900SS.

Like we said — he’s a lunatic.

Photo: Crossbreed Cycles via Bike EXIF. Hat tip to Chris!

It’s about time an American sportbike company jumped into the eMoto scene, and if you thought Erik Buell would be the guy to do it, think again. Roehr is the new champ in all-American motorcycles, and it isn’t kidding around with its electric bike. If it looks and performs anything like the Roehr 1250sc, we are in for a real treat.

With racing in his blood and experience working with the likes of Jimmy O’Donnell to win the Battle of the Twins, Walter Roehrich took his passion for racing and put it — and a whole lot of money — where his mouth is. He started Roehr Motorcycles about two years ago and launched the Roehr 1250sc (pictured above) not one year later. It’s a power-drunk two-wheeler that weighs 432 pounds, produces 180 hp and offers enough go-fast goodies to fill a grown man’s toy store.

Now Roehrich has his sights firmly fixed on a wicked battery-powered brother to the 1250sc and wants to race it in the TTXGP motorcycle green grand prix. The cleverly nicknamed eRoehr is slated to hit the market this spring and cost one-third as much as his closet competitor, Mission Motors and the slick Mission One.

“We don’t want to be $60K to $70K. So cost had a lot to do with it,” Roehrich said. “We want to sell these to people.”

A sneak-peek rendering of the Roehr electric superbike.

Roehrich used mass-manufactured parts engineered and tested for full life-cycle reliability to assemble a package any two-wheeled junkie would want to throw a leg over.

The 35-kilowatt AC motor made by Hi Performance Golf Cars provides 45 horsepower at 96 volts. The beauty of the AC motor means no brushes, no commutator to resurface and no arcing. Translated into lay terms, it’s 100 percent maintenance-free and the company claims it ran for 10 years nonstop in testing. Running them at slightly higher voltage, Roehrich ekes out 48 horsepower at 8000 rpm and 105 pound-feet of torque in the eSupersport.

Not enough for you? Opt for the eSuperbike with dual motors pushing 96 horsepower and 210 pound-feet. That’ll fit the bill.

The eSuperbike gets twice the motors, twice the power and twice the price, coming in at $29,995 to the eSupersport’s $14,995. That undercuts the Mission One and the $40,000 Mavizen TTX02 by a big margin. The eSuperbike doesn’t skimp on the hardware, either. There’s talk of Brembo four-pot radial calipers, Marchesini forged aluminum wheels and Ohlins suspension components, but you might see all that eye candy only on a race-ready model to keep these bikes from being some rich man’s garage art.

The batteries in the prototype are Chinese-made Headways lithium-iron phosphate large-format cylindrical cells. The eSupersport will have a 6-kilowatt-hour pack while the eSuperbike gets twice that. Roehrich is considering lithium-iron phosphate cells from A123 Systems, but that would double the cost of the pack so he might offer that as an option on the race-ready machine.

Roehrich claims both models will deliver 130 to 140 miles of range at 30 mph, which translates into a more realistic 60 to 70 miles at highway speeds. The recharge time with the on-board 10-amp charger is four to five hours for the eSupersport and five to six for the eSuperbike. A larger home-based charger obviously will cut down on those times.

What about the “real” figures? The eSupersport hits a claimed top speed of 95 to 100 mph with a zero to 60 time of about 5.0 seconds. The eSuperbike can go head-to-head with modern 600cc bikes with a 3-second sprint to 60 mph, a quarter-mile time in the low 11s and an estimated top speed of 150 mph. And how’s it feel?

“The bike is effortless,” Roehrich said. “No clutch. No gear shifter. Once somebody gets on a bike like this, they are gonna come back with a big smile on their face. The performance and range may not be there yet, but it feels like it is.”

The coolest part of the bike is its modularity. Want to start with an eSupersport because the eSuperbike is too much power or simply too expensive? Roehr motorcycles do away with the headache of selling the old ride and buying another based on “necessity.” Just buy an upgrade kit and make your eSupersport into an eSuperbike in your garage.

Roehrich hopes to have the bikes in showrooms by April and make its racing debut at the TTXGP race in California the month after that.

“We hope to sell 50 in the first year,” he said, “But we are very flexible. We can expand rapidly to adjust to the sales demand.”

As for the journey from gas to electricity, Roehrich said, “It’s really cool.”

“Early on, I shunned it like everyone else,” he said of electric motorcycles. “What I see is the future rather than the product as it stands right now. It’s acceptable, unique and gives a really different feel of riding. It has a future and that’s the exciting part about getting involved. You don’t have to be a multimillion-dollar engine manufacturer to make a competitive vehicle.”

Photo and rendering: Roehr Motorcycles

See Also:

• Hot Damn: 666 Road Racing Enters The TTXGP
• Go Racing on Mavizen’s Electric Superbike
• Video: Mavizen Electric Superbike on the Road
• Mission Accomplished: Electric Motorcycle Hits 150 MPH
• Video: Mission One Electric Superbike at 150 MPH

BASE jumpers are a bit crazy. You’d have to be to leap from, say, Petronas Towers. But even by that measure, Bernie Williams stands apart. He’s jumped 5,000 feet from a hot air balloon — while sitting on a motorcycle.

Williams, who lives in Cardiff, Wales, made the jump to set a world record. For what, we’re not sure. Maybe for biggest the pair of, well, never mind. Anyway, he had a guy named Todd Ames design and build a rig to suspend a Yamaha motorcycle from a hot air balloon. That task done, Williams went to Chesaning, Michigan to pull the stunt. The pilot ascended to 5,000 feet and… oh hell, just watch the video.

The bike, by the way, has now spent more time in the air than on the road. It will be auctioned for charity.

To anyone who might think, “What’s the big deal?”, remember what Evel Knievel once said: Anyone can jump a motorcycle. It’s landing that’s tough.

Video: YouTube / JLauriFilmworks

Add Italy to the list of places getting in on the electric motorcycle racing action. Azhar Hussain, the founder of the TTXGP motorcycle grand prix, announced today that he’s lined up four races there in 2010, and one Italian team already has signed up.

Hussain is almost single-handedly creating a global electric motorcycle racing series. He’s already got races scheduled throughout the United Kingdom, and there are races slated for San Francisco and Toronto as well. Oh, and let’s not forget the electric car race he’s launching in Paris. Keep in mind it’s been just seven months since he hosted the inaugural TTXGP on the Isle of Man. We’re starting to wonder if this guy ever sleeps.

The races in Italy are slated for Magione on June 27, Franciacorta on July 25 and September 5 and Mugello on September 26. The race series is sanctioned by the Federazione Motociclistica Italiana.

“Until now we have been involved in some electric racing experiments but the rapidly developing technology in electric motorcycles, in terms of battery efficiency and weight and dimension, opens a whole new world,” Paolo Sesti, president of the FMI, said in a statement. “We also hope that our decision can contribute to the development of zero carbon, clean emission vehicles and that the advanced technology developed in this form of motorsports will accelerate the presence of green vehicles in our everyday lives.”

There’s a chance there could be an Italian bike on the grid.

CRP Racing is building a bike for the TTXGP. It isn’t saying much about the eCRP 1.0, which will make its debut Jan 13 in Birmingham, England at the Cleaner Racing Conference. But it promises “a pure racing bike.”

“Joining the project of TTXGP means for us stretching the boundary of innovation in a race for the future,” Livia Cevolini of CRP Racing said in a statement. “I find this project an extraordinary idea. Moreover, I think that these bikes are also a skillful demonstration of how motorsport can adjust to the environment without giving up its identity.”

As if creating an electric motorcycle racing series isn’t enough, Hussain is broadening his horizons from two wheels to four. His latest venture, EMXGP, will see electric cars racing through the Parisian borough of Levallois-Perret along the Seine from June 4-6. They’ll make a dozen laps of a 2.2-mile course mapped out on city streets. Think of it as EV version of Rendezvous, but without the flagrant law-breaking.

“The point is to expand the idea of electric motorsports,” Hussain told us.

Hussain says the race regs will be issued soon and he’s got three teams lined up already. He wouldn’t say who they are, though.

As for us, we’re gonna call Tesla Motors to see if it will lend us a Roadster.

Photo of electric motorcycles at the TTXGP in June: Flickr / Pew! Pew! Pew! Lasers!

See Also:

• Canada’s Going Electric Motorcycle Racing Too
• Britain Goes Electric Motorcycle Racing
• Electric Motorcycle Racing Comes to California
• Video: Mavizen Electric Superbike On The Road
• Go Racing on Mavizen’s Electric Superbike
• It Wasn’t Even Close For Green Grand Prix Winner

Mavizen is moving right along on development of the TTX02 electric superbike, and company boss Azhar Hussain passed along some video of the bike undergoing testing of the battery management system.

It isn’t much to look at — just a low-speed cruise through what looks like a residential neighborhood– but it’s cool how quiet the bike is. Yeah, yeah, we know electric motors are damn near silent. But it’s still weird to hear a racy superbike emit nothing more than a whir.

The Mavizen TTX02 looks sharp. The rolling chassis is based on the KTM RC8 superbike, and they’re shipped directly to Mavizen from the KTM factory. Tasty bits include Brembo brakes, WP suspension and aluminum wheels. Propulsion comes from a pair of Agni 95 electric motors, each producing 22.5 kilowatts continuous power (about 30 horsepower) and 36 kilowatts peak (48.2 horsepower). Expected top speed is 130 mph.

Mavizen is building the bikes to provide turn-key machines for the TTXGP motorcycle grand prix. Hussain has lined up races throughout the U.K. with events slated for the United States and Canada as well. Thirty-four teams have signed up so far, Hussain told us, and at least two of them will ride Mavizen machines.

“We’ve committed to the first customer deliveries in February,” he said. “They’re shipping to the U.S. around the end of February.”

It’s be nice if one showed up here at Wired.com…

Video: Mavizen. There’s a pic of a second bike, in white, after the jump.