UBC’s electric motorcycle racing team has moped project stolen

Photo: Bhargav Thoom

The University of British Columbia’s electric motorcycle racing team has had its research project stolen.

According to UBC’s website, the ThunderBikes Team “is an Electric Motorcycle Racing Team that builds high performance electric motorcycles and electric bikes.” For now, the team is working on combining bicycle design with electric motors, but they’re working to compete in the eMotoRacing Varsity Challenge in 2020. That means the team is on a tight schedule, as they’ve got to learn all they can about electric bike tech before then.

That makes last week’s theft tough. The team had developed an electric moped as part of a long-term plan to build an electric superbike, and was planning to take it to an electric bike festival this summer to compare it to vehicles already on the market, says CBC. Unfortunately, it was stolen while parked on campus, with a lock. ThunderBikes reckons there was $5,000 invested into the project, money they can’t easily replace, and that puts the whole project in trouble. Bummer!

CBC says the ThunderBikes team “would just like it back, no questions asked.” Hopefully, the machine will be easily noticeable and be returned to the racers one way or another soon.