Swedish battery bike maker Cake has announced another electric offroader, called the Kalk Ink.
The Kalk Ink follows the same pattern as Cake’s earlier models: it’s a stripped-down machine, somewhere between a full-on dirt bike and a mountain bike. Range is limited; the bike comes with three power modes, offering as much as four hours of seat time in “Explore” mode (max speed, 45 km/h) to as little as one hour or less in “Excel” mode, which allows max power at the expense of battery life. “Excite” mode is in the middle, with one to two hours of riding, but enough snap on tap for enjoyable trail riding.
The Ink has an aluminum frame and swingarm, and an 11 kW motor with rear-wheel torque rating of 280 Nm. The battery is a removable 51.8-V/50-Ah unit. There’s 200 mm of suspension travel in back, and 205 mm in front. Ground clearance is 300 mm, and the Ink weighs 55 kg without the battery, 72 kg with the battery.
All very fun-sounding, but the price tag, alas, means this will just be a dream for most riders. Pricing is expected to be $9,500 US, or $12,500 US with extra battery. That works out to approximately $12,750 to $16,780 CAD, which is a lot of money for a machine that’s this restricted in its range. However, it does look like a lot of fun if you don’t get stranded out of battery juice …
It’s cool, I like it but can’t afford one. The Chinese will buy one, reverse engineer it and bang out clones at half the price.
I built something similar for way less, $2300 Cdn. 2007 Santa Cruz downhill MTB with 200 mm suspension and a Cyclone middrive motor kit that makes 2KW @ about 80NM torque. It will climb just about anything, crank the front wheel, do 40 mph and is a blast for about 1.5 hrs off road. It’s only 48V @ 40 amps, but if I could get 72 volts it would be 3KW and 100NM torque and it only weighs about 60 lbs. The torque is amazing. More than half of a small Toyota.
That sounds pretty cool, Doug. Got pictures? I’d love to see/hear more. I might build one for myself.
Create a how to blog. I’d love to build a bike. I’m not paying $5000 let alone $12.000 for an electric bike with a 11kw motor.