Feature | Savic Motorcycles
Electric Start-Up An obsession with engineering motorcycles led this ex-Ford engineer to form his own start-up to design and manufacture electric motorcycles in Australia. Savic Motorcycles is a relatively young start-up based in Melbourne but the idea of designing and building electric motorcycles was well formed in Dennis Savic’s head long before he left his job as an engineer at Ford to go solo. “I’m obsessed with automotive and design in general. And so, I loved my job at Ford and really enjoyed working there. So, leaving it was definitely bittersweet. But yeah, this has always been the dream,” he said explaining that he decided at the age of 14 that he wanted to build his own motorbikes and the company that he started is the outcome of that dream. In 2016 the first electric bike that Savic built had a traditional style of frame, a twin spar trellis frame and he used an off-the-shelf power unit but later realised that they needed to do a ground up design not one that had been produced for different power units such as reciprocating engines. The company then went for a backbone frame which is still quite common, where the engine is a stressed member. Savic said it was a somewhat traditional option, but not overly common as most mass manufactured bikes use a twin spar frame. “So, we did that. And then in 2018, it took us a bit of time to raise money because I ran out of funds at that point … then we raised a little bit of money from friends and family and built a concept bike, the C series. So that was the 2018 bike,” Savic explained. “And that was with an off-the-shelf powertrain as well. So that was also the first time we’d launched Savic Motorcycles publicly, and we did really well, we got a lot of publicity. And then, through building that, we realised that the off-the-shelf powertrain wasn’t going to be reliable enough or powerful enough for what the market would want. “Nor was it going to be cheap enough because when you’re buying off the shelf, there’s lots of margins involved. And so, 2019 was the first bike that we built with our own 22 | December 2021
powertrain design. Obviously, having done that, we had a lot of lessons learned and not just engineering, but also supply chain.” According to Savic the supply chain was probably one of the biggest hurdles that had to be faced because the company was quite young and low volume even by Australian standards, so a lot of time and energy was spent in sourcing components. Another bike was completed at the end of 2020. And then Savic spent 2021 capital raising again. Success with capital raising was at a critical point, but now the company has managed to raise roughly $2 million in order to get to commercialisation following a co-funding investment from the Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre under the Federal Government’s $30 million Commercialisation Fund. The co-investment of $657,000 from AMGC, will be paired with funding contributions from Savic and its partners for a total project value of $1.14 million (including AMGC funds). With that funding the company plans to offer three C-Series motorbikes which include a 25-kilowatt Omega (comparable to a 300cc traditional bike) a 40kW Delta, and the 60kw Alpha (roughly equivalent to a 1000cc bike). The Alpha has 200Nm of torque, powering
it to 100kph from a standing start in 3.5 seconds. The C-Series’ 16kWh lithium-ion battery can be charged to 80 percent in under four hours and boasts an urban range between 150km (for the Omega) and 250km (for the Alpha). “We’ve managed to pack a pretty big battery pack in there. You know, 16 kilowatt hours … that’s on par with high-performance electric motorcycles already in the market. And so yeah, we think we’ll be able to, to get a decent range out of it,” Savic added. “So, the battery pack that we have in there is about 80 kilos worth of cells. I think a normal engine dry is roughly 50.” Savic Motorcycles employed optimisation modelling in its design process with a CAD software tool called Inspire. Engineers tell the software what the materials and design limitations are, and it removes the material that isn’t needed automatically. For example, the headstock of the C-Series prototype went through a number of design iterations to reduce its size while maintaining its load-bearing strength. Inspire helped by breaking down the headstock into its smallest components, assessing the contribution of each, and providing the smallest organic shape to fulfil its structural requirements.
