Silent Rorr

Oben's first electric motorcycle gets the most powerful motor on an electric bike in India, offers the most range, and uses unique battery technology for heat management, but does it live up to the hype?

- Dipayan Dutta

2022 is the year of the electric vehicle. If you are an electric two-wheeler manufacturer though, what you want more than anything is to stand out from the crowd. Oben, a Bengaluru-based electric vehicle start-up, aims to do exactly that with the Rorr. To begin with, the Rorr is an electric motorcycle, making it only one of three currently on sale in India, the other two being the Tork Kratos and the Revolt RV. But Oben isn’t really looking at the rest of the EV space as competitors, they’re looking at the market from a consumer point of view with the hopes of taking on the lucrative 150cc premium commuter motorcycle space.

That would explain the pricing, which ranges from Rs 99,000 OTR in Maharastra going up to Rs 1.25 lakh OTR based on state-wise subsidies and incentives, which makes it significantly cheaper than leading two-wheeler EVs in India. On paper, if the price was the conversation starter, things just keep getting better. It has the most powerful electric motor of all the two-wheeled EVs on sale with 10kW of maximum power. It gets an IDC (Indian Drive Cycle) rated range of 200km, and it gets a Lithium Ferro Phosphate (LFP) battery, that is significantly better at heat management and can handle 30 per cent more heat than a conventional Lithium-ion battery. Hopefully, this means that the chances of thermal run-off (i.e. EV fires) will be drastically reduced.