Watch the Mugen Shinden Roku at Twin Ring Motegi +Video
The Mugen Shinden is the most decorated electric race bike around, having captured the last four TT Zero races and holding the record for electric motorcycles with a 119.279 mph lap of the Isle of Man TT‘s Mountain Course.
Mugen, of course, is a long-time partner of Honda, and while it doesn’t wear any red wing logos, it’s long been presumed that the Shinden is the closest thing we’ll see to an electric sportbike from Honda until the company decides to put one into production.
It’s no real surprise, then, that the Mugen and the Shinden were part of the festivities of last month’s Honda Racing Thanks Day at Twin Ring Motegi. The event featured several exhibitions from Honda’s various racing efforts, including a Super Cub race with MotoGP stars Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa, and a few parade laps of Hiroshi Aoyama riding Bruce Anstey‘s 2017 TT Zero-winning Mugen Shinden Roku. Watch (and listen!) to the Mugen Shinden take on the Motegi circuit here:
It’s a shame the Mugen won’t be part of MotoGP’s upcoming electric class, with Dorna awarding the spec bike supplier contract to Energica. We’ll instead have to wait for next year’s Isle of Man TT, where Mugen will hopefully return to defend its TT Zero title.
Dennis has been a part of the Motorcycle.com team since 2008, and through his tenure, has developed a firm grasp of industry trends, and a solid sense of what's to come. A bloodhound when it comes to tracking information on new motorcycles, if there's a new model on the horizon, you'll probably hear about it from him first.
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We can make fun, but electric bikes are our future, at least on the street, like it or not. It's a good thing these things are getting raced so that when all we have are electrics they won't be as lame as a golf cart.
Clearly, none of you guys have much saddle time on electrics.
I recently lived with a Zero DSR as my only transportation for a month, and it was anything but lame. https://rollingphysicsprobl...
That bike was a freaking rocket until it ran out of gearing in the direct drive setup at @ 95 mph, and if you are technie enough to use the bluetooth interface and IOS app to reprogram the bike's regenerative braking, it will 'engine brake' off the throttle in ways that feel familiar to Old ICE-bike Farts.
Laugh all you want, but e-bikes will be dusting you lot shortly, and you'll never hear them coming. ;-)