#AltaRedshiftMXR

Alta’s co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Derek Dorresteyn, is a motorcycle racer, and in his prime during the early 2000s, he was trying anything he could to squeeze more power and performance out of his KTM 450, but any gains he got somewhere, he lost elsewhere. Derek and his riding buddy Jeff Sand, another eventual co-founder and current Chief Development Officer, would get together and talk shop all the time, and they loved the idea of a smooth and perfectly responsive torque curve but understood how difficult this was to achieve with a gas-powered bike.

Two weeks ago we got the opportunity to ride the all-new Alta Motors 2018 Redshift MXR, as well as the Redshift MX for comparison. It was my first time riding an Alta, and an electric dirtbike for that matter, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. How easy would it be to ride and how would it compare to a regular gas-powered dirtbike?

We’ve all heard about them, talked about them, and maybe even looked them up on Google, but in the end, most of us probably figured a full-size electric dirtbike is an expensive and impractical novelty motorcycle only those with deep pockets could afford to add to their toy collection… until now. Alta Motors has just released an upgraded 2018 Redshift MX model as well as its all-new Redshift MXR, and we finally got to throw a leg over both, not only to see if they lived up to the hype, but how they stack up to their gas burning rivals.