2025 Electric Honda CR: Close-up look at the details of the new-generation motocross bike
It’s got to hurt the big manufacturers when someone talks about Electric Dirt Bikes then it’s Brands like Stark and suron that come to the FL rather than mainstream bike makers like Honda yamar or KTM that’s despite Yamaha leading the way in electric two wheelers with its bicycle range and trials bike KTM
Offering the Free Ride e for years and a range of kids electric bikes and Honda dominating electric road racing with its mugan machine to draw parallels with the car World lots of Manufacturers now make electric cars but it’s Tesla that leads in the hearts and minds of most consumers
That’s despite the American firm now being outsold by Chinese brand byd that’s the world’s biggest selling electric vehicle brand with its battery production being subsidized by the Chinese government and with the battery itself costing up to 40% of the car’s cost that’s a big deal no wonder Joe
Biden of the USA slaps 275% import tax on them in a bid to help the US car industry stay competitive well now it seems that Honda is finally preparing to launch its electric CR motocross bike to the buying public it’s always been branded a prototype but at the opening e
Explorer World Cup in Japan last week it was wheeled out with 2025 and blazing on the number plates now with 25 model year bikes usually going on sale from late summer onwards that means these bikes could be heading to dealers this year as they look very much like production
Ready rather than than prototypes or factory tweaked race machines and of course we all love the sound and smells of petrol powered bikes and no whiny electric machine could ever truly replace that but with the increasing pressure from greens over emission and noise it’s obvious that cleaner power is in everyone’s future
Like it or not now whether that’s a long-term future with lithium ion powered bikes like the current crop that remains to be seen there’s a lot of buzz in the industry about sodium Battery Technology which is much safer and doesn’t require sending children in the third world countries into mines to
Retrieve what’s needed for the batteries that are then shipped around the worlds in boats or planes hardly eco-friendly maybe hydrogen will eventually power internal combustion engines and make them clean but at the moment it’s lithium ion batteries that look set to form the first crop of serious dirt
Bikes good enough to race so to Honda where in the world of road racing it sister company mugan has led the way with its is Man TT winning bikes in the ebike class of course not against modern super bikes but piloted by top TT Racers like John mcginness and Guy Martin these
Bike lap as fast as proper 250cc two-stroke race bikes of not too long ago they are seriously quick and it was mugan that led the move into dirt bikes with the frankly super ugly erex project which you may spot has a Honda sticker on the side that’s if you can bear to
Look at it now if you didn’t know mugan was set up by the son of Honda’s founder sairo Honda as a development arm to work on future technology and mugan actually started in Motocross that first 2018 e Rex had comedy value of course but the second generation was much more refined
And the tech had completely changed so much so that the 2020 Tokyo motorcycle in Japan Honda took the wraps of a brand new electric powered CR motocross bike and mugan also revealed its own more radically style bike that uses the same motor and running gear as the CR rather
Than the full dinosaur look the Honda prototype bike looked much more production ready as it had a CRF style aluminium beam frame and shower suspension the Bodywork and dummy fuel tank was also built to look as much like a conventional bike as possible now while the Honda version had lots of racy
Carbon fiber the mugan one used more conventional Plastics and battery covers and now the CR electric bike is being shown and raised in its third ation since its Beginnings as a prototype it still uses largely the same motor and water cooling system from the 2020 bike from Tokyo but the frame is
New with a subframe that mounts on Lower at the bottom this bike has now been race tested for at least a couple of years including by Trey Canard in the Japanese Championship where he pulled whole shots and almost took the win until he was wiped out making a pass for
The lead on a 450 of course make no bones about it this latest bike is as close to production as possible from its stealthy cockpit with production style switch gear based on the CRF range the CR electric uses as much conventional Tech as possible there’s no point in
Reinventing the wheel and it gives potential buyers confidence when buying a bike that looks like a CRF it forms part of Honda’s critical mission to pursue carbon neutrality in the area of Motorsports Honda’s already been conducting research and development of Technologies for carbon neutrality in Motorsports all around the world and
From now on Honda says it will put these Technologies into practical use in racing activities starting with motorcycles and when Honda says it will do something it usually sees it through like when he said it would stopped making two strokes back in 2007 and there hasn’t been a two-stroke motocross
Bike since of course there are still issues with electric machines like range charging time and the cost of the bikes themselves the four Japanese manufacturers are studying the standardization of replaceable batteries in a bid to drive technology and economies of scale and to Counterattack the Chinese manufacturers of course and
As for racing in the UK at least electric motorcross bikes now can run in MX2 and mx1 classes the MX2 class allows bikes up to 48 horsepower or 36 KW and mx1 up to 60 horsepower or 45 Kow these are both figures measured at the motor
Test port says the rules but there’s no information on how these figures were arrived at or how organizers would be able to test these races and Club May specify capacity restrictions for championships within their own events whatever happens we’re at the start of a new chapter in Motocross and now Honda
Is getting ready to join in the electric bike movements is definitely getting serious we’ve seen Stark and the Honda prototype beat full-on 450 race bikes and consistently get better starts the Riders say they’re easier to go fast on and if you can afford one and of course
There’s no word yet on how much these CRS will cost then there could be an electric CR in your future sooner rather than later just remember to budget for the fuel for that pestrol power generator to charge it up at race Events
After years of prototypes from Honda and its sister brand Mugen, Big red has finally shown off a bike labelled 2025 CR Electric in Osaka, Japan.
Based on the factory race bike that Trey Canard used in the All Japan championship finale, we take a close up look at the bike you should be able to buy soon.
