The 23 students of Eindhoven University of Technology who left on an 80-days round-the-world journey on the electric motorbikes they developed themselves are back home. On 2 November the team was greeted to great acclaim at the university campus in Eindhoven after a road trip of some 23,000 kilometers. The aim of the enervating journey was to demonstrate the potential of electric transport.

This potential of the electric motorbike did not go unnoticed. In recent weeks the students had been in America where the STORM motorbike beamed out of the Times Square billboards in New York. CNN also gave the team air time and the students made presentations to a large number of companies, schools and municipalities.

Exceptional performance
The students’ motorbike made it around the world without any serious technical hiccups. Quite exceptional since the touring motorbike runs on a battery pack the students developed themselves. The pack, comprising 24 individual cartridges and good for up to 28.5 kWh of power, enables the motorbike to ride 380 kilometers before it needs recharging. That’s 13.5 kilometer per kWh. Compare this with a Tesla – 5 kilometers per kWh.

The only delay occurred on day two of the journey when there was a brief failure but after repair, the journey was able to continue without any problems, and the team got back to Eindhoven via Europe, Central Asia, China, America and, lastly, Paris.