Stark Drive Torque - Unboxing and Assembly
Hello,
We have been wanting to write about the the two prototype Stark Drive Torque units we have received for a while now but there has been a lot of my plate with the upcoming December 15th Launch of Stark Drive Mini on Indiegogo. You can see a preview of the campaign
With that being said, Stark Drive Torque (SDT) is quantum leap in utility and affordability for Torque enabled electric bikes.
Although SDT is based on our own custom frame design, our options were limited when it came to the drive system to power SDT. There are few players in the Torque motor arena and limited competition normally results in higher prices to the manufacturers that use these components and these consequently get passed onto the end user. To give you some idea of the cost of the 'system' for SDT, the cost for the motor alone is the highest cost on the entire bike followed by the battery pack. Conversely, on both Stark Drive and Stark Drive Mini, the battery was the highest cost component.
Having limited options for the drive system, we had to innovate in other ways to keep the price to our goal for the base SDT. One was to reduce the number of gears to 8 instead of 21 and then there was building our own frame so that we could innovate and lower the cost of manufacturing a substantial percentage of the total cost of the bike. SDT does not include rear shocks as we found this feature in SD to not be very appealing to our end users.
SDT will come in a variety of Power options, the ones we tested were 350 and 500W systems. We will offer from 250W to 750W systems when we launch. There will also be the option to go B&W for the display or full beautiful color as pictured below. The higher end display comes with some interesting extras such as auto-lights when the system senses that the brightness warrants it. You will also get access to a host of base system configuration options to help you fine tune your experience if you so desire.
Below you can see our companies (short) historical timeline. Although it has been an exceptionally bumpy ride, im pleased to announce that we are currently on track to fulfill our master plan as we had envisioned it several years ago. In fact its getting close to reworking it to Master Plan Part 2. We are discussing what is next for Stark Drive after Torque and will hopefully have something interesting to report in the new year...did someone say scooters?
As always Stark Drive arrives well packed.
All critical components that can be damaged have an extra layer of protection during the shipping process. This we have iterated to perfect after shipping thousands of bikes.
The beautiful BAFANG mid motor drive on this version of SDT.
The Powerful 500W version of SDT.
Pulled straight out of the box you can see everything is very securely connected and protected.
Here is the switching from ECO to SPORT mode giving you a lot more power and performance.
All in all, we are still refining SDT to make it even better by selecting all the features we will connect to our own custom frame design. These are prototypes in all senses of the word however we will be holding an auction on these two prototypes soon which will benefit charity. More details on that soon.
Sincerely
Stark Drive Team
Stark Drive LLC
