ELECTRIC MOTORCYCLES - excuse the pun but there’s a bit of a buzz about them at the moment. With companies like KTM and Ducati all jumping on the bandwagon and manufacturers you’ve never heard of announcing they have the next big thing coming to market, it’s difficult to know what’s genuine and what’s not!

The Novus is a bit of a conundrum, it looks like an electric pedal bike, skinny wheels and tyres, carbon frame and no lights or number plate. Yet it’s claimed to hit 60mph and have a range of 60 miles, putting it squarely in the crosshairs of companies like Zero and Energica.

The Novus is the brainchild of industrial design duo René Renger and Marcus Weidig who met at design college in Germany. Their bike is a hollow carbon frame with batteries mounted in the lower sections and features a hub-mounted motor that produces a claimed 6.2kW (8.3bhp) and 200Nm (147ftlb) of torque.

There are a few quite cool design features on the bike though, the suspension set up being one of them. The rear uses a design that has the shock pivot off the swingarm, just like a conventional bike, and it’s adjustable for compression and rebound. While the front suspension is hidden away inside the headstock of the bike and is adjustable for ‘damper hardness’, whatever that is.

Sadly, the bike in the video isn’t road legal although the pair aspire to build the roadgoing versions exactly as the prototype is. and should you want to add the Novus to your garage/bikeshed you’re going to have to fork out an eye-watering $39,500 (about £31k in today's money) and at that kind of money – it makes a Zero SR look like amazing value for money!

For more information or to place an order(!) head to: www.novusbike.com