Mugen reveals a new weapon for the 2019 TT Zero race

Bruno Gomes

March 27, 2019

The Mugen Shinden Hachi | Sumber gambar: Asphalt & Rubber

At the recent Tokyo Motorcycle Show, where Honda showed for the first time their electric project the CR Electric Prototype, which we talked about here, there was another electric motorcycle that caught our attention: The Mugen Shinden Hachi.

This is the bike that Mugen will take to race this year’s TT Zero race at the famous Isle of Man and to ride this new electric bike, the Japanese brand chose TT veterans and specialists John McGuinness and Michael Rutter.

The Shinden Hachi (which means “Eight” in Japanese), is the latest evolution on their electric race bike project, a bike that has already won numerous races, including the TT Zero last year, by the hands of Rutter himself, when he lapped the island with a 196 km/h average speed, the outright lap record for an electric bike at the Isle of Man.

This year though, Mugen hopes to win and to record another record. The first objective will be to get a better average speed, for which TT specialists McGuinness and Rutter are valuable assets to the team, but there’s also a secondary objective which is to get the Mugen Shinden Hachi to reach a top speed of 275 km/h, the fastest any electric bike reached at the Isle of Man.

The Mugen Shinden Hachi | Sumber gambar: Asphalt & Rubber

To accomplish these goals, Mugen has spent the last 12 months evolving the Shinden Hachi at the wind tunnel, and from the early prototype, which used large fairings and also very round ones, the new Hachi version is much more streamlined, more compact, with aggressive lines that Mugen believes will help to achieve the new speed record.

The electric engine is powered by a set of new batteries developed by Maxell, while the engine itself is oil cooled. The battery pack has a 20 kWh capacity, allowing the Mugen Shinden Hachi to lap the island easily at an average speed of over 196 km/h because the engine develops around 163 hp and a massive torque of 210 Nm! The bike is fully Japanese, meaning that Mugen not only fabricates the monocoque frame, in aluminium, but they’ve also opted to use experimental Showa front forks made in carbon fibre, the same technology used in MotoGP, as well as Nissin brake callipers especially developed for racing. All this adds up to a weight of 248 kg.

The 2019 TT Zero race, exclusively for electric motorcycles, is to be held on June 5th.