It was a year ago that Can-Am officially confirmed its plans to return to the motorcycle market with a pair of electric two-wheelers due to reach customers in 2024. An update on the project reveals that testing is well underway and bikes should be in the hands of customers by the end of 2024.
Although Can-Am is remaining silent on specifics of the range and performance targets for the Pulse roadster and Origin adventure bike, both built around a shared chassis and powertrain, the company says that test riders have been impressed so far. It has also released images of real-world prototypes that, while still looking very much like last year’s show bikes, give a dose of reality that was previously missing from the project.
In some of the picture’s names, the bikes are titled “Pulse-35kWh” and “Origin-35kWh.” In a previous version of this story we speculated that, while unlikely, the figure might indicate the bikes’ battery capacities in kilowatt-hours. We contacted Can-Am about this and the company has confirmed that the 35kWh reference was included in error and does not reflect the bikes’ battery size.
It would have represented a vast increase compared to current electric motorcycles on the market. At the moment, the biggest battery you’ll find in a Zero has a capacity of just under 21kWh, including the optional Power Tank upgrade, while the Energica Experia has a maximum capacity of 22.5kW. The Ducati V21L prototypes used in MotoE competition have 18kWh batteries.
A more accurate idea of the Can-Am Origin and Pulse battery capacity might be found in patents or the new bikes. These show an unusual mechanical layout with a three-phase drive motor mounted in the front section of the swingarm, powering the rear wheel via a reduction gear and a final drive belt in a sealed unit that also provides an oil bath for the moving parts. By having the weight of the motor toward the front of the swingarm its inertia is reduced even though it’s on an unsprung part of the bike. It also means the drivetrain is completely separate to the main chassis of the bike, which can be dedicated entirely to batteries and the control electronics.
The patents show that the battery pack is made of seven identical modules, each with 70 individual cells for a total of 490 cells. There’s liquid-cooling for the batteries and electronics, suggesting a high level of performance. The patent’s text says: “In the present embodiment, the battery cells are 3.5V cylindrical cells, such as LG M50L cells.” Those LG M50L cells are in the “21700″ format (21mm diameter, 70mm long), as used in older Teslas and Ducati’s MotoE bike, and have a nominal capacity of 17.8Wh. With 490 of them, the resulting pack would have a nominal capacity of 8.7kWh and a maximum usable capacity of around 10kWh—a figure that’s in keeping with middleweight electric bikes on the market at the moment (the LiveWire Del Mar has a 10.5kWh pack).
However, the patent also says: “battery cells could vary in nominal energy capacity, usable energy capacity, discharge rate, cell chemistry, and cell type.” So the door is wide open for higher-capacity cells to be used as technology advances. In terms of performance, the patents don’t reveal the motor’s power, only confirming it’s a three-phase AC motor, connected to an inverter mounted on the left hand side of the battery pack. Like the battery, the motor is liquid-cooled, connected to a pair of radiators, one on each side of the bike.
Since the official release of the Origin and Pulse in production form is still around a year away, Can-Am isn’t making official claims about performance or range yet. We’re facing a long wait before any numbers are confirmed for certain, with specs due to be announced sometime next Summer.
The Can-Am image titles also use another term that could relate to the new electric bikes, with all of the images labeled “TNT.” So, for instance, the Origin adventure bike pictures are titled “TNT-MY24-Origin-35kWh.” The “TNT” section of the name appears to be a throwback to older Can-Am models from the 1970s, when several street-legal models were labeled TNT as a shortened version of “Track ‘n’ Trail.”