KTM files patents for supercharger and EV range extender
KTM may still be getting out of its rut but it still has big plans for the future.
Financially troubled KTM may not be actually manufacturing a lot of motorcycles at the moment, but it’s still dreaming big - as a number of patents filed by the company show.
In the last week or so, we’ve caught wind of two innovative concepts to come from the Austrian brand. The first is an electronically assisted supercharger, and the second is an EV range extender.
We’ll start with the supercharger, a piece of kit that seems to have fallen back into fashion in the last year or so, with both Yamaha and Honda working on their own versions of the technology.
KTM’s take on the idea is apparently a mechanical supercharger that’s electronically assisted. So, it has an electric motor to spin the supercharger if engine revs are too low. The rest of the time, it seems, the electric motor could be used as a generator for the battery.
So, you’re not creating as much of a drain as the all-electric system that Honda is working on. Which means you can save weight by not having to carry as big a battery.
When not being driven by the electric motor, the supercharger would apparently be mechanically driven, powered off the crankshaft. The how and when of the supercharger’s power source would be determined by a complicated software.
Superchargers can help to improve the efficiency of an engine, creating a powerplant that’s still as powerful as what we’ve come to expect (or, considerably moreso, if the manufacturer wants to take things in that direction) while reducing emissions.
<H3>Overcoming the challenge of getting electric bikes further
Carrying the theme of reduced emissions even further, KTM has also reportedly filed a patent to help electric vehicles overcome one of their biggest challenges: range.
Its answer appears to be one that most of us had more than a decade ago: “Hey, what if you just strapped a generator to the thing?”
That is effectively what KTM is proposing in its patent drawings: housing a small petrol-powered generator in what appears to be a top box, which can be used to extend an electric motorcycle’s range.
Or, at least, that’s one of the ideas.
KTM has pitched three solutions in its top box range extender patent. Outside of a small petrol-powered engine and generator, KTM has also proposed the equally obvious answer of more batteries, packing the top box with swappable battery packs.
Option number three involves a fuel cell of unspecified type. One assumes a hydrogen fuel cell, but the patent doesn’t actually say, according to Cycle World’s Ben Purvis. This would probably create more problems than it solves, however, because the hydrogen refuelling network is considerably less comprehensive than the electric charger network.
In the United Kingdom there are less than 10 hydrogen fuelling stations across the country. Yes, you read that right: ten. Whereas there are upward of 82,000 electric charging stations.
The fact that KTM hasn’t really decided what will power its range-extending top box suggests the idea is still a very long way from implementation.
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Chris Cope is a fourth-generation journalist, originally from Texas. He has lived in the UK for roughly two decades and has been writing about motorcycles for most of that time. He has written for dozens of publications and websites in the UK, US, Canada, and Australia.
