Revealed last week during BMW Next Gen 2019 in Munich, Germany, the 2019 BMW Motorrad Vision DC Roadster is the firm’s take on the future of electric motorcycles. Mimicking the look of BMW Motorrad’s R-series bikes, the Vision DC Roadster uses a cylindrical electric motor mounted longitudinally and shaft drive to the rear wheel.
As for the barrels and pistons of the legendary BMW boxer twin, their place is taken by a pair of cooling elements that are mounted on an aluminium frame. The cooling elements move outwards slightly on startup, indicating the Vision DC Roadster is ready to go.
The milled aluminium frame and carbon-fibre tube structure can be seen clearly in this gallery of photos taken by paultan.org’s Matthew Tong, who attended Next Gen 2019 as BMW’s guest. The frames top spar continues on to form the seat structure with the tail piece housing the LED tail lights.
Suspension at the front uses BMW Motorrad’s Duolever fork design while the rear single-sided swingarm is propped up by an adjustable monoshock. The single absorber on the Duolever fork is mounted to the frame and fork legs with a pair of semi-trailing arms, giving movement that mimics the feel of traditional telescopic forks without the binding and stiction of traditional sliders and fork tubes.
Braking is done by Magura and while the front brake callipers cannot be seen, the radial master cylinder is a HC3 unit with horizontal transparent fluid reservoir, as is the hydraulic clutch. Of note is a variant of the M Sport logo machined into the disc brakes.
Inside the cockpit, a colour LCD display shows relevant information on the Vision DC Roadster, including temperature of the right and left cooling elements, tyre temperature and pressure and battery charge level. Metzeler racing slick tyres are mounted, with luminous elements set into the sidewalls to increase visibility at night.
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