Superbike You Probably Never Heard About Is the World's First Motorcycle with Sight

The three words designate a bike maker and a motorcycle model. The bike maker is called Verge, and it's a small producer of two-wheelers established in Europe some six years ago. It has offices in several of the Old Continent's countries, including France and the UK, but also over in the United States.

The motorcycle model is the TS Ultra. It is part of a small lineup of electric motorcycles that also includes the TS and the TS Pro with two special editions, the California and Mika Hakkinen. That's right, the two-time Formula 1 champion.

All of these machines play in the electric superbike segment (I know, there's no such thing yet, but there will be), and the TS Ultra is the leader of the pack, the flagship, the kind to rule them all.

The bike is a mechanical monster (can you use the term mechanical when talking about electric drives?). At its core sits a full-body battery pack with enough electricity storage capacity to last it for 375 km (233 miles). I know, that's huge, even by car standards. And you can fast charge it in as little as 25 minutes.

The battery powers an integrated rim motor. What is that? Well, you see that weird wheel at the rear, with the big hole in the middle? That's where the electric motor is. Not only is this an insane way of doing things, but it also gives the ride a Light Cycle kind of appearance. You know, like in Tron.

But a huge range and a weirdly shaped rear wheel do not make a superbike. They need some numbers for that, so here we go: the electric motor of the TS Ultra is rated at 201 horsepower and no less than 1,200 Nm of torque. Which you get in bulk, instantly, as soon as you twist the throttle.

I find all of the above pretty impressive, but that's not really what makes this superbike special. What does all that is something called the Starmatter.

That's not some piece of hardware or a gizmo of some sort, but a software suite running an artificial intelligence system. The idea was first presented back in November 2023, and it looks (on paper) so revolutionary it might very well change the way we ride our bikes.

That's because it pairs the said AI with a series of sensors (anything from GPS to accelerometers) and a human-machine interface to allow the rider an unprecedented level of situational awareness. How so? Well, it basically notifies the human rider of various things happening around the bike, like say letting them know when a vehicle is coming from behind, and even when said vehicle is changing lanes.

That was what the bike used to do, as during CES Verge introduced an upgraded version of the the machine and its Starmatter system, one that tops off the existing sensors with no less than six cameras and high-resolution front and rear radars.

This setup, called Starmatter Vision, is used for the first time on a production bike and makes the TS Ultra, in Verge's view, "the world's first motorcycle with the sense of sight."

The bike tells the rider what it learns through a series of new displays. The one on the top of what would be the fuel tank is now larger, and it runs a new interface. Additionally, it also shows images captured by the rear-view camera as soon as the turn signal is engaged.

The TS Ultra in the previous configuration has been around for a while now, so some people (the ones who knew about its existence, of course) got around to ordering theirs (no deliveries yet, though). Since the Starmatter Vision-equipped version is now the new standard, all of them will get the new version instead.

On the American market the TS Ultra is more expensive than your average family car. Verge is asking $44,900 for one of these babies, which by all intents and purposes is also a price higher than that of entry-level muscle cars.

If all of the above didn't convince you to go out and buy one of these things, or if the price seems a bit too much, you should know the other version, the TS, sells from "just” $26,900.

Granted, it's also a lot less capable than the monster we have here, offering just 107 horsepower and 700 Nm of torque, and a range of only 155 miles (250 km).

Verge estimates deliveries of the TS Ultra will begin in the last quarter of this year. The same goes for all the other bikes it sells.