Whereas mass manufacturing of the HyperSport will occur at a devoted manufacturing unit close to Damon’s headquarters outdoors Vancouver, British Columbia, preliminary manufacturing will start at Damon’s San Rafael, California, engineering facility. The just lately acquired house is at the moment filled with placards and carts to visualise the varied levels of the meeting course of; polished concrete flooring and pristine work surfaces anticipate elements.
The meeting portion of the store is on the opposite facet of the wall from the place Damon’s engineers churn out 3D-printed prototypes, machine the alloy elements going by way of last growth, and crimp collectively early wiring harnesses.
Industrial-scale stamping, machining, and casting will finally substitute the hand-built nature of the preproduction bike you see pictured right here, nevertheless it’ll nonetheless carry the bespoke elements designed by and for Damon. “Each half on this [bike] is ours. We’ve developed it from scratch,” Dorresteyn claims. That’s not strictly true—industry-standard elements resembling wheels, brakes, and suspension are the exceptions.
The prototype Damon HyperSport we visited within the workshop isn’t but road-legal, missing niceties resembling flip indicators and purposeful headlights. With early manufacturing scheduled to ramp up in 2024, a lot of the crew at Damon Motors is targeted on finalizing all the varied {hardware} prototypes in order that correct manufacturing can start on the HyperSport, which continues to be set to hit these preliminary targets of 200 horsepower, 200 mph, and 200 miles of vary.
New Bike, New Bikers
The targets for the manager crew are a little bit completely different throughout WIRED’s go to. Giraud says the corporate is in the course of yet one more funding spherical, this time a $50 million increase to hold Damon by way of to manufacturing.
That’s a big hurdle to beat earlier than the corporate can lastly begin appeasing the hundreds of preorders, lots of which got here from events who don’t match into common motorbike demographics.
Certainly, some 75 p.c of all Damon preorders have come by way of the corporate’s Instagram, with a median age of 37. Of the three,700 paid deposits, 1 / 4 are from individuals who don’t even personal a bike—increasing the market, actually, however probably to inexperienced riders that would nicely require CoPilot’s intervention earlier than they’d like.
Giraud is aiming excessive with the HyperSport, however he has plans to supply future fashions (some by way of partnerships) which might be inexpensive for riders in all places, together with Indonesia, the place most bikes value round $2,000.
“Motorcycling is the most important type of motorized transportation on the earth: 1.5 billion individuals day by day. If we’re going to make motorcycling safer, one million a yr seems like perhaps placing a dent in it,” Giraud says. “And, from an electrification perspective, it’s not even a drop within the bucket.”
Giraud admits it should take Damon at the least a decade to hit that stage of manufacturing, a timeline that appears optimistic for an organization that has but to ship a single motorbike to shoppers. However, while you’ve confronted loss of life and lived to inform the story, perhaps the whole lot else appears simple.
Lastly, the Trip
As Damon’s prototype HyperSport is not authorized, WIRED’s check trip cannot happen on the street. As an alternative, Damon loaded up the bike and trucked it out to Thunderhill Raceway Park, one other two hours north of San Francisco.
Earlier than heading out onto the observe on the one purposeful Damon prototype motorbike on the earth, I did just a few warm-up laps on one thing a bit extra acquainted. Extra acquainted, however no much less loopy: a BMW S 1000 RR. That is among the many quickest sportbikes on the planet, making a tick over 200 horsepower and weighing simply 440 kilos. That it will do over 100 mph in first gear and dash to 60 in fewer than three seconds implies that this “warm-up” was fairly sizzling regardless of a chilly observe on a cold, Northern California spring day.
