SM1 Powertrain: The Heart of SAVIC's Electric Motorbike Innovation

After years of development, the SM1, Savic's first electric powertrain platform, is fast approaching a manufacturing and customer-ready design. It started off as a series of critical off-the-shelf components housed in and on a battery-enclosing chassis fabricated at the hands of Dennis and a few close friends. When the vehicle first hit the road in late 2018, it featured only the most fundamental features - allowing the safe charging and maintenance of the battery, some tractive force for the rear wheel, and the basic control of some rudimentary lighting and instrumentation.

Three years and two prototypes later, Savic unveiled a new and improved version of the SM1 powertrain, which showcased a range of features the team considered ‘must haves’ for the vehicle and those who would be the first to pilot it. This included a feature-rich vehicle control unit running Savic-built software, a refined mechanical design of the powertrain enclosure allowing it to act as a robust piece of the chassis and provide the right ingress protection for all of the circuitry on the inside, and a greatly upgraded battery pack and power electronics - paving the way for higher-power outputs, faster charging, and greater control flexibility, monitoring and safety of all of the systems. Together, these were a dramatic departure that left the original version of the SM1 almost unrecognisable.

At the end of 2021, the team received and assembled several brand new components which made up the latest version of the SM1, with very few components from the previous prototype finding a place in the improved design. The latest production representative design features a long list of both major and minor changes, the most exciting of which include:

• Updated A-class surfacing pushing the vehicle's aesthetic beauty even closer to the original intent of the design team
• A greatly improved battery pack design enabling a 50% increase in energy and power density
• A quieter, smoother, torquier motor design inclusive of liquid cooling
• A fully-functioning liquid cooling system allowing for a level of thermal management that increases the vehicle’s resilience for testing environments and spirited riders

A suite of changes to the software, wiring, and electronics, allowing for:

• A smarter and streamlined user experience
• Full IoT functionality
• Monitoring and control of almost everything happening within the powertrain
• Speed and power limited reverse settings
• Cruise control
• Highly customisable power delivery and limit profiles.

After so much careful development and refinement, we are all extremely excited to see where the new SM1 powertrain will take us!