K
TM's mission to make saving the planet fun,
as well as virtuous, has now reached the mar-
ketplace. The company recently launched a
trio of production versions of the Freeride E elec-
tric prototype that it has been working on since
2008. Indeed, such is the Austrian company's
commitment to going green, that it kept on devot-
ing precious R&D resources to its E-biking proj-
ect even as sales slumped and losses mounted
during its annus horribilis in 2008. Now, after
recovering spectacularly well from that low point
to become Europe's largest-selling manufacturer
in unit numbers, KTM has begun to harvest the
fruits of that commitment via sales of the first two
E-models already in dealer showrooms: the E-SX
motocross bike and E-XC enduro, the latter also
available in street-legal form at extra cost.
But there was a third, in some ways an even
more significant electric Freeride variant. It won't
see production in KTM's Mattighofen plant until
April 2015, so it can't reach European dealer-
ships until mid-2015, followed by other countries
like the USA and Australia in 2016. This third
model is the E-SM Supermoto, the first dedi-
KTM FREERIDE E-SM
FIRST RIDE
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