Exclusive interview with Technical Director Scott Smart on the future of the World Superbike Championship: There is hope that internal combustion engines still have a few years ahead of them
The end of the internal combustion engine is drawing near. Or is it? In the automotive sector, the trend towards electrically powered vehicles is clear. In motorbikes, on the other hand, there are still no clear aspirations to soon be on the road purely on electric power.
Even after three years, MotoE is clearly overshadowed by MotoGP, which wants to future-proof itself thanks to e-fuels (more information). And what about the World Superbike Championship?
Will internal combustion superbikes disappear sooner or later? “Why would that be?” asks FIM Technical Director Scott Smart in an exclusive interview with. Smart can well imagine the motorbike industry taking a different path from the passenger car sector. He sees an alternative in synthetic fuels, as they will also be used in MotoGP in the future.
“Synthetic fuels are not new. There are intensive developments in this field. It is quite easy to replace the current fuel with synthetic fuels. A current combustion engine can be operated with synthetic fuels with minor modifications. Then the emissions are very low. So yes, there is hope for the internal combustion engine,” the FIM technical director is confident.
“In addition, it has to be said that motorbikes are always a bit behind. Looking at the EU directives, you can see that the motorbike sector has more time,” explains Scott Smart, who is not particularly convinced that e-vehicles provide the answers to all the problems.
E-vehicles don’t have a completely green record
“An e-vehicle is green when you run it. But the manufacturing process, for example, is anything but green. I’m thinking of the lithium for the batteries. That does have an impact on the environment,” notes Scott Smart.
Would MotoGP, with its prototypes, or the World Superbike Championship, with its proximity to series production, lead the way if there was to be a move towards electric bikes in the coming years after all? “It’s like asking whether the chicken or the egg came first,” jokes Scott Smart.
“If all the manufacturers produce high-performance sport bikes that are electric, then we’ll be racing high-performance sport bikes here,” the World Superbike Championship technical director expects. “But there are no plans so far that go in that direction. There are not even such tendencies in the mid-range segment.”
“There is still a long way to go before we see a lightweight high-performance sports bike because the batteries are so heavy,” Scott Smart expects. “In five or six years, of course, it could be very different. I don’t know though. I think it’s nice to have some sound on the track. “