The first Royal Enfield electric bike will be more of a technological showcase than a mass-market electric bike
After months of speculation, the Royal Enfield Flying Flea finally debuted at the EICMA 2024 in Milan Italy. This was followed by an India debut in February 2025. While we got a closer look at the motorcycle, along with a few interesting new details, it also made it clear that the production version will not be cheap by any means. The bikemaker is likely to launch the electric motorcycle around March 2026 in India.
One of the biggest USPs (Unique Selling Point) of the motorcycle will be the unique, retro girder type fork. To be precise, it uses a forged-aluminium girder fork to replicate the suspension used in the 1930s. Unlike a conventional telescopic fork, this kind of suspension is very rarely used on modern motorcycles except for a few ultra-luxury, bespoke bikes. This is because having multiple components with complex linkages are expensive to manufacture, not to mention more tedious to do quality control testing as more moving parts make it more prone to failure.
Popular fork manufacturers like Endurance, KYB, Showa all mostly make telescopic fork or premium inverted fork with adjustability, depending on the model. The availability of these are much more widespread, and are also pretty efficient for their purpose. Royal Enfield will have to get one of these brands to mass-produce the ‘rubber-band’ type girder fork specifically for the Flying Flea. That means, setting up a supply line from scratch, solely to cater to one bike will be an expensive affair.
Moreover, Royal Enfield has spared no expense in making the bike as light as possible. While figures are not given out officially, it is certain that this will be the lightest Royal Enfield bike in production. The company achieves this by using exotic materials including forged aluminium for the frame, swingarm and as mentioned before, the fork; magnesium casing for the battery pack; slim alloy wheels with matching tyre profiles. All these also add up to the cost significantly when compared to using a conventional raw material like steel.
Royal Enfield has also ensured the bike is as technologically advanced as possible. In fact, it has collaborated with chipmaker Qualcomm Technologies to provide the Flying Flea with a Snapdragon QWM2290 system-on-chip (a master chip that contains all the components of an electronic system) along with the Snapdragon Car-to-Cloud Platform. This works with an in-house developed operating system with 4G, Bluetooth as well as Wi-Fi connectivity. It also gets a smart key integrated into the smartphone, voice assist, and even has a small wireless charging compartment where the ‘fuel tank’ should be. Most of these are pretty advanced features that you usually see on high-end cars or motorcycles.
With these aspects taken into consideration, the expected price of the Royal Enfield Flying Flea will be at least around Rs 4.5 lakh (ex-showroom). It may also not be eligible for any EV subsidies, so the on-road price will easily cross the Rs 5 lakh barrier. If our price guess is on point, then it will simply be a niche product that is designed to show off the brand’s technological prowess, just like the TVS X electric scooter.
Parting Thoughts:
The Flying Flea C6 and its scrambler sibling, the S6 are essentially modern, electric interpretations of the 125cc Royal Enfield Flying Flea of the early 1940s. The original bike was made to be light enough to be air-dropped from parachutes and be used to navigate through tough terrain quickly and send messages where radio communications were non-existent or damaged. While the vintage bike didn’t shy away from getting dirty, the modern cousin will stay clean, quite literally, making it a prized possession of a wealthy motorcycle enthusiast rather than a trusty stallion for a soldier.
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