Love ’em or hate ’em, electric bikes are an opportunity to look at motorcycle design with fresh eyes. Sure, they still need wheels, suspension and handlebars?but they don’t need gas tanks or exhausts.
We spend our days looking at ?unconventional? bikes, so we get excited when we see something completely new. And despite the eye-watering price tag, we?re rather taken with the radical ?e-raw? from Essence Motocycles of Lyon, France.

Essence founder Martin Hulin starting working on the e-raw concept two years ago as an after hours project. He assembled a group of craftsmen to build a rolling prototype, which broke cover on our Instagram account, and quickly spread through the interwebs.
Martin tells us the publicity gave him just the spark he needed. He kept developing the concept, found partners, built a team and launched the Essence company. And now version 3.1 of e-raw is ready.
We?re told that the objective is to ?Get back to the ?essence of motorcycle? ? simplicity and authenticity, to keep it raw and pure and intense.?
So Essence have designed this machine to be as minimal as possible?taking advantage of the electric drivetrain’s simplicity, and paring down the traditional motorcycle bits. They?ve also blended modern tech with old-world craftsmanship, with an emphasis on raw materials like steel, aluminum and wood.

The backbone is a one-off steel trellis frame, hooked up to an aluminum swingarm machined by a third party. Everything’s...