The growth of the electric vehicle market has sparked a new trend in the car world. Older vehicles like Land Rovers and VW Beetles are having their busted motors ripped out, and replaced by electric drivetrains. Since a car’s motor is hidden the conversion doesn’t ruin its looks?but on a motorcycle, everything’s on full display.
If you’re going to convert an old bike to electric, and you don’t want it to look scrappy, you need a more considered approach. This cute Honda CB200 from Omega Motors shows how to do it right.

Omega Motors is a side-project for Nick Nieminen, James Hollis and Ian Iott. Nick and James used to work at the San Francisco e-bike company Monday Motorbikes, and after they left, started throwing around the idea of a ?modern classic? electric motorcycle. Nick is in San Francisco, but James moved to Germany and Ian is based in Ohio. So the guys worked in small bursts when they could all get together, and remotely the rest of the time. It took them about three years to go from a bone stock 1975-model Honda CB200, to this: the Omega ‘EV200.’

Nick and James had a lot of untested ideas from their time at Monday, so the project was a way of trying out stuff that wasn’t practical for a production bike. ?We felt like many brands were taking the newfound design freedom of electric drivetrains a bit too far,? says Nick, ?making bikes that had lost some of the motorcycle spirit that makes folks get nostalgic.?
?We ...