We all talk about the Isle of Man TT. We do that to acknowledge the skill and bravery of those crazy SOBs, going full throttle over a crest just in front of someone’s front yard seemingly without fear. But it’s not just litre-bikes you know, because since 2010 the Isle of Man TT has had the TT Zero category where entrants are prototype electrically-powered motorcycles.

It’s not very famous, perhaps because it takes away the event’s stature and image. But it’s also important from a tech perspective. Ask Mugen Motorsports, which for the pasts few years have been a serious front-runner with five wins.

So how does a winner of a 37.73km mountain course race look like? Well, it may run on batteries but it looks a lot like a regular bike. Of course, it also sounds very different, as we found out from John Hogan’s video in Twitter.

Spent the day getting my head around the Mugen Shinden. This is what fast will sound like in the future. pic.twitter.com/DAxV20Sozu

— John Hogan (@JohnatSuperBike) May 21, 2019

This year’s Isle of Man TT is currently underway and will go on until early June. For Mugen, this year’s Mugen Shinden Hachi electric bike will be run by John McGuinness and Michael Rutter, and is pretty much the same as last year’s bike. The machine weighs around 248kg, packs 370-volt lithium ion battery that powers an oil-cooled brushless electric motor, outputs roughly 160hp and 210Nm of torque. In 2018, this bike achieved an average race speed of 196kph. Unbelievable!