72V Talaria MX5 now available at Luna Cycle

When the Sur-Ron 60V “Light Bee” electric dirt bike came out in January of 2018it was an instant hit with high sales because it was much more affordable compared to the Alta and the Zero off-road motorcycles. Then, a new competitor showed up a short time later, the 60V MX-4 Talaria Sting (to see that article from April 2023, click here). I wrote about the benefits of the Talaria Sting which was mainly an improved modern “IPM” style of motor that could handle future performance upgrades, compared to the old-style SPM.

Electric hot-rodders have typically taken one of two routes to improving performance, for riders who want that “little something extra”. You can swap-out the controller to improve the amps, which helps acceleration. However even though this was the cheapest way to get harder acceleration, more amps equals more heat, which leads us to the second way to improve performance…

Bumping up the volts from 60V to 72V.

Doing this raises the power without a significant increase in heat. These motors can take quite a bit of heat, but the controllers and batteries can be sensitive to heat, if you like to run steep uphills for long distances, with no cooling-off period where you re simply cruising along.

The only issue with upgrading to 72V is the cost of swapping-out the controller and also the battery. Enough existing riders might like to have a spare 60V Sur-Ron or Talaria battery pack, that you should be able to sell the stock unit to defray some of the swap-costs. However, if you know you already want to have the ultimate electric dirt bike, the most cost-effective option is to buy a factory 72V Talaria.

Sur-Ron shown here, and Luna carries a variety of sprockets for both the Sur-Ron and Talaria dirt bikes

The stock Talaria MX5 comes with a 48-Tooth rear sprocket, but one of the most popular upgrades for Sur-Rons and Talaria’s is to get a larger rear sprocket. If you swap to a sprocket with 10% more teeth, it will lower the top-speed 10% and it will bump-up the rear wheel torque 10% for improved hill-climbing.

Luna stocks a full line of many different tooth-counts for both the Sur-Ron and Talaria dirt bikes, and if you want to see what accessories are available for the Talaria before buying, you can see the Talaria section of the Luna web-store by clicking here.

Here is Karls article on what you can expect when swapping to a larger rear sprocket.

From Greg M…

“…I have about 100 miles on the new MX-5. It just does everything very well. Off-road, it’s a pleasure to rip the trails with. I’ve played on the streets some, and it has more power than you need right out of the box. Range seems in line with most other bikes in this class, but will take the ever so slightly less run time for the trades in robust build, braking, and power output.

I swapped out the stock tires for the Tusk Ground’s, added a direct-mount stem/lock, Luna bars, a few little personalized items. The price point is amazing for what you get. It would cost you several thousand dollars in upgrades on the earlier platforms to reach the out-of-box performance you get with the MX-5…”