Jarvis to compete in Romaniacs onboard the new JARV-E dirtbike
If you ride enduro, chances are you already know who Graham Jarvis is. If not, think of him as enduro’s equivalent of Michael Jordan in basketball or Valentino Rossi in motorcycle road racing. The man is widely regarded as the GOAT of hard enduro. As in the Greatest Of All Time.
Which is why his latest move is turning heads. Enduro riders are some of the biggest fans of two-strokes, the smell of gasoline, and the sound of an engine screaming through the mountains. But Jarvis has done the unthinkable. The hard enduro legend has traded his beloved 300cc two-stroke for an electric dirt bike, and he'll be taking it to one of the toughest races on the planet: the Red Bull Romaniacs.
Yes, Graham Jarvis. On an e-bike.
Good thing we befriended Jarvis during his visit to the Philippines for the Splenduro Hard Enduro Championship in Tagaytay a few years back, and we reached out to the GOAT himself and asked why he traded a 300cc two-stroke for an electric dirt bike. His answer was surprisingly straightforward.
“It performs better than combustion in hard enduro,” said Jarvis.
Of course, range anxiety is one of the biggest questions surrounding electric motorcycles. So naturally, we asked Jarvis how they plan to deal with that during one of the toughest races on the planet.
“The range will be the same as combustion bikes… In [Red Bull] Romaniacs, they just take the battery to fuel stop for us,” Jarvis explained.
In other words, his electric race bike will offer roughly the same usable range as the Husqvarna TE 300 he previously raced, on which he achieved roughly 60 kilometers in hard enduro conditions. Also, instead of pulling up to a fuel stop and filling the tank, the team simply swaps in a fully charged battery and sends him back into the mountains.
The machine in question is the JARV-E (website here), a purpose-built electric dirt bike developed with direct input from Graham Jarvis himself. Designed from the ground up for hard enduro and trials-style riding, the JARV-E is expected to be an exclusive machine, with only 100 units slated for production.
And the numbers are no joke. According to its official specifications, the JARV-E packs a motor with a max rated power of 50 kW (yes, that’s 50,000 watts), paired with a 5.6 kWh battery that can be swapped in as little as 20 seconds. It also boasts up to five hours of riding time while tipping the scales at just 95 kilograms, making it exceptionally light for a hard enduro motorcycle.
The bike is loaded with premium hardware, including a chromoly race frame, Sirris F43 suspension, CNC-machined components, and Nitro Mousse inserts to eliminate punctures. As for the price? The JARV-E carries a sticker price of EUR 12,200, or roughly PHP 876,000, making it as serious a machine as the rider whose name it bears.
