Charge

“This is the Isle of Man TT. We’ve come to see hard men ride hard motorcycles, not piss about on battery-powered scrap.” That sums up the reaction of most TT fans on the Isle of Man in 2009, the year of the first electric race there. Clean, quiet, motorcycle racing at an average speed of less than 100mph? You must be kidding. CHARGE follows electric racing pioneers from America, Europe and Asia to the island in the Irish Sea for the first zero-emissions race there in 2009 and, for those that survive, on their return in 2010. The speeds rise fast, and slowly attitudes change. Today there’s an electric championship in MotoGP and even TT legends like John McGuinness have embraced the hi-tech missiles (his average speed at 2019’s TT Zero: 121mph). A decade ago it was a very different story. CHARGE tells that story. It’s a great racing movie (‘a must-see motorcycle movie’ Dan Aspel, Motorcycle News) and it’s a head-on collision of cultures. Tech versus tradition, Yanks versus Brits, rider