Ultraviolette F77 Road Test Review: 4 Likes And 4 Dislikes

The F77 gives an experience that’s unlike any other bike in India. Here’s how

The Ultraviolette F77 proved to be quite a fun motorcycle when we rode it earlier this year in Bengaluru. But then that was on good roads and with limited time. So how does India’s sportiest and most powerful electric bike perform on more practical fronts like everyday usability, range, and reliability? I got a chance to spend a couple of days with the bike and here’s everything I liked and disliked about it: 

Likes: 

Range

The most crucial aspect when we think about an electric vehicle is range, isn’t it? And with its massive 10.3kWh battery, Ultraviolette claims that the Recon will return a solid 307km range. And when we did put it to test, the bike ran for a decent 227km before it finally ran out of charge. Here’s how we tested the bike: 

So if your usage will mainly be restricted within the city, you can easily go on for more than a week without putting the F77 to charge. 

Performance

Over the past couple of years, we’ve learnt that even the slowest of electric vehicles can be quite a delight to ride, given that they make all their torque from the word go. So when India’s fastest electric bike came our way, we had our hopes high. 

And the F77 was definitely impressive. The Glide mode (slowest one) is actually quite usable in the city and doesn’t feel like something that’s made purely for hypermiling. It has just enough acceleration for those quick overtakes and the approximate 80kmph top speed is pretty decent as well. 

But if you love riding your bikes in a spirited manner, Combat Mode is quite lovely. It was nearly twice as quick as the Glide mode in our roll-on acceleration figures and it’ll keep you quite entertained in the city. In fact, a 120kmph top speed means this mode will happily take on highway duties as well. 

Let me give some context before I talk about Ballistic mode. An ICE bike has things like clutch engagement and gear shifting before you launch it. While they don’t exactly hamper the riding experience, what they do is give that extra bit of time for your brain to comprehend what’s going on. Every gear shift, for example, readies your brain for the next wave of power. Plus even the smoothest of engines have at least some form of noise going on down there, to just tell the rider what’s going on. 

The F77, on the other hand, has nothing of that sort. So when you slot it into Ballistic mode and give it the beans, it pulls right to its top speed in a single go and there’s absolutely nothing hampering the acceleration experience. So before your brain can actually understand what’s going on, you could be doing speeds way higher than what’s safe. The experience is not only exciting but also very different from what even the fastest ICE bikes in this segment have to offer. 

Brakes

Putting a leash to all that firepower are the F77’s potent brakes. Their initial bite is nice and sharp and no matter what speeds you’re doing, they inspire a lot of confidence in bringing the bike to a halt quickly. Its braking distances were not only better with the TVS Apache RR 310, but we found them to be on par with the KTM RC 390. And that’s really saying something considering the F77’s 200+kg kerb weight.

What you will have to get used to though, is the nosedive. Given its front-biased architecture (because of the nearly 70kg battery mounted near the front), the F77 tends to nosedive a fair bit, especially under heavy braking. That said, it’s not scary in any way and you just need to get used to it. 

Handling

Don’t let the 207kg weight make you feel that the F77 is a bike that steers lazily, for this one loves going around corners. The big battery at the front does mean it’s not super quick while changing lanes but once you tip it over a corner, it feels rock solid and inspires a lot of confidence. And complementing the handling are the grippy MRF Steel Brace tyres. 

But what I found even more impressive was the bike’s weight distribution. The bike’s new frame has been designed in such a way that even at slower speeds, it feels way lighter than the other 200kg bikes that I’ve ridden. Given my 68kg lanky self, I was a bit worried about handling such a heavy bike but the F77 was delightfully well-balanced even when taking tight u-turns. Even moving it around in the parking lot is quite manageable. 

Dislikes: 

Slightly committed ergos

The F77’s sportiness continues the moment you sit on it too. Its clip-ons are low and footpegs are rear-set. Even my 6’0 self had to lean forward quite a bit to reach the handlebar. While it was still manageable for me, Praveen in our office who is around 5’5, found the ergos to be quite committed and said he wouldn’t use the bike on an everyday basis. 

Stiff suspension

All the stability we talked about around corners? Yeah that unfortunately doesn’t feel the nicest on our roads. While the USD fork feels okay on most of our roads, the monoshock has a tendency to kick back, especially when going through some of the moon-inspired craters found on our roads. I first thought it was because of my slender build, but even the heavier riders at our office shared the same feeling. 

Miscellaneous Issues 

The F77’s fit-and-finish levels are top notch for the most part but some things just leave you scratching your head. Its charger cover, for example, is very flimsy and leaving it to charge up in public places will always give me anxiety. And given that the cover doesn’t have a rubber gasket to prevent water from seeping in, my anxiety will probably go through the roof during monsoons. 

And alongside that, we faced our fair share of software issues as well. We faced ABS calibration issues in our first ride as well and the same happened during our road test review. While it has dual-channel ABS, there were times when the system not only switched to a single-channel system, but even disengaged itself completely on multiple occasions. 

Then was its reverse mode. Ultraviolette has been generous enough to give this hefty bike a reverse mode, but accessing it is so difficult that it took us a whole lot of permutations and combinations of all the toggle switches to finally find it. And if you give up and decide to reverse it manually, you’ll realize that there’s a lot of resistance from the motor towards the chain while doing so, so much so that I was afraid it might snap the chain. So my solution for this was to switch off the bike every time I reversed it manually. 

And lastly, its navigation system. You see, Ultraviolette doesn’t have an application of its own so in all these days that we spent with the F77, we couldn’t figure out how to connect our phones to the bike! So while I can see my location, there’s no way for me to put in the location that I want to reach. These things aren’t something I’d like to see in a bike if I was paying Rs 4.55 lakh (ex-showroom Bengaluru) for it. 

Price 

And that brings us to the elephant in the room. Rs 4.55 lakh is what Ultraviolette is asking for the F77 Recon trim. It’s a reality check: bigger batteries are expensive and without the shield of the FAME 2 subsidy, performance-oriented EVs won’t exactly be a steal deal.

Verdict

So yes, the truth is that you really will get much quicker bikes for a lot less money than the F77. But what the F77 gives, is an experience. It’s silent, rapid and just something that’s very different from any of its competitors. That very experience, unfortunately, has a price. This bike will definitely not set sales charts on fire but what I can say is that the ones who buy it, will have something that looks and rides like nothing out there. 

The F77 also gives me hope. It’s a start, a really impressive one, and I’m hopeful that it only goes upwards from here. If Ultraviolette can fix the little niggles and make it a more well-rounded product, it’d be that much easier for us to recommend it. And if this is what performance-oriented electric bikes are like, it excites me to even just think as to what more we might get in the future.