The Toyotron Hunter Electric Motorcycle.

By Mike Hanlon Via: Gizmag

"Toyotron is a new Thai company with three electric motorcycles in its range and plans to add two more in the very near future. Now we're not suggesting for a moment that the name has any relationship to that other well known brand which sells more motor vehicles than Ford and General Motors, but ... well, check out the company's logo.

Apart from the name and logo, the company's range topping Hunter is not exactly an original concept either - when I saw it in a motorcycle shop in Thailand, I was very impressed with the integrity of design and the styling and functionality of the entire package. It seemed original, but within a few hours of posting the story, a reader alerted us to the similarity to Honda's Big Ruckus, which had not sold in the motorcycle markets I was familiar with. Since we posted the story a few hours ago, we've now added pics of Honda's Big Ruckus in the gallery section and the Toyotron Hunter is as similar to Honda's Big Ruckus as the logo and name is to that of Toyota.

No, it doesn't have a 250 gas-burning engine but everything else about the machine is somewhere between similar and ... well, you decide by looking at the pics.

The top-of-the-range Hunter is selling in Thailand for THB 59,000 (about US$1750) and can run around 70 kilometres on a single charge from a standard power outlet – the company claims that the cost to drive the Hunter a kilometre is approximately seven satang (that’s one hundredth of a Thai Baht) based on Thai electricity rates and that comes in at a staggering one fifth of a United States cent. While we’re not sure about that claim, its clearly ridiculously cheap to run wherever you might be and whatever you get charged for your electricity.

The Hunter has a top speed of around 70 kmh (43 mph) which is more than fast enough for Thailand in general and Bangkok in particular, where speeds rarely exceed 60 kmh anywhere but the expressway."