The Team

Electric Superbike Twente designs, builds and races a fully electric racing motorcycle. The goal is to show how awesome and fast electric transportation can be. 2017-2018 was the very first year for the team, so everything is built from scratch. Most components are designed by in-house by the team. For example: frame, swingarm, battery manager, electric motor, battery pack and ECU. The last one is a great example of efficient PCB design with Eurocircuits PCBs.


The ECU (electronic control unit) is the central computer of the Lion-GP. It handles a lot of sensor data, for example coolant and motor temperatures, brake and suspension data, Bluetooth tire pressure or 12V battery status. On top of that, it handles the different driving modes. This makes it possible to turn on and off regenerative braking, or adjust the mapping from throttle to torque output. Also, it communicates with all the other electronic equipment, such as the BMS, charger, datalogger and inverter. Finally, it handles all data and registers for the inverter as well.


This is a lot of functionality, but in racing it has to be packed as light and small as possible. Therefore, a six-layer PCB layout is made. Fun fact: it has the Bluetooth antenna integrated in the PCB. The outline of the PCB is made exactly to the dimensions of the box it will ride in. This includes the PCB mounted connector and mechanical holes for mounting. To keep the PCB as small as possible, components are placed at both top and bottom.

The result

The box with the ECU is mounted in the nose of the superbike. All the data is processed to the display and datalogger. This year, the design has contributed to multiple wins in the MotoE-competition.

We would like to thank Eurocircuits for supporting our team with PCBs which sit in the heart of our Electric Superbike.

Jeroen Goudswaard, Powertrain manager, Electric Superbike from the University of Twente

Electric Superbike TwenteAuke Vleerstraat 3b, 7521 PE Enschede, The Netherlands

