Energica->ke4817 was on the receiving end of great news when it found out that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Environmental Protection Agency both gave the thumbs up for the Ego electric superbike to be legally sold on US territory.

The development is a major break for Energica, which has been working hard to get the bike up to the safety and environmental standards of both the NHTSA and the EPA. But with both organizations giving the Ego their respective approvals, Energica can now proceed to roll out the electric superbike as soon as the company can establish a dealership network to sell them.

It’s unclear what timetable Energica will be working on, but you get the sense that the company is now full steam ahead in getting a dealership network up-and-running after numerous delays in the past few years have stalled the Ego’s sales debut. Reports indicate that the first wave of bikes are expected to arrive in the US in the third quarter of 2015, but until Energica says anything definitive regarding the Ego’s long-awaited arrival in the US, it’s probably best to not expect it arriving anytime soon.

Once it does arrive, the Ego is expected to fetch a price of around $34,000, which is pretty expensive for a motorcycle of any kind. But Energica has been on record saying that the Ego and its naked cousin, the Eva, are high-performance bikes that will be offered to a specific clientele who has no objections about the price tags of these two bikes.

Continue reading to read more about the Energica Ego getting approvals from the NHTSA and EPA.

Why it matters

I’m really happy for Energica for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it cleared a major hurdle in trying to get its electric superbike into the US market. It wasn’t easy getting to this point but the company soldiered on to get to where it is now. Not too bad for a start-up, right?

That said, Energica would be fools to think that all their issues have been solved just because they got approvals from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency.

There’s still a lot of work that needs to be done, including that pretty important part about how the company will continue to get the necessary funding to build these bikes. There hasn’t been any updates on that end ever since the company tabbed UBS to become its sole financing advisor back in March 2015. These approvals from the NHTSA and the EPA won’t mean a whole lot if Energica doesn’t have the money to build the Ego and Eva bikes. Just ask Erik Buell Racing, right?

But I don’t want to be a buzzkill because I know that these approvals are milestones for the company. It happened later than what most people thought, but the important thing is that Energica now has them.