Usually, when you learn of Students building a bike for some kind of project, your mind immediately forms an image of some weird-looking, gas-chugging motorcycle held together by duct tapes. This, however, is an exception arguably one of the finest examples of a project bike that you’ll come across.

Built by a team of fifteen students from Twente University in the Netherlands, the Delta XE (no, it’s not inspired by the new Covid-19 variant) is an electric race-only superbike, capable of breaching past 186mph, which is set to take part in four racing championships this year.

Delta XE Electric Superbike

One look at the Delta XE and it looks purpose-built to set the race tracks on fire. A lot of the credit here goes to the Suter MMX-borrowed carbon fiber bodywork} which comes wrapped in a staggering livery.

Most of the panels here are red and it makes sense since red usually means fast in the motorcycle world, which this bike truly is.

Speaking of which, the Delta XE churns out an insane 150kW (201 horsepower) and 125 lb-ft from its mid-mounted motor, capable of propelling it to a top speed of over 186mph. Meanwhile, the bike takes under three seconds to reach 62mph from a standstill.

The motor comes mated to a juicy 13.5kWh battery pack and sits in a chromium molybdenum trellis frame supplied by Bakker Framebouw.

All this is complemented by top-shelf Öhlins USD forks and Öhlins TTX-GP mono-shock, provided by CeraCarbon Racing and Ten Kate Racing Products, respectively.

Both these companies are also responsible for the bike’s Marchesini alloy wheels, special racing chain, and the accompanying sprockets.

Each of these components is aimed to do just one thing, to decimate race tracks and help the team reach their ultimate goal of inching towards MotoGP lap times.

With the bike, is “theoretically” capable of achieving this, the Electric Superbike Twente team plans to take part in four racing championships this year to find out how the Delta XE stacks up in the real world.

Once that’s done, the next challenge would be to up the ante further, ultimately putting electric motorcycle racing on the map.