Slovenian entrepreneur, Marko Ukota, spent 15 years racing a gasoline-guzzling supermoto. Now, with his company, Flux Performance, he is on a mission to deliver a greener version of dirt bike thrills to amateurs and pros alike across the United States of America.
Compared with other motorbiking competitions, supermoto racing is more about rider skills than the bikes themselves. Bikers handle both short technical tracks, including off-road, and the hair-raising jumps and obstacles of motocross. The racers travel at less than 160 kilometres per hour, meaning more flat-out acceleration and less speed than you see in other motorcycle races.
In the last 15 years, 33-year-old Slovenian biker, Marko Ukota, has combined the skill and exhilaration of handling the corners and wheelies of dirt tracks with an engineer’s interest in improving what is under the chassis. Ukota won the Slovenian and Italian supermoto championships and came ninth in the world at the Supermoto World Championship in Sestriere in 2021, racing for Honda.
But even amidst the thrills of riding the course, he began pondering how to turn gasoline-guzzling supermotos electric whilst maintaining their performance. “These are bikes to be ridden in nature, so burning oil and creating a lot of smoke is terrible,” he says. “With an electric bike, you can be part of nature.”
Ukota built a career as a mechanical engineer alongside competing in supermoto races. “Almost nobody makes money in motor racing these days,” he explains. He began working on his vision of an electric motorbike as a 19-year-old, raising 5,000 euro with fellow students to begin creating a design of his own.
Ukota kept the first electric motorbike he made; it still works, but it didn’t meet his high performance standards. “It was a fun plaything, but it wasn’t particularly light, and it only had seven horsepower,” he says. “It wasn’t going to displace gas motorcycles.”
Ukota returned to the germ of that idea a few years ago, with more engineering experience under his belt. By this point, he had worked as a freelancer in the research and development departments at several different companies.
And so, in 2021, he co-founded Slovenian startup Flux Performance with two aerospace engineers: Jure Tomažic, who had a doctorate in electrical engineering, and Črt Gorup, a software specialist. Together, they set out to develop powerful electric dirt bikes. “We’re the holy trinity of engineers,” he laughs, saying it was an engineering combination that has proven crucial for developing what he describes as “the fastest dirt bike on the planet”.
Ukota explains Flux Performance’s supermoto “has more power than bikes of the same weight (which peak at 85 horsepower) and superior riding characteristics. Whether it is holes or rocks on the tracks or trails, the bike is going to handle it.”
It took Flux Performance two years to create their first successful prototype. “We put our numbers onto paper and found the physics justified what we wanted to achieve,” says Ukota. “Normally people choose a fancy design and then buy the drive train (or battery storage system) from China. We created our prototype the other way round: we revolutionised the drive train to achieve the performance metrics we wanted and worried about the bike design later.”
Since Ukota’s first attempt to create an electric dirt bike as a student, motorbike manufacturers have brought out new models. However, none convinced this demanding biker-engineer. “They fell short of what I expected as a biker and what I thought was technologically possible,” says Ukota. “Happily, the car industry has progressed battery technology in the last decade, so you don’t need 20 billion euros to make a powerful electric bike anymore.”
The team at Flux Performance has gone on to develop three electric motorbike models: a motorcross for track only, an enduro that is road legal and meant for trails and an urban supermoto for cities and between cities. All these models operate on a single electronic platform.
Ukota says the biggest advantage of Flux Performance’s electric dirt bikes is the lower and easier maintenance costs. Although the initial bike price is around 13,000 euro, which is roughly 10-20% more than a comparable gas competitor, after one year of biking, the extra outlay will pay off. “With a gas bike you have to change the oil filters every five hours and the pistons every 60 hours,” explains Ukota. “You practically need to be a mechanic to own a gas-propelled bike.”
The reduced maintenance costs mean Flux Performance’s target market range from die-hards bikers currently using gasoline-powered vehicles to those new to biking. “Our core customers are 30 to 60-year-olds with a family and a job who seek a bike to ride in their free time and don’t want any maintenance hassles,” says Ukota. “This type of customer can ride our bikes anywhere; these are quiet bikes, and he won’t get any noise complaints.”
Using the Flux Performance app, the customer can also set metrics like speed and acceleration according to the experience of a biker. “The performance and capability of the software is very exciting,” says the supermoto champion.
Flux Performance was funded as part of our Innowwide programme to carry out a six-month market feasibility study for the team to explore how to commercialise their product in California: the biggest, most lucrative market for e-motorcycles. With their US partner, bike distributor, The Fun Bike Company, Flux Performance has produced a detailed plan to enter California and other US States, examining off-road electric bike competitors, customer needs and how to register intellectual property, certify its lithium-ion battery and meet other regulatory requirements.
Working with Fun Bikes gave Flux a great insight into the Californian culture and consumer mentality. “The state is a great fit for us,” says Ukota. “It has a strong biking culture and consumers have more disposable income than in Slovenia and are more open-minded to new brands.” Fun Bikes’ experience of the market gave the Slovenian startup access to invaluable, non-publicly available data.
“We realised you really need boots on the ground there. You need locals to represent you to access the opportunities that are created only by being in that ecosystem physically,” concludes Ukota. Flux Performance and Fun Bikes are now exploring a joint venture in California or another way to have a local team based in the US preparing for the rollout of Flux Performance supermotos.
The pair are also eyeing other states. “If you achieve compliance in California, which has strict rules, the process is relatively easy for other states that follow,” says Ukota.
Flux Performance is now completing its first round of funding, aiming to produce its first bikes in the second half of 2025. The team project a first full year of sales totalling about 20 million euro in the United States and between 10 to 15 million euro in Europe. With the off-road dirt bike market worth an estimated 7 billion euro, Ukota believes the company can achieve sales of 100 million euro within five to six years.
The potential of the electric motorbike market can be seen from the way the world’s largest motorbike manufacturer, Honda, has decided to produce only electric motorbikes by 2040. However, that decision was a controversial one; many petrol heads are sceptical about driving an electric motorbike, since they associate speed with the noise of gas combustion engines.
This is one reason why Ukota does not focus on communicating the environmental benefits of his bikes, but on the problems they solve. At Flux Performance, the team believe the riding experience of its models can win over sceptical petrolheads. “I want to make the environmental choice the easiest choice”, explains Ukota. Flux Performance is receiving 50 euro from customers who want to preorder one of the first bikes and inviting experienced bikers to help test their prototypes.
“Bikers are often conservative people. You need to have a superior product that solves a problem.” He smiles broadly: “We are decarbonising a tough crowd.”
