MotoStudent Rookie of the Year: Electric Superbike Twente

We are Electric Superbike Twente, a student team from the University of Twente and Hogeschool Saxion building electric motorcycles. After moving away from building bikes going up to 300 km/h on track last year, we participated in MotoStudent for the first time in October 2025. This required the team to design, build, and test a completely new bike with a fresh concept in just one year. Being able to take home the Rookie of the Year award at MotoStudent was, therefore, a big compliment.

This year, we are rebuilding from scratch. The main focuses are to reduce weight, improve reliability, and streamline internal systems. In practice (for the powertrain subteam), this means we are redesigning a lot of our PCBs. Our BMU (Battery Management Unit) is the brain of the BMS. It monitors the battery, controls balancing, and houses the HVIL relays.

At the centre of the board is the NXP S32K358 microcontroller, which provides more than enough processing power to keep the system running safely. This year, the BMU is being made custom to incorporate all regulatory systems cleanly. This brings many challenges, like using differential signals and handling high levels of EMI, and because of space optimisation, it is also double-sided.

The BDU (Battery Disconnection Unit) and CMU (Cell Monitoring Unit) are also being revamped in order to save weight, reduce complexity, and increase performance. The BDU is responsible for cutting off HV in case something goes wrong, and the CMU is responsible for measuring cell temperatures and voltages, as well as balancing. This year is a big year hardware-wise, as upgrades and changes are also being made to data gathering nodes, the telemetry system, and our low-voltage control.

All of these changes are being made to set up the team for next year to perform at the MotoStudent competition in 2027, aiming to finish as high as possible.

For more information please visit the Electric Superbike Twente website.