BMW’s plans for CHARGING via the SIDE STAND revealed

Now this, we like. It may only be a patent at this stage, but BMW looks like it might have just cracked the rather cumbersome idea of having to physically plug-in your future electric motorcycle to an old-style cable sprouting from a nearby electrical socket.

How it does this is by direct transfer of the electric charge through a motorcycle’s sidestand up into the bike’s battery store. The current is delivered from a charging ‘plate’ which will remain plugged into the mains.

It’s like a mobile phone wireless charger for you motorbike. Rock on with this idea, BMW – it looks spot on. No details of charge rate or capacity (in fact, not much info about much at all) is on the patent, so for now this is pretty much a what-you-see kind of deal.

And that usually means that we’ll have to wait quite a while to see anything like this in the real world. Still, quite a cool idea isn’t it? Especially for the M1300GS model which BMW has trademarked the name of. – that’s very likely to be a hybrid electric/petrol powered big Adventure of the future (we think).