Karimganj high school boy converts motorcycle into an electric bike

Although it’s rare, usually we witness such an innovation oozing out of students belonging to IITs and NITs of the country, or at least someone who’s grown up enough to conjure their educational repertoire to come up with such a valuable tool or machine. But in Assam’s Karimganj, a 13-year-old boy has managed to convert an old worn-out motorcycle into a properly functioning electric bike that solely runs on a battery.

Meet Ankurit Karmakar, a Class 8 high school student from Karimganj, who took his father’s classic motorcycle Yamaha RX 100 and made some technical twitches to successfully convert it into a battery-run electric bike. And it took him just over a couple of months to come up with this electric bike, something which is soon gonna challenge the relevance of traditional fuel-run vehicles.

Ankurit is a resident of the Subhashnagar area in Karimganj and studies at the Rowlands Memorial High School. A thorough tech geek, Ankurit loves deconstructing out-of-use or faulty electric appliances/tools into its tiniest individual constituents. He loves the concept of reverse engineering and often finds himself playing with circuit boards and magnets found inside those equipment. “I always liked opening up broken or faulty devices to see what it consists of. The idea of disassembling any device always fascinated me”, said Ankurit Karmakar.

The son of a jeweller, Ankurit comes from a typical middle-class background where things are not so easy to get. Talking about his initial spark regarding this innovative idea, the teenager said, “I was playing Cricket with my friends one evening in our neighbourhood when a person was passing by in a scooter which had almost no sound. That piqued my interest and I went ahead to ask that guy, and he said that it’s an electric scooter. It further intrigued my interest, so I went home and started researching about it online. With the help of YouTube and Google, I started working on my dad’s old Yamaha RX 100 motorcycle. It was a classic model that my grandfather gifted to my father in the year 1996, so I named the bike ‘Ashutosh – The Wonder Bike’ after my grandfather’s name. I worked daily on it for more than 2 months, and finally, the electric bike is all ready now.”

At a time when petrol is touching 100 rupees per litre, such a useful innovation will surely come in handy for those who now find petrol as a sort of ‘luxury’ and not a basic requirement. Whereas e-rickshaws have already made their foray into public transport, electric vehicles like bikes or scooters are certainly not far away from entering into private consumer hands.

After the electric bike, the ‘wonder kid’ is now planning to make a similar vehicle that will run on a solar panel. It is also noteworthy to mention that Ankurit didn’t buy any single raw material from the market while making the electric bike as he managed all the individual parts from worn-out devices or equipment. And such an inquisitive mind at such a tender age should be encouraged at any cost for our valley to produce its own indigenous brand of innovative minds for tomorrow.