The Dakar Rally is unlike any other race on the face of the Earth. And Segway is one of the last bike makers you’d expect to find in it. There are plenty of reasons for that, but perhaps the biggest is the fact that the Chinese manufacturer doesn’t produce a single bike that is capable of serious off-road riding.
That was true ... until Segway started working on the Mission 1000 project. It was an ambitious plan to participate in the “Future Mission 1000” category of Dakar, which is dedicated to electric vehicles in particular.
The result of the project was the Segway X1000, a proper, fully-electric off-road motorcycle. The company even went as far as unveiling the bike at CES 2025 and weirdly enough, there hasn't been much hype around it. Here’s why I think it deserves your attention.
For starters, know for a fact that the bike was created especially for Dakar – meaning normal folks like you and me may never get to see it on showroom floors.
And because it’s Dakar-specific, the bike has rather unique underpinnings such as a double-shock rear suspension system, which is not something you’d find even on rally bikes nowadays. This setup optimizes weight distribution and space by addressing the requirement to incorporate a sizable 14.5-kWh water-cooled battery pack as a structural component of the chassis.
That’s a considerably bigger battery pack than the likes of the recently released Livewire S2 Alpinista (10 kWh) and twice that of the more off-road-focused Zero FX (7.2 kWh). It also gets three riding modes: eco, standard, and sport.
Performance-wise, the X1000 can achieve speeds of about 86 mph (140 km/h) thanks to its 50-kW electric motor. Despite not being the fastest motorcycle out there, it does promise to take off on any kind of terrain thanks to its swift torque delivery – it peaks at 85 lb-ft (115 Nm).
However, it does weigh a lot – 529 lbs (240 kg), to be exact – which is more than 100 kg (220 lb) heavier than most gasoline-powered competiton motorcycles. As a result, it won’t exactly be the nimblest motorcycle in the race.
The bike is competing in the brand-new Future Mission 1000 class, which was created especially to enable vehicles using alternative fuels to participate in the renowned race. Although the Segway X1000 is entirely electric, Future Mission 1000 regulations allow manufacturers to compete with hybrid or hydrogen-powered bikes.
Other than bragging rights for outperforming the competition, the Future Mission 1000 class allows teams and manufacturers to test experimental technology in the most challenging setting. So it’s not exactly a contest.
Segways' team is testing the bike, not necessarily racing it, over 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) of harsh desert terrain. The team consists of Yang Jie, Xu Jianhao and Benjamin Pascual, all on three separate X1000s. Jianhao placed 16th in the 2019 MXGP of China, while Pascal competed in Loretta Lynn's 2024 450 B Limited class, so you probably haven't heard either of these names before. But that's not the point.
The rapid pace at which Segway built an electric motorcycle from scratch, entered it into Dakar, and is even competing with it over a period of 10 months shows us how far along we’ve come in electric tech. The X1000 is ushering in a new era of fierce competition for electric motorcycles, and Segway was the last bike-maker I had expected to be captaining that ship.
Here's the video from CES 2025 via Segway Powersports US.
While Segway has confirmed for us that there are no plans at this time for a consumer version of the bike, one has to wonder how far along we are from a day when we see Segway's bikes lining up against factory Hondas and Yamahas to compete in the longest rally raid in the world. Wild days.
