Vietnam’s largest motorcycle manufacturer, Sufat, is about to start production of a range of electric scooters powered by a novel motor said to deliver a similar performance to petrol-engine scooters. Sufat says that the electric scooters will reach 80km/h (50mph) in less than ten seconds, and will hit top speeds of 80-88km/h – twice as fast as most existing electric scooters.

The scooters will be powered by transmission-less wheel-hub motors developed by a US company, KLD Energy Technologies. The high-frequency, low-rpm motors use a nano-crystalline material said to conduct heat much more efficiently than conventional iron cores, thus reducing the motor’s operating temperature.

Texas-based KLD is setting up an assembly plant in Hanoi to produce the motors for Sufat. Initially it plans to produce around 2,000 motors per month, but plans to ramp up production to meet Sufat’s production target of 50,000 electric scooters in its first year of production.

The Vietnamese market is seen as a potentially lucrative market for electric scooters. The country already has more than 22 million scooters on the road.