After finishing third in Rally3 at the BP Ultimate Rally-Raid Portugal in 2024, Pedro Bianchi Prata returned for 2025 with a slightly different ride from usual. Upon reaching the finish, he became the first rider to complete a World Rally-Raid Championship race with a fully electric bike.

Bianchi’s bike was developed in partnership with Moeve, coming with a generator and battery system. He debuted it at the Baja TT Escuderia Castelo Branco in March before bringing it to the Baja TT Dehesa Extremadura in May.

With the W2RC coming to his native Portugal, he naturally brought it out in its own “E-Bike” category. While electric bikes have appeared at the Dakar Rally as part of Mission 1000, including three Segways at the 2025 edition, Bianchi’s Moeve is the first time he ran the main race alongside gas-powered bikes and under FIM sanction.

Of course, as much as he knows the Portuguese environment, a rally raid is also over twice as long as a baja.

The race began with him finishing 31st among all riders in Prologue, which was also his highest overall stage performance. The challenges began from the first stage; while it was normal to swap the battery multiple times in a given stage, he also missed a waypoint after miscalculating where a pit area should be. Consequently, he received a four-hour, 37-minute penalty.

As the rally progressed, the longer stages meant his team was swapping the battery out as often as seven times daily. The warm weather and fast course in the first half also stretched battery consumption to its limits.

“It was very hard,” said Bianchi. “It took many days, a lot of work, especially an internal struggle between accelerating and managing the batteries, managing them in a way that would allow me to reach the points where we had to change batteries. It was a huge challenge not only for the motorcycle, but also for me and the people who worked with me on this project because they traveled even more kilometers than I did to get to the points and make sure everything went well.”

By the end, his time was good for 40th overall. The result wasn’t anything to write home about, but the goal of the race was to collect as much data as possible to continue developing the bike.

“I am very happy with this result,” he continued. “I think we proved that these electric motorcycles also have a place in our sport, they also have a place in rally raid, and it’s good to get here at the end without a single fall, without a single problem, without a single breakdown, and it was really great.

“It’s exciting to make history, exciting to ride the first 100% electric motorcycle to finish a rally raid in its entirety, without a single shortcut, without anything different, without anything different from the other competitors. Thank you to Moeve for believing in this project, and now the future will tell what we will do.”

Results

Finish	Overall	Number	Rider	Team	Total Time	Margin
1	40	17	Pedro Bianchi Prata	Offroad Center Bianchi Prata	21:54:59	Leader

Stage winners

Stage	Overall	Driver	Time
Prologue	31	Pedro Bianchi Prata	5:31.6
Stage 1	48	Pedro Bianchi Prata	7:42:16
Stage 2	41	Pedro Bianchi Prata	4:45:06
Stage 3	41	Pedro Bianchi Prata	4:2:54
Stage 4	37	Pedro Bianchi Prata	3:17:03
Stage 5	45	Pedro Bianchi Prata	1:35:09

Featured image credit: Adois Comunicação