For decades, to start our motorcycles and scooters we only have to press the magic button, something that was a complete innovation in the Red Button Derbi Variant.
In the past, giving life to a motorcycle engine had always been an act for tough men -sorry for the men and sorry for the tough-, and it is that even any man was in a position to kick start depending on which motorcycle.
Kicking off a Bultaco Frontera 370 from the 70s was not an easy task, and sometimes, due to kickback, it resulted in a broken tibia and fibula if you were not wearing off-road boots… So, no kidding…
It wasn’t such a beast, but kick-starting a Norton Commando, a Laverda, a Ducati 900 SS, let alone a Harley-Davidson, wasn’t an easy task either.
Luckily the electric starter arrived, a gadget that cars already enjoyed in 1912 -aboard a Cadillac-, although it took a long time to become generalized on two wheels.
The Red Button Derbi Variant was the first moped to have an electric starter
On motorcycles, the first electric starters mounted on mass-produced motorcycles would timidly arrive on the 1965 Harley-Davidson Electra Glide and, later, on the 1969 Honda CB750 Four.
Introducing the electric starter on a motorcycle with a large displacement or a high compression ratio was a necessity, so its use gradually spread.
But in mopeds it was not necessary, since they could be started even by hand, because the effort required to make a stroke of a piston in a 50 cc engine was negligible.
Despite this, Derbi decided to include this gadget in 1980 in its star moped, the Derbi Variant, to save its owners the starting effort, and thus the Red Button Derbi Variant was born, the first moped with electric start.
For its launch, the marketing machinery was launched, baptizing the invention as Spacetronic, the electric starter with aerospace technology.
Variant’s electric start was christened Spacetronic
At the time, it was all the rage, and had considerable success among the female public from wealthy families, who found that ideal gadget to save themselves the effort of starting with pedals. Owning a Red Button Derbi Variant at that time was considered almost a symbol of social status: if you had one, your family “had money”.
To better understand the feat here is a bit of background. In 1980 mopeds like the Derbi Variant mounted pedals by law -it was mandatory-, which were used as footrests and also to start the engine.
So they had no battery as the lighting system was powered directly from the engine’s generator when it was running. With the engine stopped there was no lighting.
For this reason, including a starter motor made it necessary to include a battery, but, of course, a huge motorcycle battery could not fit inside the chassis of a Derbi Variant. Its stamped sheet metal chassis was no more than 15 cm thick.
So for the Red Button Derbi Variant they invented a tiny pack of cylindrical Nickel Cadmium cells used in radio control vehicles.
The entire starting system was encapsulated in the left crankcase, which is quite an achievement for a small 50cc 2T cycle engine.
It was not easy to fit a battery pack in the left crankcase of the engine
These batteries were self-powered by power from the Variant’s generator while it was running, so in theory no external recharging was required.
But, of course, batteries do not last forever and they needed, over time, a special charger to recover their energy, sold separately, or change these cylindrical cells.
Luckily, if the electric starter battery failed, you could always start the Red Derbi Variant with the pedals, just like all other mopeds!
A jewel of our national industry that is worth remembering, and that is part of the temporary exhibition on Derbi’s 100 years at the Bassella Motorcycle Museum, in Lleida, Catalonia, a small tribute to the legendary Red Bullets firm.
We reproduce below in full the text that appeared in a promotional brochure for the Derbi Variant “Red Button”. Pure marketing!
The magic of pressing the red button
World’s 1st moped with Spacetronic electric start
By owning this moped, you acquire the right to enjoy a WORLD PREMIERE, the SPACETRONIC ELECTRIC STARTER (Derbi Patent), since the new range of Derbi mopeds are THE FIRST IN THE WORLD to incorporate this starting system with the moped engine.
For the study and construction of this extremely advanced and very simple starting system, different in its conception from those existing in cars and motorcycles, given the difficulty of installing a conventional starter and battery in a moped, Derbi studied the technologies used in the motors of the “LUNAR ROVER” vehicle, the high power Nickel/Cadmium batteries used by the ARTIFICIAL SATELLITES and the kinetic energy accumulators of the SPACE ROCKETS.
The SPACETRONIC-DERBI electric starter is based on the conjunction of these techniques and AEROSPACE elements.
The special HIGH POWER batteries used are essentially differentiated by their large load capacity, minimum size and weight, and long life, self-recharging very quickly with the motor of the moped.
The entire set of this electric starter is located on the left cover of the engine of these small but utilitarian Derbi 50 cc vehicles.
Before the series production of the SPACETRONIC, and with full success, a series of exhaustive tests and tests of more than thirty thousand starts have been carried out, which correspond to the average starts that can be made in seven to ten years of normal use of the vehicle.
Due to its great simplicity, this electric starter does not require any type of maintenance.
