Recently at the Portland International Raceway Scotty Pollacheck crosses the quarter-mile marker doing 156 mph. He has traveled 1,320 feet in 8.22 seconds, faster than any gas-powered cars, trucks or motorcycles that have raced in the drag sprints on this same raceway. Extremely impressive given that the motorcycle he is riding is powered entirely by lithium-ion batteries. His bike runs on 990 lithium-ion battery cells that feed two direct current motors, generating 350 horsepower. The bike accelerates from zero to 60 mph in just under a second, faster than many professional gas powered drag motorcycles. There is a growing movement that’s exploiting breakthroughs in batteries and could soon challenge the world’s fastest-accelerating vehicles in the $1 billion drag-racing industry. Electric gives instant torque, whereas gasoline you have to build it up. A lot of torque with no vroom. It is commonly believed that electric motorcycles will challenge the top records within five years.
That is awesome! This technology is coming into its own.
its just that the motorcycle sounds like a slot car you used to play with as kids. it just seems wrong to the senses that something so fast doesnt make that wonderful noise of firing fuel out the pipes..oh well progress is progress
A few years ago I heard about an electric supermoto bike getting challenged for its legality. You know what, those guys are out there changing the world, doing real R&D, they should get to join any class they want to. Good for this guy. I said years ago, that if the US was really serious about “green” tech there was one sure way to get people fired up about it: racing.
The government (EPA) should sponsor guys like this. They’re doing all the heavy lifing that the big corporations theoretically could have done years ago.
“Who Killed the Electric Car?”
Oh, how the world would be different if it didn’t happen years ago
Gee-zuz!
“…0 t0 60 in a second…”
With just a sack of batteries and two DC motors…?
How much could that cost?
Certainly less that a slower IC bike.
Very interesting, THanks for the info.
Absolutely amazing.the technology of future,its getting better day by day.
what people dont realize is how “anti” green or not green electricity is. you think because you plug it in it doesnt expend natural resources…you are wrong. coal plants wood plants and other methods are used to produce so called green electricity..its a goverment farce…just becuase the newspaper and t.v. says its green and good for the enviroment doesnt mean its true..yes the drag bike probably costs less than an equal i.c. motored one but is it cleaner..i doubt it…you go back to their trailer and they are running a deisel generator to recharge it..how green is it?
A1….
i don’t think it was presented as a “Green” issue, but rather a performance per $ issues.
More a matter of convenience.
I doubt there’s much tinkering between runs.
May be adjust the clutch to the track & tires, charge-er-up & go.
I’m with you on “Green Stupidity.”
There’s no free “energy lunch” at the level required to run a post industrial economy.
I say Eat red-legged-frogs and bring back nuke-power!
-Nicker-
I absolutely agree that using electrical power in places that burn coal or natural gas for fuel is hopelessly useless. However, advanced battery technology will help us a) not waste power, by efficiently storing it and B) in places with hydropower, solar, or nuclear (or nucular if you’re the prez) it absolutely makes sense, and in some cases is more eficient.
Any new energy technology is better than just endlessly burning up finite resources, as it will help for when it begins to become hopelessly expensive to “just do what we’ve been doing”
Truly very cool and the wave of the future. With all the talk about green energy one thing that doesn’t come up very often is disposal of worn out batteries. What do you do when 50% of the country is running on batteries and they have to be replaced like old tires? Think about the amount of toxic waste created by ten’s of millions of batteries being sent to the dump every year. how much green will that offset.