Moto Man

I just found out MotoCzysz ran this all electric bike in the special electric only IOM race this year (TTXGP), And they plan to sell it to the public...
http://www.motoczysz.com/main.php?area=home


And the FIM are launching a electric racing series in 2010...
http://www.motogpmatters.com/news/20...le_racing.html
http://www.autobloggreen.com/tag/ttxgp/

chickenstrip

If the public wil buy!

On the serious side, I'm all for an electric bike if it can perform like what we've come to expect from today's bikes.

Little_Horse

or at least close to, I don't see why it wouldn't most of a bikes performance is how it handles, then how well it can accelerate, and of course the tough thing of range and performance.

L8RGYZ

Fixed that for ya.

trinc

it didn't finish the 1 lap IOM race. bummer.

i should walk over & look at it... the pics are really cool.

heres the blog with dyno video.
http://www.motoczysz.com/club/

tim

SlowHAWK

I've worked a bit with a company that makes electric trolling motors, and were planning to expand into scooters/motorcycles. They stated that the performance from an electric motor shouldn't be an issue at all... if anything, it might even be better than a gas motor as the power/torque is almost instant... they actually were actually having to program their test bikes to not provide full power if you cracked the throttle open at low speeds to aviod flipping them over.

Other examples of bikes/cars that seem pretty cool are the Tesla roadster (which seems to be pretty damn fast, and I also recall some wack job crashing a electric drag bike on YouTube a year or so ago...

As usual, the issue is batteries and weight... which is pretty much the only thing holding back all the electric vehicles. About the only thing I don't like about electric vehicles is the lack of sound.... imaging driving the Hawk without the rumble... might actually kinda suck.

J.

Little_Horse

seems oregon has a pretty interesting electric racing scene, wasn't the "white zombie" running here too?

RK1

Unless and until there is some miraculous breakthrough in battery technology, electric powered vehicles will remain rich man/nutjob toys. You need several hundred pounds of batteries to hold the same energy as a 7 pound gallon of gasoline.

You can refill a motorcycle fuel tank in about two minutes. How many HOURS to recharge a 250-300 pound motorcycle battery pack?

And for all you greenie weenies out there, how do you generate the energy to charge tens of millions of electric vehicles? Bituminous coal fired power plants?

mikstr

The main issue I have with electric vehicles is how the power will be generated. The public is being led astray by commercial interests who conveniently fail to mention that our existing production facilities are anything but clean and/or safe (in the US, for example, over 50% of power is generated by coal-burning plants... not much of a solution there; here in Quebec, most of ours comes from hydroelectric dams, those wonderful installations that belch out methane gas (whose propensity to retain heat is 25 times that of CO2!!!!) at alarming rates, to say nothing of the heavy metal pollution it causes to the waterways; or nuclear - remember Chernobyl?). The power and sound characteristics of electric vehicles are interesting but to call them green is extremely misleading and to see them as the panacea is short-sighted and downright dangerous.

RK1

Yeah. Without a big breakthrough in battery tech, without spending trillions of dollars to upgrade the power grid, without the willingness to build hundreds of nuclear power plants, electric vehicles are a joke.

Little_Horse

the next change is going to be hydrogen because they can control the production and distribution of it. Electricity can be produced to many easy ways. So electrics are good for a few but not everyone could have one or we would have a serious problem, hence the rich man's toys game.

I still like seeing people developing a different race vehicle, its cool and requires alot of skill and ingenuity, that alot of other racing lacks now days.

trinc

the wave for electric may be the 1 drive system hybrid like the chevy volt.

it's an electric drive system that has a highly tuned gas motor that drives a generator to produce enough to drive the car & charge the batteries.
this system needs NO power grid & keeps the supply chain intact.

tim

mikstr

Hydrogen is far from perfect as well, namely because of the energy needed to produce it (while in theory it produces as much energy as what is required to produce it, the truth is somewhat different as the hydrolysis process used to produce hydrogen from water is less than perfectly efficient; also, where will the energy needed to perform this come from? electricity? welcome back to square one...) and the fact that water vapour too is a greenhouse gas. As you can see, the "hydrogen solution" is further evidence of misleading info and improper analysis.

mikstr

So I don`t come across like a chronic naysayer, my personal belief is that the solution lies in electric vehicles but that this must come with the development of a clean production source, that being nuclear fusion (the same thing that powers the sun). Scientists have not yet managed to control the fusion reaction (an uncontrolled fusion reaction is commonly referred to as a hydrogen bomb ) but if the great minds of this world did their homework, it would get done. Unfortunately, the Exxons of the world don`t really want to see that happen, and so far are getting their way....

Moto Man

+ 111

killer5280

Personally, I think all this green rhetoric is just another sham to monopolize our alternatives and control our behavior by those already in power and who already control nearly all resources. I also believe that the negative effects of internal combustion engines are grossly and repeatedly overstated, the phony greenhouse gas argument being the most egregious of these overstatements.
Sure, it would be neato if electric or hydrogen or whatever powered vehicles were a viable alternative to i.c. engine powered vehicles, but they're not and probably never will be. Even if they were, do you think we would be allowed to have them? The powers that be do not like ordinary peons having access to cheap, unregulated sources of energy and they don't like us having access to cheap, reliable individual means of transportation like cars, scooters and motorcycles.
Long live the internal combustion engine and the wonderful noises it makes in all its various configuations!

mikstr

I must confess that I am somewhat sceptical of everythig having to do with climate change as the commercial interests on both sides of the argument are so utterly self-serving that nothing being spewed from them can be beleived. That being said, I have noticed a change in our weather in my 43 years on this planet (most noticeably in the winter, the trend being for the snow to arrive later and leave earlier) and am concerned about waht this means for my young daughter who just turned one year old.

SlowHAWK

Tell me about it.... in the last 20 years I recall actually being in a hail storm maybe 3-4 times... we've had hail 3 times here in the NYC area in the last 2 1/2 weeks (including last nights hail/knock trees and power line down storm)... and the winters have been a joke, which is great when you own a old barely insulated house!!!

My 2 yr old daughter my never have to by winter clothes for herself!!!

j.

killer5280

Whatever the change, it isn't being caused by CO2.

Tyrannical world government, with every human activity catalogued, monitored and regulated, which is being forced down our throats right now, worries me for my kids' futures a lot more than climate change.

Gregw

When you consider that Mars is getting warmer
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle1720024.ece
It looks like Jupiter is getting warmer
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0522121036.htm
Venus is believed to have had a climate like Earth, but is now 467° C on the sunny side
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php...ns-from-venus/
you start to see that we aren't really the cause of all this doom. When is the next time the Earth will be destroyed again? Oh yeah, 2012.

trinc

i'm a firm believer in climate change. i remember back in december we had a foot of snow on the ground... man it was cold. last week i was sweating like a pig as the temp was over 90 degrees, the last couple of days has been a lot cooler.


tim

Moto Man

Back to the topic.......

All greeness loathing & oligarchic control fear issues aside what makes this bike, and other electric motor driven bikes, intresting is summed up by a statement from Michael Czysz -

"I remember feeling sad for weeks when I learned 2-strokes were on their way out but my mourning was short lived once I laid eyes on their replacements – the mighty 4-stroke 990’s. While I am NOT claiming ICE to be out or electric to be the “new” MotoGP, I am stating that this is a very magical power source. The torque deliver is what every engine designer and tuner tries to mimic. In ICE, this can only be achieve by adding layers of electronics; we now just have the electronics! "

Full Text here...http://www.motoczysz.com/club/?p=166

Bottom Line is that this type of power delivery is what we have been trying to get from ICE. And as pointed out by Tric if you couple an electric only driven bike with what we know works for portable power ( an on board gasoline generator) it is going to be viable for longer travel.

These things can be powered by what ever way you can get voltage into them; On board Genrator, plug-in, solar, or whatever somebody dreams up tomorrow. If someone in Iowa wants to burn corn based ethonol to power a generator then why not. If you wanna use the more than abundant solar power in Nevada then do it. If some hippy from California wants to use McDonalds grease to make it go, then eat your damn Big Macs and fries to get your fuel. It's the ultimate in flex fuel if you think about it. Its not about taking away options, its more about opening up options and giving us the power band we want all at the same time. Its about the massive instant torque (like a Superhawk has), not the greeness or political control.

Gas bikes are going to be arround for a long time. This is just something new that offers even more of the powerband that many want.

Zedicus