Anyone who thought electric motorcycle racing wouldn't be interesting...........

[vnvbandit]

 I present Exhibit A.   

http://www.roadracingworld.com/news/article/?article=40601

[f3racer]

that was awesome. if barnes could sort his handling issue out it would be over

[R1Racer99]

By "interesting" did you mean insanely slow and boring?

[vnvbandit]

Did you watch the vid? Heck no! They were really dicing it up!

[Burt Munro]

It would be interesting to see a technical comparison between Barnes and Higbee's bikes......  HP, gearing, weight, battery type, etc.

[skiandclimb]

I thought it was awesome watching them race. Reminds me alot of the 20's and 30's era racing, where there were huge differences in machines, and all of the were homebuilt. Very cool stuff!

[Ducmarc]

no good thoughts on electric bikes until my friend gave me a 140 volt battery pack out of a hybrid a few days ago unfortunately they crushed the car along with the motor . there was a guy in one of the cycle rags a few months ago that used junk out of a golf cart but that's way to heavy. but these are real light  will have to go on a electic car sight to see if  they have any capacity.

[GSXR RACER MIKE]

There's alot of crazy legislation trying to be enacted by certain special interest groups, some are trying to take large leaps and others are taking the 'many small steps toward an end result' approach. What I'm talking about is emissions, there's already some places in the US that are trying to implement what is more or less an 'emissions tax' based on your personal situation. One system checks each vehicles mileage when the license plates are being renewed every year, based on the mileage driven your assessed an 'emissions' tax or fee per mile based on the vehicles weight and emissions rating. The more extreme groups want this applied to all fuel driven engines including recreational vehicles as well, they also want racing to have a much higher per mile emissions tax. This goes hand in hand with some of those groups success in getting ALL 2-stroke engines eliminated from any new engines manufactured for use in the USA after a certain date thru a phase out program (seen many new 2-stroke engines in anything lately?) - even though ironically new 2-stroke technologies have been developed that burn cleaner than 4-stroke engines (based on miles per gallon).

Even beyond eliminating the emissions factor from the equation, the electric bikes wouldn't have the noise ordinance problems many tracks are being confronted with - tracks could be built close to major population without noise issues. And just like anything racers will get creative and work the bugs out of these bikes and get them to the point where their working awesome and will eventually be just as fast as the current bikes. This would also mean the tracks would finally have to get power outlets all thruout the pits - that would mean less generator noise as well!

Wow, the racetracks of the future are sounding more and more like a quiet place you go to relax.  ::)

(Man am I going to miss the sounds of race engines and the smell of race fuel)

[tzracer]

This goes hand in hand with some of those groups success in getting ALL 2-stroke engines eliminated from any new engines manufactured for use in the USA after a certain date thru a phase out program (seen many new 2-stroke engines in anything lately?) - even though ironically new 2-stroke technologies have been developed that burn cleaner than 4-stroke engines (based on miles per gallon).

Yes you can still buy 2 stroke outboard engines - see Evinrude E-tec. There are no laws (I have seen) outlawing 2 strokes. Most manufacturers have chosen between 2 and 4 stroke, not wanting to have to pay for 2 parallel engine development programs.

[GSXR RACER MIKE]

I read that in Bottom Line Personal years ago, they also gave all the references to where they got the information (including the actual Governmental agreement) and about the person they were interviewing about the subject. What I love about that magazine is the fact that they tell you about things that are going on and hardly anyone knows about it - then sure enough the things end up happening. They explained in the article about 2-Strokes what would be happening over the coming years and how ALL gasoline engine manufacturers would be increasingly pressured to shift to 4-Stroke designs by imposing higher and higher penalties on the manufacturers for every 2-stroke engine produced until it got to the point where it would no longer be profitable to produce them.

The same basic type of thing is happening with smoking, it's on a predetermined Government driven phase out program that was started back in the 90's. That was a deal made with the cigarette manufacturers so the Government wouldn't cause an entire industry to collapse overnight causing massive job loss and the Government wouldn't suddenly lose the many Billions of dollars they reap in taxes from smokers every year either. That article showed the preplanned timeline of how the phase out program was going to start and continue into the future until smoking was virtually eliminated by attacking the smoking industry with increasingly aggressive anti-smoking campaigns and imposing ever increasing taxes until they get to be so astronomical that it will be almost impossible for anyone other than the wealthy to make smoking a habit (if I remember correctly the eventual tax was going to be something like $30 PER PACK). Watching that timeline happen exactly as they laid it out back in the 90's has been a real eye opener as to what is really happening, not what we are led to believe thru the media and social programming.

The 2-Stroke phase out is happening in the same way, and was laid out years ago as to how it would be happening - you can believe it or not. 

[R1Racer99]

"And just like anything racers will get creative and work the bugs out of these bikes and get them to the point where their working awesome and will eventually be just as fast as the current bikes."

Wrong. Wrong. And wrong.

[GSXR RACER MIKE]

"And just like anything racers will get creative and work the bugs out of these bikes and get them to the point where their working awesome and will eventually be just as fast as the current bikes.

"Wrong. Wrong. And wrong.

Look at the evolution of motorcycles, I bet the original motorcycle creators never imagined motorcycles would be what they are today. By endlessly looking for any advantage over the competition the combination of R&D by the manufacturers, Pro racing teams, and individual racers all developing and incorporating new technologies has led to motorcycles being at the level they are today.

Motorcycle acceleration is all about power to weight ratio, the lighter the vehicle the less power is needed to do the same amount of work. Batteries are rapidly being developed that are smaller, lighter, last longer, and produce more power - electric motors as well. The majority of the weight of a motorcycle is from the engine (plus oil weight), cooling system (plus coolant weight), exhaust, and fuel (including the fuel tank and pump weight). Batteries and electric motors have more options in their physical design than a gas engine, this would allow greater flexibility in frame design (including frame width and swingarm pivot point location) and would make it easier to create that optimal mass centralization situation.

Another advantage batteries have is that you can incorporate braking systems which actually charge the batteries by using the energy produced by braking (already in use in some hybrids). Once a system like that is incorporated that means you would need even less batteries (less weight) if the batteries were being charged every time you were using the brakes. Performance electric motors can also accelerate really hard and are very linear in their power delivery.

So why would electric motorcycles not be able to be developed to the performance level of gas engine motorcycles?