194 HP Electric Superbike to Debut at Silicon Valley Advanced Battery Show
By John O'Dell September 9, 2010Our colleagues at Edmunds.com and Inside Line know no bounds when it comes to covering cars and light trucks, but while many of them are enthusiastic motorcycle riders, they do little with the two-wheel world. Something to do with corporate mission and all that.
Well, that's them and this is us and we're here to talk about green transportation. And motorcycles, especially all-electric ones, are about as green as it gets.
So occasionally, you'll see a photo or a headline - or both - featuring a 'cycle. Like this one.
Pro rider Chip Yates - a former Boeing engineer - says he'll debut his TTXGP series electric superbike early next month at the San Jose Battery Show.
Yup. Battery show. Electric transportation's gotten so interesting that even the batteries get their own trade show and expo now.
Yates' bike, developed with his Southern California-based Swigz.com Pro Racing Team, ujtilizes lightweight construction, a proprietary electric motor and kinetic energy recovery system (KERS) to make use of some of the power that's usually lost during braking.
Not much in the way of information has been released yet, except that the so-far unnamed bike boasts 194 horsepower and 295 lb-ft. of torque. Oh, and it appears to be bright yellow-orange and perhaps still without the batteries it will need to put that powerful electric motor to work.
In an interview on his Website, Yates said0t he had budgeted $12,000 for batteries, spent $7,600 on (apparently lithium-ion) cells from China only to find they were too heavy and not powerful enough and now is looking at another $30,000 to $40,000 for better batteries to make the bike go.
Seems he's run into the same problem most EV makers have to cope with - battery power to move a car, or bike, isn't cheap.
So showing the superbike at the upcoming battery conference may be part of an effort to get an advanced-battery maker interested in working with Yates' team to get the bike up and ready to race.
About that Battery Show
The show at which it will be shown is a first-ever event being held Oct. 5-8 in San Jose, in the heart of California's Silicon Valley.
The promoter says it is a conference and technology exposition designed to bring suppliers and end users together.
In addition to the trade expo, the conference will feature three days of seminars and panels on topics including the role of batteries and ultracapacitors in renewable energy systems; the developing market for pure electric vehicles; the role of batteries in electricity generation and
SmartGrid electricity networks; lithium-ion battery safety; metal air batteries and plug-in hybrid battery advances.
Speakers include, among others, representatives of Tesla Motors and battery makers Altairnano, Electrovaya, A123 Systems, Battery Corp. and Johnson Controls Power Solutions.
We'll be there to cover it all for you.
And, of course, to drool over Yates' superbike.
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