Electric Superbike is on the way
from Urban Transport (162 articles)
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Image Gallery ( 17 images )“Yes, the Vectrix regenerative braking is awesome. You don’t need to take your hands off the throttle to get on the brakes like you normally do – it’s one continuous movement and you just roll the throttle back past zero.
“When you’re at a standstill, it also provides you with reverse which is a great idea on a bigger scooter or on a motorcycle where you want to be able to manoeuvre the bike around without having to wrestle it – really handy when you have a pillion on board.
“On a motorcycle it’s a unique feature. It’s a Vectrix patent and they hired us to develop it with their electrical guys – it’s super smooth – it has springs which are bi-directional and it feels very sure and robust. I don’t want to downplay it by saying that it feels typical but it feels like what it should feel like in the normal mode and has that same type of feeling once you go past the detent in the centre and begin decelerating quickly and harvesting the energy.
“What happens is that it changes the electrical fields and starts to charge the battery. It takes the momentum of the motorcycle and effectively harvests the energy contained, or at least some of it, and puts it back into the battery.
“It’s all about conserving energy, because the battery capacity with current battery technologies is limited and we need to make it as efficient as possible.
“The thing about electric motorcycles is that we can make it as fast as you like but the flip side of that is that the range of the motorcycle is severely compromised if we unleash all the power potential.
“If you think that in touring through a populated downtown area – this is an ideal bike. It will look fantastic, with that big electric motor sitting right on the rear wheel, it will have tremendous acceleration. It’s not going to be like having a big gas motor that you need to get it into maximum torque zone before you pop the clutch and then fight to keep it there so you can get maximum acceleration. This baby will have maximum torque at zero sitting right there inside the rear wheel ready to go – I can’t emphasise how fast this bike will accelerate.
Will it be heavier than a normal superbike?
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