ElectroCat really proved the old saying “To finish first, one must first finish” at Pike’s Peak. There were three electric motorcycles registered, two came to the starting line but only ElectroCat finished.
The Pike’s Peak Race week was filled with lots of drama but little action. Mark Gardiner has written an entertaining article about it in Roadracer X http://www.roadracerx.com/features/backmarker/backmarker-pikes-peak-part-2-electric-results-less-than-shocking/.
I love Mark Gardiner’s analogy with the tortoise and the hare. It proves the old saying: To finish first, one must first finish. 😉
I was well aware that ElectroCat was slow, completely unsuited for the track and didn’t handle worth crap (it was built 20 years ago to take 16-year old boys around the streets of Rome, not to race Pike’s Peak), but I also _knew_ that it would make it to the top in less than 20 minutes, because I had done my homework.
I might add that the ElectroCat is capable of much more impressive acceleration and top speed, but if I had “pulled out all the stops” the motor would certainly have overheated in the thin air at 14,110 feet. (We _think_ this is what might have happened to the Lightning motorcycle.) At 14,110 ft there is half as much air as at sea level, which means half as much cooling. Even if an electric motor can have over 90 % efficiency, the waste heat is still like an electric baseboard heater squeezed into a large ice cream bucket. It gets really hot really quick without proper cooling. I had to set the power to make the motor survive the thin air and steep climb. The battery pack is capable of about 250 HP, the controller of 130 HP but the motor is very much under-dimensioned thermally because it was sized for normal, flat, highway and around-town use.
I did my first testing in May as soon as they opened the road (and at that point ElectroCat became the very first electric motorcycle in history to make it to the top of Pike’s Peak, therefore the banner on my trailer saying “The first electric motorcycle to conquer Pike’s Peak….May 25th, 2010”). I also attended the official practice in early June. Those tests confirmed my estimates and calculations, plus, I knew _exactly_ how the bike would perform. I then went home and built the battery pack that had just the perfect size and modified the motor to get better cooling (as the dyno tests my father ran on an identical motor suggested.)
Taking about batteries, a little correction to Mark’s article would be in place: The bike actually only weighs 20 lbs more than the original combustion engine bike, so the “tons of batteries” is not really true.
I raced what I had available in the most optimal fashion. With a budget of about $2,000 for upgrades and testing, a more than full-time “day job” as graduate student in mechanical engineering at University of Denver, I still think I did a pretty good job.
If somebody is willing to write the check, we will show up with the winning electric motorcycle next year. We have all the data and the skills; we just don’t have deep enough pockets (particularly not with the KillaJoule streamliner taking all available resources at the moment). Give us two years and we will take the overall record. No kidding, the numbers are there and we know how to do it! We just need the budget and a 10-minute rider. 😉