Author Archives: Bill

New Zealand Success

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The KillaCycle New Zealand Tour was a huge success! We not only demonstrated that electrics can be fast and sexy, the tour also brought together EV people from all over NZ. An “EV movement” seems to already have started in NZ in the surge of the tour.

Meremere Burnout
Picture: Meremere dragway in Auckland. Most of the day rained away. Even when the rain stopped, the track was too wet to run safely at full power.

Every show and dinner on the tour turned in to a mini-convention where people met that otherwise wouldn’t have met. With ten events during three weeks, that means a lot of people. We really helped to draw together a “critical mass” of NZ EVers.

One of the purposes of the tour was to promote and help the development of the Tumanako open-source motor-controller project. The Tumanako group, based in New Zealand, has built and is just on the edge of production distribution of an open-source 200 kW inverter and drive package. It is awesome and it is about time someone did this. This has potential to be the “Linux” for electric vehicles.

Motor-controllers are a big issue for _all_ racers and for small manufacturers. The motor-controllers you can buy are a “black box” and you have no access to change or modify the software for your needs, because the manufacturer will never give you the source code. Imagine buying a race engine where you can’t change the pistons or even set the ignition timing..? That is the case for electrics today. Information about the Tumanako group here. I will write more about them soon. We hope to use one of their motor-controllers in the motorcycle streamliner that Eva is building right now (more about that too soon). Eva and I are strongly supporting the open-source project and hope that more people will join the group to reach the critical mass where things start to really happen.

You can read many more details about the trip, (and about Eva’s electric motorcycle streamliner) on Eva’s blog at http://www.EvaHakansson.com

KillaCycle 1/9th Scale Model Electric Motorcycle SOLD! on Ebay

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Scale KillaCycle

SOLD! Rider’s Discount, the folks that provide the top quality helmets, gloves, boots, back protectors, etc. for Scotty and Eva, won the bid. Our loyal fans bid it up and gave a welcome boost for Eva’s electric land speed program.

Please visit Rider’s Discount if you are shopping for motorcycle gear and show your appreaciation for their support of the KillaCycle and the ElectroCat.
http://www.ridersdiscount.com

Eva will build a very limited number of these as it is very very time consuming and tedious to make such detailed models. We will put them up for sale on the KillaGear web store.
http://www.KillaGear.com

We used detailed photos of parts of the KillaCycle the same graphics files for the logos on the KillaCycle to make the graphics for the scale model, so they are an exact scale model of the real thing.

We built this scale model because many folks have asked for one, and frankly we really need the money to support our racing efforts. Help the KillaCycle go even faster by actively bidding on this very detailed 1/9th scale model of the KillaCycle, built by the KillaCycle team. The more you bid, the faster we will get the bike to go!

KillaCycle ships to New Zealand

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The KillaCycle is now on it’s way to New Zealand. Whew! It was a lot of work getting it race-ready, building spare motors, and just figuring out what bare essential support equiment we needed to race it.

Eva did a LOT of the packing and organizing while I went through the bike and built spare motors.
Eva and Clark

We are really looking forward to racing head-to-head agianst the top drag bike teams in New Zealand. We are very excited to having Ian Wilkins on his fast and spectacular-looking drag bike in the other lane against the Killacycle.

We will be racing Ian Wilkins at Meremere drag strip on January 31st. The day before, we will be displaying the KillaCycle at the “Show and Shine” associated with that event.

Take a few moments to visit the “New Zealand 2010″ gallery in our photo album to see Ian’s drop dead gorgeous bike (and Eva loading the huge crates on the freight truck.)
http://www.killacycle.com/photos/new-zealand-2010

You can also see our full schedule here: (This will be updated as the times and dates for appearances and race events become finalized.)
Green Stage, New Zealand

The fastest EV on the dragstrip, AGAIN! 7.864 @169 MPH

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Scotty Pollacheck on the KillaCycle set the overall world record for an electric vehicle in the 1/4 mile, once again, while Eva Hakansson on her ElectroCat set the 48 volt division street-legal electric motorcycle record. What a perfect birthday present for me at Bandimere Speedway.

Here is a terrific video by Steve Ciciora from this weekend at Bandimere.

(You can go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbi1RhgRrxk if the above link doesn’t load)

Read about it in Eva Hakansson’s blog:

and in this great article by Christine Jerritts in the Denver-Motorsports-Examiner

We have the very latest and most powerful “F1″ cells from A123 Systems. (AONE on the NASDAQ) We are working away building a very lightweight and powerful new battery pack for the KillaCycle from these cells. These are, in fact, the most powerful cells ever produced on the planet by anyone, so they should make the KillaCycle go much much faster on the drag strip.

We plan to make a few other improvements on the bike at the same time that will result in a total weight reduction of over 150 lbs and a power increase to 560 HP. Hopefully, with the weight reduction, the poor tortured motors can take this. :-)

(Still looking for sponsorship for help with an upgrade to brushless motors, by the way.)

KillaCycle goes Kiwi!

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The KillaCycle and crew have been invited to race in New Zealand this coming January and Feburary. This is REALLY going to be fun to race the Killacycle “upside down”.
Team Greenstage is making the arrangements and sponsoring the transport.

We will be racing the KillaCycle at the “New Zealand 4 and Rotary Nationals” on Jan 31st at Fram Autolite Dragway, Meremere and showing it at Greenlane Showground’s, Auckland Jan 30th.

There is a possibility we may be racing the very fastest drag bike in New Zealand, head-to-head, on Jan 27th at Taupo International Dragway, NZ. This should be exciting because the current NZ drag bike record is 7.615 and 172.19 mph. The KillaCycle has managed to go 7.82 and has a best top speed of 174 mph, so this will be a real drag race. No joke. Here is a picture of the bike we might be racing:

| Athol Williams<br /> Athol Williams

We will be displaying the KillaCycle in several locations (I’ll update as the schedule firms up) during our NZ stay, Jan. 23 to Feb 10th.

KillaCycle at Portland Oregon, July 24th & 25th

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The KillaCycle will be racing at the NEDRA-sponsored Wayland Invitational event on the evenings of July 24th and 25th.
As special treat, we will be racing a 1/10th scale model of the KillaCycle head-to-head in the 1/8th mile. The Shredder X radio-controlled scale drag bike folks, (with a few high-performance goodies from Castle Creations ) are going to give the “big” KillaCycle a serious challenge. No joke.
At Portland International Raceway

Get your own KillaCycle Apparel!

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We have filled up the KillaCycle web store with brand new KillaCycle shirts, hats, posters and postcards!
By supporting the KillaCycle team YOU will make the world’s quickest and fastest electric motorcycle even FASTER!

SPECIAL OFFER
You get a signed KillaCycle postcard with every order.

Click HERE to go to the KillaCycle Web store

| Team Apparel
Team Apparel

KillaCycle at Las Vegas on June 20th & 21st

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The Motorcycle Drag Racing Association has invited the KillaCycle to make exhibition passes at their event at Las Vegas drag strip on June 20th and June 21st. As always, we are out to set new NEDRA world records.

Please join us in Las Vegas and drop by to see the KillaCycle, (and us) in person. You are more than welcome to stop by and see us in the pits, take pictures, and take videos. If all goes well, you could see yet another world record!

Green power to recharge the KillaCycle

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We have just installed a Cummins-Onan Hybrid Quiet Diesel fully-automatic power system in our race trailer to allow us to recharge the KillaCycle with a low carbon footprint. We run this system on Blue Sun biodiesel fuel.

Since we are often “off-grid” in the pits at the race track, we need to be fully self-contained. This powerful, yet whisper-quiet, 8/10 kW hybrid power system lets us recharge the bike in 7 minutes. When we are not charging the bike, and the power demands are modest, the system switches over to the trailer battery bank and runs completely silently. The switch-over is 100% “bumpless” for the loads we have assigned to be uninterruptable. The system provides uninterrupted, clean, true sine wave power from the battery bank, the biodiesel-fueled generator, or from grid (“shore”) power comletely automatically.

If you have a home that is off the grid, running primarily on solar or wind energy, then this system is the perfect suppliment for those cloudy or windless periods. It will come on automatically (and very very quietly) when your battery bank gets too low or the peak demand exceeds your inverter capacity. It runs very nicely on biodiesel, so you can stay “green” while providing the back-up your solar or wind system sometimes needs.

Here is a photo of the components of the Cummins-Onan HQD System:
| Cummins-Onan HQD System Cummins-Onan HQD System

You can see the entire installation process in the BioDiesel Power System album in our photo section.

Click on this link to learn more about the Cummin-Onan Hybrid Quiet Diesel systems.

New World Record at Bandimere 7.890 second (also 174 MPH!)

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The KillaCycle®, ridden by Scotty Pollacheck, made drag racing history AGAIN at Bandimere Speedway October 23rd, 2008. 7.89 seconds @ 168 MPH is a new official National Electric Drag Racing Association (NEDRA) record and makes KillaCycle® the world’s quickest electric vehicle of any kind in the quarter mile! This was the very last run down the strip for this season at Bandimere. What a great way to finish the year.

Lightning struck twice on the mountain as we set the new mark for top speed in an earlier run that afternoon, 7.955 seconds@ 174.05 MPH. The M&H Racemaster tire really gripped the awesome track prep provided by Larry Crispe and the crew at Bandimere Speedway. We turned up the launch current to 1850 amps per motor, well beyond what we ever had before, and still did not slip the tire! (The all new temperature-controlled track surface provided the very best possible traction.)

Jim Husted at Hi-Torque Electric did his magic to the motors and they were able to withstand more RPM, current, and voltage from the battery pack than we thought was even possible. This is what delivered the “back half” performance that made the new top speed record possible.

The A123 Systems NanoPosphate batteries are changing the entire landscape for electric vehicles, and battery-powered devices in general.

The History Channel recorded it all that day. The footage will air early in 2009, perhaps February or March.

If you don’t want to wait that long for the professional footage, here is a video clip (digital camera) of the run

(You can go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVv0NVLFPig if the above link doesn’t load)

Nice write-up with a few more interesting facts added in click here on AutoBlogGreen.

Please visit the National Electric Drag Racing Association (NEDRA) site to learn more about fast, exciting, and “green” drag racing.