PBS Nova films the KillaCycle at Bandimere

David Pogue in the pits

The KillaCycle crew spent the day with David Pogue and the PBS Nova film crew yesterday. (July 16th) They are doing a show about advanced battery technology.

Electric Burn-out

Until they actually saw the first run at Bandimere Speedway, they did not fully believe “Zero to 60 mph in less than one second.” The film crew was not prepared for the acceleration on the launch. After the first run, they said, “It was on the starting line…and then it was just GONE!”

The camera crew attached little mini-cams all over the KillaCycle (and the ElectroCat ). They got fantastic action footage. Since the KillaCycle is an all-out racing machine, we did not concern ourselves with AC magnetic shielding or trying to minimize stray fields like you would do on a street EV. (Like you would not add a muffler to a racing ICE machine.) Thus, there were some very weird distortions in some of the on-board video footage. Kind of like science fiction force-field looking effects. I hope they show these “force field” clips.

You can see more photos in the photo album here.

It was a great pleasure meeting and working with the Nova team.

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

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.)