Electric motorbike racing

[Jonathan]

This was not a project particularly relevant to this forum, but since it involves machining and is generally an exciting project, I think people here might be interested in hearing about it...

Over the summer this year I was involved with building and racing an electric motorbike, for the University of Nottingham PEMC research group. We started with an existing motorbike frame (Suzuki GSXR-600) which had been raced as an electric bike previously, but stripped down so we started off with a heap of parts:



1 month later:



Our rider was Jeremiah Johnson, a professional rider from Hawaii. He arrived in Nottingham shortly before the first race and stayed for the whole season. The bike was not quite finished when we had to leave for the first race in Assen, so the finishing touches, connecting all the batteries and battery management system, were only completed in the early hours before the first race in Assen. During practice Jeremiah told us that the bike had much less power than expected. We found that this was due to a fault with the motor controllers, which after working late into the night again we managed to fix in time for the race, securing 3rd place.
The subsequent races, in Anglesea, Hockenheim, Donnington and Silverstone were just as eventful. After each race we fixed any broken parts and made improvements. The first upgrade was to lighten parts of the frame, by cutting metal out where not needed and replacing some parts with carbon fibre. Another member of the team put a lot of effort into the bodywork and painted the fairings - something we didn't have time to do before the first race. Later on I added ducted fans to increase the airflow over the motors in the hope that this would let us extract more power from them.
Racing was quite an unfamiliar experience for most of the people involved. Compared with having plenty of equipment in the lab it was a stark contrast to be at a race track with only what we had remembered to take. This meant there was much improvising to keep the bike working whilst at the track. The electric bike racing attracted a lot of interest from some petrol racers and fans. I was frequently asked what the top speed and range of the bike were - about 105mph and 120 miles, though not at the same time! The race at Donington included petrol bikes on the track at the same time as us though in a separate race. It was good to see the electric bikes proving they were competitive against petrol, though less good when a petrol rider blocked Jeremiah on the penultimate corner, preventing him from taking 3rd place.
We achieved third overall in the race series, which was pleasing given the short timescale available to work on the bike and considering also that this was our first racing experience! The race series has given us valuable experience and data which we can use to improve our standing next season.

For next season I have negotiated a sponsorship deal with Parker for the motor and the plan is to race the bike in the Isle of Mann TT Zero in 5 months time. According to my simulation the new motor should get the bike to approach 180mph without much difficulty, for short periods at least.

I have got plenty of pictures of the bike, inside and out, so if people are interested I will post them. There are some videos and interviews featuring the teams that participated, including us, here on the IET website.



We're currently looking for sponsorship for the parts required for the upcoming races (TT zero and moto-e), so if you're reading this and works for a company that manufactures something related, please do get in touch.