EV Events

Going 17 kms from home to IBM Huergo II building on the BETM (Borromeo's Electric Travel Machine)

http://www.vimeo.com/7375528

I'm at Interbike - They allowed me to attend as Media due to owning VisForVoltage. I've been collecting a bunch of information and have seen some very interesting bikes. I'll be posting some about this over the next few days.

Main thing to note is this is a big big big international trade show all about bicycles. The electric bicycles are a drop in the bucket here. I'd guess the electric bicycle presence is a little bigger than before, but I have no comparison as it's my first time here.

The Light Electric Vehicle Association appears to be a new feature of the electric bicycle scene. They had a set of meetings here yesterday which drew together a bunch of bicycle dealers some of whom currently sell electric bikes. Hopefully it'll turn out to be a good thing.

The Silicon Valley EAA held their yearly EV rally yesterday. I ran into a few VisForVoltage members and hopefully they'll chime in with their experiences.

It was very very hot.. according to the local newsrag in Palo Alto it was 101 degrees, and of course being in an asphalt parking lot made it even hotter. Woah. At least this time I made sure to drink a lot of liquids (unlike last year) but I still had a bad headache most of the evening.

Anyway.. it was great fun if there were fewer people than usual.

Apparently there's an electric race being held in the Bonneville salt flats real soon. A couple people were heading to that with some very interesting looking vehicles.

My personal treat was to finally receive the Zuumer I've been waiting patiently for 7-8 months to receive. It is very well made and I think worth the wait. I'll be posting about that separately.

October 2 - 5 in Ashville NC
SEVEXPO.com

Last night I went up to San Francisco for a special event at Mission Motors' headquarters. The TTXGP team is producing a DVD of footage from the Isle of Man, and the event was a world premier for that DVD. The part shown was minute-by-minute coverage of the race shot at many locations along the island, and for the mountain bits they used a helicopter mounted camera for some stunning video. There's supposed to be a lot more on the DVD than this.

Being in Mission Motors' headquarters .. well .. they of course cheered every time their bike was on the screen.

There was also a chance to look closely at their bike, and hear them say a few things about it. I'll be making another posting about their bike along with some pictures.

Electric motorcycles at the AMA Vintage Motorcycle Days (eGrandPrix/TTXGP)

eGrandPrix/TTXGP attendees and results of at the AMA Vintage Motorcycle Days

http://blog.ttxgp.com/index.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=80&blogId=1

http://www.plugbike.com/2009/07/27/2009-amaegrandprix-at-midohio/

http://blog.evfr.net/?p=225

Still no photo's & video, seems that will have to wait until I get back home.. Tuesday/Wednesday.

The weather on Sunday was fabulous and the electric motorcycles got on the track twice. This was the first time I got to see them go on the track, and they were doing great. Tony (the 'young man' I mentioned in the day 1 report, he's also a VisForVoltage member) - his bike only made it around two laps. The first lap is led by a pace car at a modest speed, the next three or so laps were at full speed, and Tony's bike only made one lap. His bike has lead acid batteries and he'd said to me he wished his budget would allow for lithium batteries. In any case Electric Motorsports would-have-been-TTXGP-Pro-bike had everybody beat by a long ways.

Frodus & I did post-race video interviews of a couple of the riders ...

One of the TTXGP folk present has been doing technical and rules work between the various standards bodies involved. The TTXGP has an advisory board from the IET, an Engineering institute based in England. They're working with the FIM and the AMA for racing rules & standards and the TT has further standards that are extremely tough because that's the toughest race course in the world. Anyway I filmed about 8-9 minutes of talking with her about those rules negotiations.

A very interesting bit the TTXGP organization wrote into their rules is to allow for many other things than the normal FIM and AMA rules allow. Such as multiple motors, and most interesting to me is streamlining. A small group of streamlining people were at the event including Craig Vetter. Two of these vehicles were small electric scooters built by a velomobile maker and dealer in Minnesota. (Jon Nygren, www.beamerbikes.com)

I filmed a 10+ minute discussion between myself & Jon which I hope is interesting, it was very interesting to talk with him about this. The idea we went with was "what would be the iconic vehicle that captures the public's imagination and helps EV's take off into the public mainstream". In other words in the history of vehicles there's been several iconic vehicles that simply took off and defined a certain class of vehicle experience -- such as the Model T Ford, or the Ford Mustang, or the Chevy Corvette, etc.

I feel very fortunate to have been able to talk with Craig Vetter for approx 15 minutes over a couple times. He said to me a number of things including offering his personal help to get the fairing installed on my Lectra. Another which he repeated several times is he thinks the TTXGP/eGrandPrix presence is very historic, that we who are part of making TTXGP/eGrandPrix happen are taking steps of historical significance ...

This is a bit curious to me. On his website he'd said a couple times he didn't think electrics were "there" yet. But a) he'd started to put together a TTXGP team which of course would have fielded a streamlined bike, b) he was saying all kinda great things about the electric bikes which came to the AMA event. I suppose this means the TTXGP race caught his attention.

Doing this a day late, and no pictures.

It was rainy yesterday so we stayed inside the TTXGP tent. There was a motorcycle parade in the morning, and the electrics were in that.

There's an area with several fully faired bikes, including Craig Vetter's Honda Helix test bike. I've been reading so much of his experiment it's very cool to see it in person, and to see just how low-tech he goes at designing things. Spent a lont time talking with a fellow (beamerbikes.com) who does full fairings for electric bicycles and scooters. At the show he as an Rad2Go scooter (the one that looks vaguely like a Vespa) as well as an eGo. Both have a cloroplast shell around them. Says he's gotten a speed improvement out of it.

Rest of the day was standing around the TTXGP tent. I did video's with two people: markcycle (EnerTrac) about his kit, and I'm totally blanking on his name but the young guy I mentioned in yesterdays post. Turns out he's a VisForVoltage member from Grand Rapids MI.

The most interesting thing was to chat with the regular bikers who came by. In some cases they'd ride by .. slowly .. looking carefully at us the whole way, other times they'd be standing and looking and I'd go up and ask "What do you think about this". In every case they were positively interested and impressed with the state of electric motorcycles. They're okay with the prices on e.g. the Zero S and the GPR-S. But every one of them asked about "engine braking" and how they depend on that feature of gas bikes.

The eGrandPrix is a continuation of the TTXGP organization which held the race in June on the Isle of Man. They're expanding the racing series apparently to a worldwide series of electric motorcycle races. This weekend they're holding a race at the AMA Vintage Motorcycle meetup/swapmeet/race/event in Ohio. This is a pretty big deal event, lots and lots of people here with all kindsa bikes. Of course the vast majority are gas powered. Did see an electric standup scooter zip by this evening.

I'm attending the eGrandPrix and will be posting stories here and on examiner.com

Today was just about arriving and getting orientated.

Electric Motorsport is attending (all the way from California; they did a straight-through trip took 48 hours of driving to get here; me, I flew) .. this is the bike they would have taken to the TTXGP in the Pro class, but it wasn't ready in time.

This is an old Norton Electra which has been converted to electric. The fairing is from Aerotek.

A very nice conversion by a young guy who says it was his college project. It's got a Mars Electric motor and driven with Enersys batteries. It looks very similar to the GPR-S and Todd and him went riding around for a long time comparing notes.

Here they are.. they were riding each others bikes.