Three Wheels

Among my too-many-projects is a three wheel electric motorcycle that I bought around the same time as I got the Lectra (Aug 2006). Link is below to an earlier blog posting on this.

It's a 1978 Suzuki motorcycle which a guy had converted to electric by welding on the rear end (axle etc) of a golf cart. The motor is running at 48v and with regular car tires. I'd taken it around my neighborhood last year and got up to 40 miles/hr with it (maybe a bit more?) He said the rear end & motor were the most powerful he could find.

I started to get it registered last year and then had some kind of mistake happen while working on the wiring and it stopped running. Sooo... I focused on the Lectra to get it running and the three wheeler has been sitting there. And the last couple weeks I've fiddled around with it and got it running again.

I had to replace the controller and most of the power cables. And I had to figure out how the forward-reverse switch works, and along the way I finally worked out why a series motor is called a series motor. There was also an issue with the throttle where even with the throttle at 0 the controller saw a bit over 0 ohms and the controller would never go to 0 speed, so I pulled out the pot box, looked at it, put it back, and now it works right.

Currently it's configured with a 48v 400A Logisystems controller .. the forward-reverse switch works .. 48v 80ah battery pack .. the 12v system doesn't work so there's no lights, no horn, no turn signals .. and there are no mirrors .. so there are a few things left to do before I'll go back to the DMV and restart the registration process.

Where it'd been left last year I was to take it to the CHP office for an inspection. But, since it wasn't working, I didn't do the inspection. Last year the CHP officer thought I couldn't register it because it's a golf cart. I've since talked with this fellow who lives down the street ..and.. owns a three wheel electric motorcycle himself. He said that's silly and that my mistake obviously was to say "golf cart". He said all the CHP really needs to do is since the "engine" doesn't have the normal engine number, they need to generate a faked up engine number, which will be a sticker I'm supposed to attach to the motor. Not a big deal.

So it sounds as if rather soon I'll be having yet another EV running.

Probably I need to sell off a few of these vehicles..

The Lumeneo Smera is a cool looking three wheel EV in a reverse trike configuration. It is due to go on the market in October 2008, and is due to cost in the neighborhood of 22,000-30,000 euros (a whole lotta dollars). It has a lithium ION battery pack but they do not specify precisely which chemistry. The pack voltage is 144v and the total size is 10 kwh. They claim max speed 80 miles/hr and max range 90 miles.

Aptera Motors is designing a plug-in hybrid electric trike/motorcycle using the "Reverse Trike" model. It's hugely aerodynamic, and they claim 230 miles/gallon fuel efficiency, 150 miles range in electric only, etc.

One of my vehicles is a three wheel motorcycle...

I got it 1 1/2 yrs ago through an ebay auction, meaning I did not build the thing. I started to register it last year but during that process the thing stopped working. So for the last 9 months it's been sitting idle while I've focussed on the Lectra. It's been this big white elephant sitting in the driveway to walk past and occasionally think about and get frustrated. I tried several times to get it running but.. no luck.

This afternoon I decided to wire up a controller to the motor completely bypassing the existing wiring. And.. it runs. Yay.. meaning, now that the Lectra is pretty much finished I can spend a few cycles on this trike and get it running too.

Let's see how many electric motorcycles I can own...