I have been a bit remiss in posting this news ...
Two (?three?) weeks ago Lightning Motorcycles set an amazing electric motorcycle land speed of 215.96 miles/hr. http://www.examiner.com/green-transportation-in-national/lightning-strikes-again-with-214-mph-electric-motorcycle-record-at-bonn... ... This is 40 miles/hr faster than last years record, which was also set by Lightning.
Their bike this year is a complete redesign - new frame (custom designed frame by them) - new motor (rather than last years EV1 motor, they worked with Remy to design custom motors) - new battery pack (EnerDel) - etc
Additionally they're going into production so that people who can afford the $38,000 base price can have their own electric superbike. Now that they've set this land speed record they can advertise selling "the fastest production motorcycle" (not fastest electric production motorcycle... fastest production motorcycle)
This week two more teams were at the Bonneville Salt Flats: http://www.examiner.com/green-transportation-in-national/more-electric-motorcycle-land-speed-record-action-at-bonneville-salt-flats
Chip Yates:- Managed to set four different FIM land speed records, even though none of them were as fast as Lightning's 215.96 miles/hr. The deal is that the SCTA speed trials are not FIM approved, while the BUB speed trials are, so Yates' records are on FIM's record books, and the Lightning records are not.
KillaJoule:- This is a fully enclosed streamliner electric motorcycle with side car. That makes it qualify in a very narrow categorization of vehicles, of which theirs is the only one that has attempted time trials. That made every one of their runs establish land speed records, the fastest of which was 138 miles/hr. Not terribly exciting, but that's partly because they had motor problems that involved letting out the magic smoke. OH NO! THEY LET OUT THE MAGIC SMOKE! They've got a new motor waiting for them at home, and expect to be at The World of Speed in a couple weeks to try again. They were hoping to reach 200 miles/hr this week.
