The folks behind the Zero X thought it would be cool to stage a 24-hour endurance race and set a Guinness record for longest electric vehicle race:
The Zero X is an EV you can buy right now for $7,450. It weighs in at a bantamweight 150 pounds, delivers as much as 40 miles on a charge from a lithium-ion battery, and with a 23-horsepower motor it’ll hit 57 mph (and throw up a big spray of dirt getting there). Sakai says it offers the same power as a 250-cc gasoline powered bike, and with 50 foot-pounds of torque it’ll smoke the tires on pavement.Sakai, a longtime rider who previously designed mountain bikes for the likes of Santa Cruz and Haro, started developing the Zero X about five years ago. He was convinced electric drivetrains are the best way forward and motorcycles the logical place to develop them. They’re smaller and less complex than cars, and the regulatory hurdles to getting them on the road aren’t as high.
Off-road bikes also lend themselves to electric power because they’re typically ridden short distances, so range isn’t a huge issue. Electric motors also provide loads of torque, a big plus in motocross riding. The Zero X produces power instantaneously, which can catch you off guard because the bike is all but silent. Snap the throttle too hard and you’ll lift the front wheel.
The company he founded has shipped 200 bikes in the past 14 months and expects to ship another 400 to 500 this year, says CEO Gene Banman. Eager to show the technology works, Sakai and Banman thought it would be cool to stage a 24-hour endurance race and set a Guinness record for longest electric vehicle race. Some 50 people on 10 teams came from as far away as England to participate.
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The race started at 11 a.m. Saturday in what had to have been the quietest start to a motorcycle race ever. Ten bikes streaked away from the starting gate with nothing more than the whir of their 8-inch, air-cooled electric motors and the chatter of their chains. Each team was allowed three batteries, and the first bikes headed for the pits about 20 minutes in. Zero says the 2 kilowatt-hour batteries are good for 40 minutes of hardcore riding, bbut the teams were pushing them hard all day and didn’t want to risk running out of juice on the track.
Swapping the batteries proved remarkably easy: Loosen a thumbscrew, remove a bracket and slide it out. Installation is the reverse of removal. Even with a stripped thumbscrew, one team managed to get in and out of the pit in less than two minutes. The best of them were doing it in less than a minute.
Electric motors, with their amazing torque off the line, really do seem like a perfect fit for sport bikes — except that the people who like racing bikes, on road or off, like the noise of a gas engine.