Why I chose to build an electric motorcycle

I've loved motorcycle ever since I was old enough to talk. But lately they've posed a problem for me. They make me ill.

Lately I've noticed myself dreading work on many of my favorite cars and bikes because I've come to associate them with exhaust fumes. The fumes seem to make me feel, well, exhausted. It ruins my day. It wasn't just the 1969 Honda CB350, a 1998 Suzuki GSXR750 that did the same thing to me. So did my 1975 BMW 2002, my 1975 VW Rabbbit and my 1972 Datsun 1200. Turns out old cars easily draw tailpipe emissions in through the trunk or hatch, especially with the windows open. It also turns out that even modern motorcycles emit more unburned fuel than SUV's. These things that I once loved eventually became annoying because of my unusual sensitivity to exhaust fumes.

Enter the electric vehicle. I had the opportunity to drive a Tesla Roadster recently. After that it was final, I had to build an electric car. There was no good reason not to. I'd thought about it for years, lurking on electric vehicle forums, but not able to settle on a good conversion setup I could afford.

One day I'd like to build an electric car. You can't beat the all-weather nature of a car. But the cost of doing it right with lithium batteries is high. Many DIYers seem to spend $8,000 or more on batteries alone to get adequate range and power. That's way beyond my budget.

With the decreased weight, aerodynamic drag and rolling resistance of a motorcycle, you get way more the bang for your buck. Cars seem to average between 2 and 3 miles per kilowatt hour, while motorcycles you can get over nine miles. So let's say you have $3,000 to spend on batteries, and you obtain 9.9 kilowatt hours of lithium battery (a rock bottom price of $1 per amp-hour). That theoretically takes you 89 miles with a motorcycle but only 30 miles in a car.

Performance is also a factor. A slow electric vehicle is so uninspiring. Every electric vehicle should be inspiring. It's much easier to go fast with a motorcycle.

Unsettling....

It's being reported that a GM engineer suffered chemical burns and a concussion in an explosion on April 11 while testing a new electric vehicle battery being developed by A123. The explosion also knocked several windows and a door out of the lab building.

I can only imagine what they were doing to the batteries to make them explode. According to the Wall Street Journal, "batteries in that lab undergo testing in which they are damaged, exposed to extreme heat and cold, shaken, and doused with water in an effort to ensure they are safe."

On a related note -- and before I read this news story -- last night I ordered 32 of the A123 20ah prismatic pouch cells from ShenZhen Victpower, a black market seller in China that many DIYers have reported good experiences with. No one really knows how they got these cells, which are by all accounts quite amazing. So I made a Paypal payment of almost $800 and crossed my fingers.

The ones that exploded at GM may be a new, more volatile A123 design, or my have been battered into an unlikely explosion during tests. Whatever the case, I'm taking precautions to prevent an explosion and fire from burning down the garage, not limited to new fire alarms and relocating or containing every bit of flammable liquid in my garage.

What could possibly go wrong?

My newest project, a 2000 Triumph TT600 that will be converted to run on electricity. Found with help from a craigslist want-ad, I towed her home in the rain on March 23, 2012.

Triumph made these bikes for three years and they cost $8999 new. Thanks to depreciation, a few missing parts, frozen brakes and a blown engine, I paid $560. It dropped a valve while being over-revved and the previous owner also regularly let students of motorcycle racing abuse it on the racetrack. But despite its hard life there's no real dents or blemishes in the body work and I ran a string to make sure the frame was straight.

The engine and transmission will be removed and replaced with a brush-less alternating-current motor, the AC-20 made by HPEVS, along with over 80 3.3-volt lithium batteries configured in 28-series strings for 92 volts nominal.

It won't be as fast as this crotch rocket originally was, but who really needs to go 0-60 in 3.5 seconds? I only needed to try that a few times on my old GSXR 600 before I was tired of scaring the shit out of myself.

And if the AC-20 is powerful enough for a few TTXGP racers in recent years, it's fast enough for my street bike. The AC20 is reportedly able to produce 50 horsepower and 105 pound-feet of torque at 108 volts and 650 amps. The gas engine made similar numbers, but in reverse: 108 horsepower and 50 foot-pounds of torque.

Project costs so far:

$560 for the bike

$700 for used Curtis 1238-6501 controller purchased on Ebay, produces 550 amps and maxes at 108 volts.

$500 for a rebuilt AC20 motor. Electric Motorsport in Oakland was nice enough to sell it for this ridiculously low price. I hope it works.

I hope to have a range of over 50 miles so the lithium batteries may end up being the most costly bit. Stay tuned.