Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1546567
FIVE MINUTES WITH G ive us a brief overview of Lightning Motorcycles and what led us to this point. Lightning is an advanced electric-vehicle technology company best known for its high- performance electric motorcycles. We use racing as an accelerated engineering and validation environment for our battery, powertrain, vehicle control and thermal management. It really started in the early 1990s—maybe even 1989—when I was invited to race an electric car at an event in Phoenix. At the time, I was racing open-wheel cars, while the other guys involved were electric-vehicle engineers. They built the car, I got involved with it, and I became really interested in the technology. Through that process, I thought an electric motorcycle would be a really good application because motorcycles are smaller. The penalties you pay for the lower energy density of batteries compared with gasoline are much less significant because you need fewer batteries to make the vehicle perform at the same level. How much has the technology changed since you started? Incredibly. The first bike we built was around 2005 or 2006 and used some of the earliest lithium batteries you could get. We called it the E1. We basically took a Yamaha YZF-R1 track bike that a friend of mine had, bought some very early lithium batteries, an AC induction motor and an industrial drive, and put it all together. It made about 65 horsepower and 64 pound-feet of torque. For what it was, and where electric motorcycles were at that time, I could see the promise in it. I could see what it could become. The next bike was a much bigger step. We used the motor from the GM EV1 electric car. In stock form, it was about 140 horsepower. The CTO for Tesla, which was just starting at the time, provided that motor because they were doing tests with it and the drive system for the first Tesla Roadsters. We built a bike around it and brought it to Bonneville, where it ran 176 mph on its first run and broke a record that had stood for 30 years. Mike Corbin had set that record three decades earlier. We then road raced the bike in one of the first FIM/AMA electric road race series, with Michael Barnes riding. At that point, we were getting 160 to 170 horsepower out of it. We had better batteries, and it was the first bike that was getting close to conventional motorcycle perfor- mance and handling. It had good forks, a good shock, a sturdy chassis and was pretty robust. It was heavy, but again, it showed promise. After racing it for a year, winning the North American Championship and setting the speed record, we said, "Okay, what's next?" This was 2010. We had run it in 2009 and 2010, and over that winter we started working on the LS-218. So, the LS-218 basically forms the genesis of this bike we're Richard has been building electric motorcycles longer than most and has the records to prove it. We sit down with Lightning Motorcycles CEO Richard Hatfield to find out a little more about the company. RICHARD HATFIELD P114 FEATURE I RECORD ATTEMPT AT BONNEVILLE MOTORCYCLE SPEED TRIALS