Comments on: Electric Yamaha R1 – Lightning Lithium

By: mike

mike — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 12:17:51 +0000

hey man sorry to say but is kinda lame i mean who would want to make a big like that it jusst has no meaning to me no massive hourse power no nuts it looks to me like its just all gear it kinda takes the point out of motorcycles its kinda disapointing but hey thats just how i feel bout it

By: FRE

FRE — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 01:51:56 +0000

Gabriel stated that they should have used a hub motor instead of using chain drive with the horrible sprocket and chain. Unfortunately, at least with present technology, that would not be practical.

The size and weight of an electric motor bear an inverse relationship to the speed at which it runs. The weight of a hub motor would have been many times greater than the motor which they actually used. From the looks of the two sprockets, it looks as though the ratio was probably about 20:1. Thus, a hub motor would have weighed perhaps 20 times more, in addition to being very bulky and much more expensive.

The extremely large sprocket could be considerably reduced in size by interposing a reduction gear between the motor and the front sprocket. Presumably that would be done with a production electric motorcycle.

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 07:10:37 +0000

Hello, can you sell me that (The R84) bike, I’m local, Irvine, or build new one for me. Thank you. mon.rouge@yahoo.com

By: todd

todd — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:25:00 +0000

Justin, I still have that XR650L I bought from you (actually got it registered). Funny, I’ve been thinking of making it an electric bike for some time now.
Nice spread in PopSci by the way.

-todd

By: JG

JG — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 18:17:25 +0000

To see more of what I build, (yes I built this bike)go to http://www.graywrxfabblog.blogspot.com