Charge

For over a hundred years, riders throughout the world have ridden Man TT's hills and curves with high speed and glory. Our recent global awareness has pushed society to new dreams and challenges in perfecting an Eco friendly way to live, including our motorcycles.

In June 12, 2009 to what some considered blasphemy, others consider it history as the first ever zero emission grand Prix roamed free in Man TT.

The new documentary, "Charge," which recently released, captures the dreams and visions of obsessed riders, engineers, and businessmen, as each set a high speed record in the electric motorcycle world.

In our previous blogs, Brandon Miller(a.k.a Electric Cowboy) attempted to set an electric Motorcycle speed of 100 mph.

Miller actually ended up with the record of 101.652 mph.

The highest speed record is recently held by Lightning Motorcycles at 215 mph.

At the fast rate technology is improving we wouldn't be surprised for a higher speed record to be set anytime soon.

"Charge captures a pivotal moment in motor sport history: the dawn of the zero-emissions racing era. It came on June 12th 2009, the day of the world’s first zero-emissions motorcycle grand prix. The race took place on the Isle of Man TT course, the most demanding and deadly circuit on the planet. The film begins in early 2009 amid the hectic preparations for the race and concludes over a year later at the 2010 TT Zero. The second race sees a huge leap in performance – proof that racing really does improve the breed and that maniacs on motorcycles can be a force for global good. We follow the fortunes of several teams in the run-up to the 2009 race and on their return in 2010, from swaggering US hotshots MotoCzysz to shoestring Anglo-Indian contenders Team Agni and local heroes ManTTx Racing. Charge is the dramatic and highly entertaining inside story of an unlikely group of pioneers – obsessed visionaries, ambitious businessmen, new-tech eccentrics, government ministers and hardcore racers – from as far afield as India, the USA, Germany and Britain. It’s a human story as well as a technological one: the teams’ hopes for personal glory and commercial success ride on their green machines. It’s about the dream of a clean, green world. It’s about the dream of winning."

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Source: DocuramaFest (AP, 5/21)

Brandon Miller attempts to set electric motorcycle speed record

A few days ago, Brandon Miller, a.k.a the Electric Cowboy, set out to Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah to attempt to set both world and national records for partially streamed and non-faired electric motorcycle under 150 kg. Yes it may seem a bit geeky, but it’s also exciting because it is very new motorcycle technology, and so it sounds like science fiction.

His attempt is going to be performed with two electric motorcycles: the Zero S Zf6, and his famous "Foxy Cleopatra,” Zero S ZF9 model that anyone can buy in any store. Foxy has had a few modifications done by Hollywood Electrics, such as the single bar end mirror and the tail chop; a change made for a more effective and faster speed, even though it is somewhat unnecessary, since it's already super light and fast. For the Zero ZF6, he will tweak the race setting and have custom made race upgrades and hardware modifications, since the original speed for the Zero S Zf6 goes up to 88mph. By making the modifications the bike can go up to 100mph.

For the first few runs, Brandon plans to attempt setting both records using the bike's default settings. If he fails during the first attempt, he will make some "modifications to the software and hardware settings on both bikes" to determine the power and speed they give out.

Some of the records he has achieved are: being first person to get their racing license on an electric motorcycle, and being the first rider with any no-gas experience. After his record setting attempts, whether he succeeds or not, he plans next year to set a FIM (Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme) world speed record.

As of Sunday, via an update to his fund-raising website, Miller claims he has set a new speed record for electric motorcycles with a speed of 98.87mph. But that's not good enough for the Electric Cowboy, in his own words “I wanna break 100 so bad I can taste it! Or maybe that’s just the salt on my lips...”

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Source: Gas2 ( 9/17)