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Comment by hooloovoo_zoo | Hacker News Reader

It will obviously pay for itself in terms of energy... in the limiting case, you could just hop in a Tesla and win the race.

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Hm. I love the idea of a logic proof, but is this correct? In the limit the Tesla runs out of battery and you can't push it up the hills.

Interestingly, they race electric motorcycles at the Isle of Mann TT, and the riders all talk about how it's a different game to racing fuel-powered bikes - the bikes are capable of using up all their energy much more quickly that a fuel powered bike, so it becomes as much an efficiency trial as a race, they need to manage their energy consumption to ensure they make it to the finish line (all while still averaging over 100mph around the 40-odd mile mountain racecourse...)

I work on a team that designed two electric motorcycles for the IOM TT Zero. Yes, it's a very different game from the gas races. Aero and energy storage on board are the primary concerns - the top team for the past several years has been successful primarily by packing on ~20-30% more energy than their competitors, so that they can go faster, for longer.

The TT is really an edge case, though, since it is such a long (38mi) and high speed course.

If you've been there a while, I probably met you, or at least your colleagues - a few years back at Maker Faire (where you were showing off a yellow motorcycle, from memory R6 based?), and again at Sears Point for the first US TTxGp back in maybe 2010?

One of your guys (Richard?) offered to get me good prices on Agni motors and packs of A123 cells for $300-ish per kWHr. (I should have taken him up on that... My current ride is a probably-illegal-in-CA 125cc two stroke Cagiva Mito - which is a barrel of fun! I could easily see myself looking for 30 or 40kW of electric motor/controller/battery to jam inside it next time it needs a complete engine rebuild...)

Hmm, not us! We were there in '13 and '14, and our bike was built on a CBR1000RR chassis. I can't remember who had a yellow bike, although it sounds familiar... it may have been a bit before my time if they were talking about Agni motors.

Small world :)

I meant the limit as battery / bike -> infinity for a fixed race length, not the limit as distance goes to infinity. In the latter case, the human dies as surely as the car. The race stages are only about 200k, which is no problem for the car, especially at the relatively low speeds of the bikes.

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