Jimi would have loved it. The sound of racing motorcycles wouldn’t have drowned out his electric guitar.
TTXGP stands for Time Trials Xtreme Grand Prix, but the name says little about the actual race — which will be electric, which means quiet, fast, and historic. It will be held next weekend on the 60.7 km Snaefell Mountain Course road circuit on the Isle of Man.
TTXGP will be the world’s first zero carbon, clean emission grand prix race; it’s a proving ground for the concept of high performance electric motorcycles. From six countries will come 17 teams and 19 non-polluting motorcycles. Most or all of the bikes will be powered by batteries. And some — or all — of the bikes will be fast enough to make a good showing on the TT course.
Team entries include Mission Motors from San Francisco with an electric motorcycle claimed to be capable of 150 mph; KillaCycle Racing, the folks who built a sub-eight-second electric drag bike; Bramma, the American builder of the Enertia Electric motorcycle, and others from Britain, Germany, the Isle of Man itself, India, and elsewhere. Some of the teams consist of university students — mostly in engineering programs — and some are simply racers who want to beat everyone else in this new field.
The race is the brainchild of Azhar Hussain. You can read his blog at blog.ttxgp.com.
The race is slated for June 12 at 10:45 a.m. local time. The Senior TT race takes place later that day at 1 p.m.
There’s video on YouTube of one of the entries, the Mission 1 from Mission Motors, and at Gizmag you can read about riding the TTX-01 electric superbike.
If that’s not enough for you, go to the TTXGP site and book a flight for a one day trip — you’ll have a grandstand seat for both the TTXGP and the TT Senior race.
I’m not sold on the green idea yet either, but kudos to the TT for even letting it happen. Wonder how many will not finish the lap due to fuel? shortage.
Hope the people, birds, dogs and cattle on the island hear the whine coming.
Coincidently, this weeks NPR Science Friday show has an interesting discussion on whether Nuclear Energy is green energy. They discuss disposal, safety, fuel supply, etc.
You can listen or download the podcast from the [url=http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200906052]Science Friday website[/url].
If you watch a show like Daily Planet on Discovery Channel, you would know that if you converted all the cars/motorcycles to electric and used fossil fuels to generate the electricity for those vehicles, you still would have less carbon emissions than is generated right now by those vehicles.
And not all electricity is generated using fossil fuels, so the emissions really is less. Going forward we will see more electricity generated using solar and wind which will improve even more.
They aren’t going to save the world but I’m pretty excited about it. Can’t wait until the day when I get a chance to try one.
Hellcat: Sir, I respect your expertise vi-a-vis nuclear power. You’ve obviously been aroound for a while, but so have I – long enough to remember Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Nukes are fine, WHEN they work, but God help us if they go wrong. And then we must address the problems of disposing spent fuel rods. Not every reactor in the world is Chalk River…
As some one who worked 35 years at a nuclear power plant – and lived nearby – I can tell you the electricity is about as green as it comes. Most hydroelectric pants were built long before environmental scrutiny, and wouldn’t be built today. I say cheers for the elctric demonstration at the TT.
Zero Emissions? Green? Where do people think the electricity to charge the batteries comes from, the nearest current bush? Most electricity in the world (other than those areas blessed with an abundance of hydro-electric generation) comes from coal or diesel fired plants, or worse, from nuclear power plants. Try living by one of those and tell me about zero emissions! Coal is dirty, diesle stinks and plutonium is (nearly) forever.