Kingston team eyes zero-emissions Grand Prix
Published Friday, 24th April 2009
A team of students from Kingston University plan to enter their new green motorbike in the world’s first zero-emissions Grand Prix on the Isle of Man this June.
Designed by six final-year engineering students, the bike is powered by batteries that can be charged from a standard household socket and can reach speeds of up to 102 miles per hour.
Twenty-four other eco-bikes from the US, India, Italy, Germany and Austria are also expected to compete in the 2009 Isle of Man TTXGP on 12 June.
“Being green doesn’t have to mean slow,” said Paul Brandon, course director for motorsport and motorcycle engineering at Kingston Universtiy. “There are too many sceptics when it comes to electric vehicles but we all need to reduce our CO2 output and this initiative is taking a huge leap in that direction. The ideas we and others put to the test on the racing circuit are the ones most likely to become commonplace on the road.”
He added, “The energy density of batteries is far less than that of petrol or diesel so how we manage the energy we carry is critical to our success in the race. The bike we have designed has a whole vehicle efficiency of 90 per cent, so we are only wasting 10 per cent of what we carry. By comparison a petrol-based vehicle wastes 70 per cent of the energy it carries.”
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