Electric Motorcycle You’ve Probably Never Heard of Just Set Four Speed Records
RW-5 Voxan. It may sound like it, but it’s not a drug or anything like that. It’s a motorcycle. And not just any such machine, but one that about a couple of weeks ago set not one, not two, not three, but four (that’s 4) speed records. They’re still pending certification, true, but they’re records nonetheless, hence worthy of a mention, at least.
The two parties have been in cahoots for about 15 years now, working to create speed-record vehicles. The Voxan is their most recent such machine, and it was put through its paces at the Bonneville Salt Flats at the end of last month.
So, what is the RW-5 Voxan? Simplistically put, it’s an electric motorcycle powered by a liquid-cooled permanent magnet axial flux motor and a lithium-ion battery. It can spit out 107 horsepower and 180 Nm of torque. Those are not the most impressive such numbers out there, but seeing how they apply to a ride that tips the scales at under 331 pounds (150 kg), their impact is much more powerful.
The records the bike set over at Bonneville apply to the under 150 kg class, and cover the motorcycle both with and without its fairing.
With this part on, the Voxan went on a flying start run over one km at 168.712 mph (271.515 kph), and over a mile at 168.593 mph (271.323 kph). With the fairing off, the same thing was performed at 180.065 mph (289.787 kph) and 180.035 mph (289.738 kph) respectively.
The numbers above are currently being reviewed by the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM) for validation.
The bike was raced by Louis-Marie Blondel, Venturi’s head of engineering, and the guy that three years ago took to the track at the Kennedy Space Center alongside Max Biaggi to set no less than 24 speed records on a bike called Voxan Wattman.
The four records set at the end of August by the company and its University partner take the number of achievements of the two partners to a total of nine. The Venturi VBB-2 was declared the fastest hydrogen vehicle in the world back in 2010, when it reached 303.025 mph / 487.631 kph.
Subsequent variants of the vehicle, the VBB 2.5 and VBB-3, followed suit and set their own speed records in 2010, 2014, 2015, and 2016 in the electric category. The fastest this thing was capable of going was 341.133 mph (549.211 kph).
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