Badass 150mph electric sportsbike with 150-mile range unveiled at TED

If you aren’t already a fan of the TED: Ideas Worth Spreading conference, then here’s a great reason to get started. At the 2009 TED event, which is happening as we speak in Palm Springs, Mission One is unveiling the most exciting piece of battery-electric motorcycle technology we’ve seen to date. The Mission One electric sportsbike will be the first machine to hit the market with genuine sportsbike performance and the range to make it a worthwhile addition to the garage.

A top speed of 150mph is well into supersports territory and more than enough for the road - but the shattering 100 foot-pounds of torque available right off idle should make this one of the quickest-accelerating tyre-shredding streetbikes on the planet. As Mike Hanlon points out over at Gizmag, by comparison the 2009 R1 only makes 85 foot-pounds of torque when it hits 10,000rpm. The brutal torque allows the Mission One bike to operate completely without the use of gears, saving the weight of a transmission. Sadly this means there’ll be no clutch for wheelies either.

Battery life is of course the key issue with these machines, but Mission One have used high energy, high-density lithium batteries to achieve not only the high power expected from a sportsbike, but a 150 mile range between charges on a standard driving cycle. A full charge can be achieved in 2 and a half hours with a 220v outlet.

The bike is equipped with a data aquisition system and a WIFI card, which lets riders download a range of performance data, and toddle away with a laptop computer designing new power curves to try out. This computer tuning replaces pretty much all engine maintenance and tuning - but you’ll still need to get the spanners out to work on the brakes and suspension.

Speaking of chassis, the bike is equipped with a handling package to rival anything on the market. Fully adjustable Ohlins units front and rear take care of the suspension, the brakes are Brembo radials, and the wheels are forged aluminium beauties from Marsechini. The rear wheel has a conventional disc brake on it, as well as a regenerative braking system (probably similar to what we’ve tested on the Vectrix) that is tunable through a computer so you can decide how much force/regeneration you wish it to supply as you roll the throttle forwards.

The jaw-dropping bike will hit the market in 2010 as a special edition, costing around US$70,000 - not a surprising figure considering how advanced the battery pack is, and the top-shelf componentry elsewhere around the bike. The company has also committed to bring a ’standard’ model to market with a much less intimidating price tag, with details to follow later in the year.

The Vectrix Superbike looked promising, but was unobtainably expensive and never looked like making production. This effort from Mission One dwarfs the Vectrix’s figures in a much cheaper package. It puts the electric motorcycle right about where it should be in 2010 - and it’s a glimpse at a stunning electric future of performance motorcycling, where power and performance will be numbers you can dial in at will. The key to rapid improvement will be once there’s enough of these types of bikes out there to start a high-profile race series. Once that’s in place, we’ll be close to a tipping point!

See the Mission One website for more info.

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