Eva Håkansson dreams of building a 400-mph streamliner motorcycle with a twist — it’ll be electric. Who’s to say she can’t do it? She’s already built her own electric street bike, her father is a mechanical genius and her husband is the guy behind Killacycle, the quickest EV on the planet.
But we are getting a little ahead of ourselves. First we have to go to Pikes Peak. By way of Sweden.
Håkansson became immersed in the world of business and environmental science at Malardalen University in Sweden. It was there that she grasped the beauty of electric vehicles. They’re quick, they’re clean and they’re efficient.
“Electric is the most efficient way to get anywhere,” she says.
The best way to prove that was to build an EV. The result was ElectroCat, a 100-mph motorcycle with a 50-mile range. It seems a bit of a lightweight compared to a gasoline-burning bike, but it’s on par with many of the e-motos running in the TTXGP and the TT Zero electric motorcycle races. The electrified Cagiva Freccia C12R uses a 5-kilowatt-hour lithium iron phosphate battery and a permanent magnet DC motor.
Håkansson, who’s pursuing a graduate degree in mechanical engineering at Denver University of Denver, plans to rework ElectroCat to run in the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. That’s a hell of a place to test an EV — the 12.42 mile course has 156 turns and climbs from 9,390 feet to the summit at 14,110 feet. It can tax even the best drivers in the best cars. Håkansson hopes to be the first to do it on an electric motorcycle.
Why a motorcycle?
“It was the cheapest way, and it required a fraction of the garage space,” she says.
It also was a no-brainer, given that her father is Sven Håkansson. He was a championship-winning designer and rider in the 1960s. He’s definitely old-school, his daughter says, but came out of the days when you “built your own and raced it.” It’s a perfect ethos for today’s DIY electric motorcycle racing scene. Sven Håkansson also knows a thing or two about e-motos, having built his own in the 1980s.
And then there’s her husband, Bill Dubé. He’s no slouch when it comes to electric speed. He’s the guy behind KillaCycle, an electric drag bike that does the quarter in 7.82 seconds at 168 mph. The two of them met three years ago when Håkansson was writing a book on hybrid and electric vehicles. (It was never translated to English from Swedish.) She asked Dubé for permission to use a picture of KillaCycle and it went from there.
“We met at a conference in 2007, in 2008 I moved in and we got married in 2009,” Håkansson says with a chuckle.
Now the two of them are collaborating on what they hope will be a record-setting 400-mph streamliner they’ll run at Bonneville. Land-speed racing seems like a tough gig for electrics. Why not go racing in the TTXGP electric grand prix instead?
“Everyone is doing it,” she says. “That’s not fun. We wanted to do something that hadn’t been done.”
And that’s how the idea of KillaJoulewas born.
By her calculations, she’ll need around 400 horsepower to make a good showing at Bonneville. KillaCycle puts down around 500. She and Dubé don’t have quixotic dreams of hitting 400 mph off the bat. The first goal is beating the 176.434-mph pass Kent Riches made in August with the Airtech-Lightning Bolt streamliner motorcycle. (Lightning Motorcycles has hit 166 on an electric sport bike, and the Mission One electric superbike has done 150 mph.)
There isn’t much in the way of technical details at this point because it’s early in the build. So far, they’ve built the chrome-moly frame and engineered the front suspension with help from her father. Greenstage-Tumanako is providing the motor controller, and they’ve got a sponsorship deal with A123 for batteries. KillaJoule’s pack will use the same cells you’d find if you opened the pack on your cordless drill, but instead of 10 cells, it will use about 1,300.
Håkansson and Dubé aren’t just dabbling in greener racing. Their tow rig and the huge Cummins Onan generator they use to recharge batteries run on biodiesel. The forklift they picked up at a government auction is electric. So is Dubé’s daily driver, a 1986 VW Cabriolet he converted to battery power.
“We’re trying to be green,” says Håkansson. “It’s not easy, but we’re trying.”
The best thing about these two is their willingness to share what they know with anyone who’s interested. Motorsports is by definition competitive, but Håkansson and Dubé have no problem showing people what they’re doing. They’re as passionate about spreading the EV gospel as they are about going fast. Really, really fast.
Eva Håkansson on ElectraCat, the converted Cagiva she built.
Dave Eyvazzadeh for Wired
