Chip’s electric superbike to take on petrol rivals

Chip Yates, owner of SWIGZ Racing, with his electric racing bike.

ELECTRICITY versus petrol power – that’s the tantalising prospect when this electric superbike goes head-to-head with its conventional rivals at the Auto Club Speedway, California, on January 9, in a professionally organised race.
The electric machine, developed by SWIGZ.COM Pro Racing in the USA, is the world’s most powerful and technically advanced electric superbike. By February, 2011, it will have become the most powerful road racing motorcycle of any kind being actively campaigned.
Chip Yates, the bike’s rider and owner of SWIGZ Racing says: “We have to thank WERA Motorcycle Roadracing for inviting us into their series to make history with this news. Our electric motorcycle will compete head on with real racing superbikes such as the Ducati 1198 and KTM RC8, as well as other established manufacturers, and we expect to work hard to show the world that electric technology can achieve laptime parity with petrol superbikes.”
The news comes following the bike’s recent exclusion from the FIM and TTXGP Championships for electric motorcycles, which has imposed a significantly lower maximum weight limit of 250kgs for the 2011 season. “Our bike weighs in at 266kgs”, says Yates. “Clearly, these championships are more concerned with promoting scooter development, and our bike is so much faster than the electric competition that we feel far more inclined to push its unique technology platform forward in the competitive environment of petrol bike racing.”
The SWIGZ Racing machine has a power to weight ratio that is slightly better than 600cc petrol bikes, and will begin the 2011 season by competing in the WERA Pirelli Sportsman Heavyweight Twins Superbike class, where its power to weight ratio puts it in the middle of the field. To be competitive against these heavyweight twin cylinder superbikes, it will benefit from a more than 20% increase to its current 194 horsepower after this first race weekend in January.
Yates continues: “Our scheduled power increase will make our electric superbike more powerful than a MotoGP bike and will bring us extremely close to power to weight parity with the best 1,000cc Japanese superbikes. Those two facts are a simply outstanding reflection of the potential in electric power.”