Achieving a record at Bonneville has been on the Voxan group’s mind since they started their project with Max Biaggi a few years ago, where they achieved many records in their under 300kg category. But the work aimed at continuing to improve has continued, and although Max is no longer the rider, that doesn’t mean that the team hasn’t given everything to arrive at Bonneville with a backpack full of expectations.
And given what we’ve seen, it was no wonder, because the Voxan Ohio State RW-5 was born from the synergy between Voxan itself, the College of Engineering at Ohio State University and the Buckeye Current team. Together, working in the same direction, they set out on the salt lake with a machine that has broken four records and that competed in the under 150 kg category.
What does it mean to compete in the under 150 kg category? Well, it is a light bike, in which the electricity available to complete the course within the parameters set by the organisation is less because the weight of the batteries has to be saved. Therefore, the work has to be much more precise.
So they had to weave these materials together in the middle of the salt lake to compete both with and without the aerodynamic package, and with measurements at one kilometre and one mile. In all four, the bike, with a power of 80 kW, a torque of 180 Nm and a permanent magnet axial flow motor powered by lithium-ion batteries, achieved spectacular times.
The records broken have yet to be officially confirmed.
Logically, it was during the tests with the fairing that the speed reached almost 290 kilometres per hour. Exactly 289.787 km/h in the kilometre measurement and 289.738 when passing the mile. As for the records without the fairing, the speed was noticeably affected, marking 271.515 km/h at the kilometre and 271.323 km/h when passing the mile.
Thanks to the results achieved at Bonneville and these four new records, which still have to be registered with the FIM and officially verified, the project now has a total of 9, making it one of the benchmarks in terms of electric motorcycles.
