Saturday, January 30, 2010

Show and Shine

OK, missed a few days in the blog. Here is the summary (check out Eva's blog for more details).

Taupo:
Great weather, great people, awesome fun!

Wintec Hamilton:
These guys have great facilities and the people that turned out were very tunned in to the technology. Plenty of interest here in Hamilton.


Day one 4 and Rotary Nationals (Show and Shine):
Wicked event, people and cars everywhere and some amazingly well presented cars! We were presenting from one of the center stages so we got lots of traffic and attention. Plenty of people already keen on electric vehicles and those new to the technology seemed to be either confused, stunned or worried when they heard about the performance potential!


Tomorrow is the big day though. The rubber hits the road as the KillaCycle is given a chance to do the business in its first outing in NZ.

Scotty (who arrived in NZ this morning) will be charged with driving the KillaCycle to find out. Can he beat Ian Wilkin's and Afterburner, his high octane nitrous injected bike?

Come and see it all at Meremere tomorrow (the KillaCycle is racing at about noon)!

Monday, January 25, 2010

ZeroNow

We have had a brilliant day here today in Palmerston North.

To start with, Eva arrived safely just before the start of the ZeroNow event, Bill is much happier now :)

After being introduced to everyone Eva was happy to be in NZ and quickly emersed herself in the event and everything that was going on.

The ZeroNow event was situated in the open area in front of Te Manawa and it included a diverse collection of technologies many demonstrating high efficiency and high performance in the same package. Of course Eva, Bill and the KillaCycle fitted right in.

Here Eva is attaching a couple of the NZ tour sponsors logos (ZeroNow and ECONZ Timecard) to the KillaCycle.

With all the energy efficiency being demonstrated, Athol felt he needed to take up a bit of the slack. He fired up his nitro methane powered bike to check that no one was asleep and to ensure that as a group we were contributing our fare share of emissions. That cleared out the ears!

The KillaCycle was not the only high performance electric bike, Iain Jerrett had his electric road bike on display as well. What an amazing job he has done! This is a very professional conversion.

Check out the details on his website here.

Big ups to Athol, Bill, Eva, Tom, Tabitha, Ed, Craig, Andrew and Jon (and everyone else in this extended team). These guys are all committed to making a difference, they are amazing people!

Thanks also to everyone displaying products or who came along to see what was happening. It was a big turn out and I know we all had a lot of fun.

The KillaCycle Tour just keeps getting better!

Stay tuned...

Leaving Te Papa

Just a parting shot as we left Te Papa on Sunday evening. Athol's bike in the foreground and the KillaCycle at the back.

Good bye Te Papa! Thanks to all the wonderful Te Papa staff and all the people that came to see us, we had a lot of fun.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

KillaCycle Taupo event change

Sadly, the KillaCycle will no longer be on display in Taupo. Bill, Eva, Tom and myself will still be stopping off at Roberts Reserve in Taupo with the Electric Saker and Tom's Electric Mini to talk about EV's the KillaCycle and anything else related, so please do drop by to say hello.

If you want to see the actual KillaCycle, I suggest you either come to Palmerston North on the 25th Jan, or Hamilton on the 28th Jan where it will be on display. Even better come to Meremere on the 31st Jan and see it in action!

GS750V in the Wellington town hall today

The GS750V (Electric Saker) is in the Wellington town hall today as part of the LCA2010 open day.

Come down and see Tom and I between 11am and 2pm today (Jan 23rd). Tom has his electric mini on display as well and we are both show casing Tumanako technology.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

KillaCycle enters Te Papa

Just a quick note to let you know that the KillaCycle has made it to Te Papa! It's there until Sunday Evening (Jan 24th). Come down and meet Bill Dube and Athol Williams (Athol also has his record holding top fuel drag bike on display).

Thursday, January 14, 2010

GS750V More Speed

Yesterday we upped the torque limits on the Tumanako inverter and got a bit more speed :)



There is still motor tuning and other refinements to be done, but I think the test battery pack is going to be our limiting factor from here on.

Time for an upgrade!

Monday, January 11, 2010

KillaCycle Tour Updates

A quick update for you.

The KillaCycle will be at the Classic Car and Hot Rod Festival in Kumeu this weekend (16th and 17th Jan) courtesy of Athol Williams and his top fuel drag bike (the KillaCycle will be sharing a spot with Athol's fire breathing beast).

And just in case you missed it, we have confirmed the stop off in Taupo on Wednesday the 27th of January at Roberts Reserve and the drag racing in Nelson on Saturday the 6th February is all go!

Check in on the Tour Calendar for full details.

Friday, January 8, 2010

GS750V (Electric Saker) first drive!

Guess what we did did yesterday?

Yep, we drove the GS750V for the first time ever. It's still easy as we go stuff, with a 150V battery and software torque limits we wont be breaking any speed records but it is another significant step. The torque control was very smooth, transition from forward to reverse was perfect and we even managed a little bit of regeneration (we don't have our brake POT hooked up yet, but this can be achieved by selecting reverse while driving forward slowly).



This was all achieved with the Tumanako vehicle controller interfacing with a Semikron SKiiP module.

We are on the way!