We love electric vehicles. They’re quite fast, having instant torque, and they’re “Mother Earth” friendly. We’ve seen them in huge numbers, but most of them have four wheels. Today we saw another electric vehicle, but it only has two wheels. Yes, an electric motorbike. No, that’s wrong. This is an electric superbike. Yes, it’s fast. In fact that’s 260kph fast!

This San Francisco-based Mission Motors Mission R electric racing superbike is set to compete in the TTXGP racing series in 2011. It’s built by the EV powertrain technology arm of Mission Motors, which is the MissionEVT, and only has one gear. The bike is capable of 156Nm of torque which is cranked from 0 to 6,400rpm.

The heart of this white baby is a liquid-cooled three-phase AC induction motor capable of 14.4 kWh and 141hp. That’s about the same size of a 600cc petrol equivalent. That’s not very far from my little car’s capacity. The bike’s very much capable of a 260kph top speed, which my car can’t.

There’s also something interesting here. The MissionEVT 100kW motor controller offers customisable regenerative braking maps as well as throttle maps, allowing the user to tune the bike to his preference.

The Mission R’s chassis features an entirely new design for integrating and balancing the weight and volume of a large EV battery pack into a motorbike, and the chassis is wrapped in a new and aerodynamic industrial design by Tim Prentice of Motonium, with a small frontal-area and aggressive ergonomics.

All vehicle and ride data is accessible via WiFi or 3G connections, and MotoGP-spec components from Öhlins, Brembo, and Marchesini round out this built-for-racing package.

SOURCE via Wired