Well, I was doing some more research on this, to check out what advances have been made since I stopped blogging on this. Turns out that allot of research is being done in the area, and we may not have a long time to wait for production modals of electric vehicles, including motorcycles. Now, there are quite a few electric cars on the road, and the technology is proven.
One thing most of the cars have in common is that they are expensive. Another thing is that they use Lithium batteries. Why? Well, the lithium batteries have a much lighter body for the same capacity. On the order of 5Lbs per battery instead of 50-70 Lbs. This translates to an amazing add to range for a specific bike. The down side is that they have a HUGE price tag. The other batteries we were looking at ran from $100-$250 dollars per battery. They also run around 70Lbs. The Lithium equivalent would be $899, and run 5.5 Lbs.
So, while more then tripling the price of the batteries, it does free up around 260Lbs, far more benefit for the money. This added (or lowered depending on your outlook) weight advantage could translate to a much longer range for the bike, by just adding in more battery cells.
Current plans were for 5 - 6 batteries, giving us around a 100-150 mile range. Of course, we could use the heavier batteries during development, and then switch to the lighter batteries further on.
I guess it just all depends on what kind of funds I can get allocated to the project.
