Battery pack powers world’s fastest electric motorcycle

It’s hard to imagine riding a motorcycle at a speed of 228 mph, but that is exactly what rider Max Biaggi did on November 3, 2020 when he and the Voxan Wattman team broke 11 world records for the world’s fastest electric motorcycle.

In accordance with the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM) regulations, the motorcycle's speed was measured from a flying start over one mile in opposite directions, within a period of two hours. The final speed is the average of the two speeds recorded over the two runs.

Voxan Wattman is run by Venturi, lead sponsor of Ohio State’s Buckeye Bullet, the world’s fastest electric vehicle. So it was no surprise when Venturi owner Gildo Pastor called on Ohio State to help break yet another speed record.

Center for Automotive Research (CAR) Lead Engineer Prashanth Ramesh and Visiting Scholar Faissal El Idrissi, along with graduate student Yatin Khanna and undergraduate Noah Holleyfield, collaborated with Voxan Motors engineers to design, fabricate and test the battery pack for the record-breaking motorcycle.

The team at CAR leveraged their previous experience using different cell chemistries for automotive and aerospace applications to help identify the ideal battery cell technology for the motorcycle. They utilized CAR’s battery testing facilities to test multiple cell technologies to benchmark against, taking into consideration thermal performance, power capabilities and energy.

“Multiple factors had to be taken into account including the high power demands while keeping the battery pack as low in weight as possible,” said Ramesh.

Modelling and simulation tools allowed the team to predict the performance and evaluate the benefits of different configurations in the battery pack. In the end, the design and configuration of the battery pack included more than 1,000 individual cells in order to meet the required power and energy at the system level.

“Working on the battery pack for a unique application like the Voxan motorcycle presents a lot of interesting engineering challenges in pushing the limits of current battery technologies,” said Ramesh. "The work done by the team at Voxan is impressive and I am excited to see the future of the Wattman.”