It looks like a Batman bike but it isn’t. It is an electric log catcher made of niobium to exceed 400 km/h.
The Bonneville Salt Flats Lake, in the United States, became famous in the motorcycle world and beyond, as it was the scene of the largest recorded land records on the planet. Lightning Motor Motorcycle has teamed up with Brazilian company CBMM to design the world’s fastest electric motorcycle.
Baptized by the seemingly “weird” name of Tachyon Nb, he will attempt to beat the speed record set by Max Biaggi with his Voxan Wattman. At the moment, we know it easily reaches speeds of 400 km / h, although this must be improved if it is to get rid of the 455,737 km / h set by the Italian driver.
Lightning Motorcycles created Tachyon Nb with the express goal of setting a new record for electric motorcycles and for that it has partnered with Brazilian company CBMM that specializes in Niobium (the chemical symbol Nb, hence its name), a rare and unusual mineral. Used to strengthen part of the frame, engine and brake discs.
In addition to trying to exceed the top speed set by an electric motorcycle, this association of companies is seeking solutions for the future in the two-wheeled world, and the ability to apply them in new models that Lightning Motorcycles may manufacture itself.
The name of this electric motorcycle derives from a hypothesis put forward by scientists in the 1960s who were studying a particle that could potentially exceed the speed of light and reach the moon in less than one second. The particle that was called Tachyon and which, as we see, served as an inspiration.
To reach these figures, it will use the Lightning Lightning LS-218 as a base, an electric motorcycle that in its configuration reaches 200 horsepower and a top speed of 350 km / h. To do this, they stripped everything necessary to the electric bike and dressed it up with an ultra-lightweight carbon fiber chassis. This is drop shaped so that the drag coefficient is not high, and it can move faster.
The frame and swingarm were also hardened to withstand the test requirements using, as we said earlier, niobium alloy steel. Niobium is a soft metal that has the ability to provide high strength to this type of alloy as it has a very low density. With this, you get the same structural strength but using less material, which greatly reduces the weight of the bike.
We’ll have to wait a while to see if this car can break the previous record set by Biaggi, as tests at Bonneville Salt Lake have been canceled due to bad weather sweeping the US.
