Electric racing at the threshold of competing directly against gas powered racing – Brammo and Darvill Racing at the Southern 100

For years we’ve had electric powered racing, whether it’s drag racing (NEDRA and the like), go-karts, motorcycles (TTXGP and the like) or cars (Formula E, Formula Lightning, etc). Electrically powered racers ran in separate classes, and often separate events, because while electric race vehicles might be fast enough they didn’t have the range to participate in regular gasoline powered races. Many in the field dream of doing so, however, and have been working for years to reach the point of competing directly against the gassers.

With my post last night going over Darvill Racing’s announcement that they’re entering the Southern 100 with an electric bike, the electric motorcycle racing field reached that threshold.

What Darvill (and Brammo) have achieved is an agreement to enter an internationally sanctioned race which traditionally had only gasoline powered bikes. The Southern 100 will be the worlds first internationally sanctioned motorcycle race with a mix of gasoline and electrically powered bikes.

In last nights post, I named off some other events where electrically powered motorcycles raced against gas bikes. While none of that happened at an internationally sanctioned motorcycle race, all were important stepping stones to reaching this threshold. The biggest was Lightning Motorcycles overall win last summer at the Pikes Peak Hill Climb, by a big margin, racing against top riders and bikes from around the world. Surely that caught the attention of officials in high places.

It’s another ball-o-wax however to have official FIM sanctioning lined up. It means electric racing is beginning to enter a phase of running in the regular races. Eventually it will become routine for electric bikes to be present in what had been a gasoline powered race.

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About David Herron

David Herron is a writer and software engineer living in Silicon Valley. He primarily writes about electric vehicles, clean energy systems, climate change, peak oil and related issues. When not writing he indulges in software projects and is sometimes employed as a software engineer. David has written for sites like PlugInCars and TorqueNews, and worked for companies like Sun Microsystems and Yahoo.