New electric motorcycle racing series for the US – under AHRMA auspices

Arthur Kowitz just posted an announcement in the Electric Racing group on Facebook (which I manage) titled – “Announcing a New eMotoRoadRacing Series in the USA!“. The announcement is basically that AHRMA will host an electric motorcycle racing series starting in 2014. For the first year it’s an exhibition series, that will have points and awards, and with “reasonable participation” it will become a regular class in the subsequent years.

The series will be held during AHRMA race weekends at these tracks

Roebling Road Raceway
NOLA Motorsports Park
Willow Springs Int’l Raceway
Sonoma(Sears Point)
Road America
Grattan Raceway
New Jersey Motorsports Park
Miller Motorsports Park
Barber Motorsports Park
Daytona Int’l Speedway

I queried him privately, and he says there’s nothing yet public to link to for specifics.

He did say the series is open to “ePrototype, eProduction racer, or race-prepped eStreetbike”. I believe what he means is that the series is open to including the top end bikes (Lightning, Brammo Empulse RR, MotoCzysz, etc) and the middle-weight race bikes (Empulse TTX, Zero SR) as well as the street versions of those bikes (Empulse R, Zero S). It may even be meant to include the DIY electric builders.

Open the door to the Tesla Destination Charger network using these Tesla-J1772 adapters

Sponsored

I think in practice that the series will primarily focus on what I called the middle-weight bikes .. Empulse TTX, Zero SR, Empulse R, Zero S, as well as DIY builders.

We’ll have to see just where this is going. In the meantime I have some questions, and no answers, but here’s the primary one in my mind.

Are they cooperating w/ eRoadRacing? What Azhar Hussain told me at the end of the 2012 season, is that the TTXGP name would be freely licensed for use within club racing series. There would be some conditions on using the name and rules, with the idea that TTXGP would become a production bike series with limited modifications allowed. Maybe, or maybe not, this new series will be launched under that plan.

I’ll wonder something out loud … just because the TTXGP and eRoadRacing series’ existed, does that mean we all need to treat that organization as the be-all-end-all of electric motorcycle racing? Yes, the TTXGP and e-Power did valuable service in laying the ground work for electric motorcycle racing. But, does that mean there can be no other electric motorcycle racing series?

The end goal is for electric motorcycle racing to take over. But, how do we get there? Do we work at the grass roots and build interest organically through club racing events? Or do we build a world championship series from scratch?

About the Author
Latest Posts

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.