The Secret of the Killacycle's Success

What's it like to go from zero-to-sixty in 1.4 seconds?

Fifty-four year-old Bill Dube doesn't know. He turned over that job to young Scotty Pollacheck, who is half his age and has ice water in his veins.

Instead, he gets his thrills these days dreaming up ways how to make his record-holding Killacycle a bit quicker, endlessly tweaking, continually experimenting with a motorcycle that started life as a highly-modified Kawasaki but long ago left its Japanese origins far behind. According to the effervescent Coloradan, who has been building electric cars for decades, Killacycle is never the same machine from one race season to the next, and often between races.

But as excited as he is talking about the Killacycle, he simply can't contain his enthusiasm for the secret ingredient that makes 150+ mph quarter mile speeds possible: $12,000 worth of A123 Systems M1 lithium ion batteries.

"These are the batteries," he says emphatically.

He should know, he's destroyed more than his share of more conventional batteries over the years, pushing them to their limits and then some, leaving them smoking hulks at times.

Bill began my education into battery technology by first explaining the "positives" of A123's 26650 cells. They are:

• Lightning on Two Wheels
• Short Supply: American-made Electric Car Batteries
• The 3G Electric Motorcycle
• GM's New Electric Car Battery Quest
• Electric Cars Winning Over the White House

• Plug-In America Meets the LEAF
• The Stonewalling of Peak Oil
• Judgment Day for Nissan
• The Remarkably Efficient Natural Gas Fuel Cell Car
• Can Shale Gas Save the Planet?
• Jay Leno's Electric Car Challenge
• AC Propulsion – The Quiet Revolutionaries
• Better Place Places Historic Order
• Best Approach to Electric Car Range-Extension Still Evolving
• The Return Of Electric Cars?

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