Once more with the 200 horsepower E1PC

My friend Harry 'Brammofan' Mallin alerted me to a sort of rebuttal, by Michael Czysz, of Guy Procter's story claiming that Czysz' claim of 200 horsepower was rubbish. Holy crap, that's a tortured sentence. Czysz' case was made earlier today in H4L. (Subscription required now that it's more than 12 hours old, sorry.)

It made/makes interesting reading; but it's about how I thought Czysz would spin it. I still think Guy Procter was more right than wrong; Czysz' rebuttal, that he could extract more power, briefly, but that his team has to limit Rutter to 'half throttle' is equivocating. You could also extract more power, briefly, from the ICE bikes racing in the TT. Throw a nitrous injection system and turbo on them, or run them on nitromethane (with just a soupcon of hydrazine, mon cher) and they will make far more power too, for at least as long as it takes a Frenchman to grope a chambermaid.

A modern superbike is, in fact, at or near full throttle for some good long stretches at the TT, and the rider of such a machine has full power available (whenever he's crazy enough to dial it on) for two laps before refueling. An ICE superbike is making at least 1.5x Czysz' bike's power when it hits 190 on Sulby Straight, if his, as he claims, hits 150. (The math's simple; it takes at least that much more to do 190, assuming similar aeros.)

So the fact remains that bikes running on a few kilos of dinosaur juice can make far more power, for far longer, than bikes running on energy painstakingly harvested and converted from the wind made by the wings of butterflies (or, for that matter, electrons energized by a flood-prone nuclear power plant.)

It might seem that MCN took a cheap shot, but Procter's point in punking the 200 horsepower claim is valid: the electric motorcycle scene does not do itself any service by floating claims that are qualified at best, and gross exaggerations for most practical purposes. This category would be better served by under-promising and over-delivering; look at the lessons already learned in claiming ranges of 40 miles and more in commercially-available bikes.

By the way, Zizz' (sorry, I just got tired of checking the spelling) claim to the effect that no ICE bike could lap as fast as his E1PC, if the ICE bike was restricted to one gallon of gas, is not true, either. It would be easy to build and tune an ICE bike that weighed less than 100kg, had 2/3 the frontal area of the (ahem) 'Sedgeway' race bike. A fast small(ish) rider could handily lap at 100+ on such a machine. It could likely be done with with a nearly stock Honda NSF250R.

My guess is that unless there were some big tuning breakthroughs in the Sedgeway paddock today, they'll have their work cut out for them going from low 90s to 100+. I'd be surprised to learn that Rutter has that much more to offer on the riding side of the equation. Right now, Michael Czysz is probably actually hoping for rain. It won't really slow Rutter much, so rain would be a PR win-win. If Rutter went over the ton on a less-than-ideal course, the story would be, "And we could have gone so much faster!" If Rutter came up short, they could blame the weather.

If I sound churlish in this assessment it's because I agree with Procter. It would be wiser to arrive on the IoM, impress expert observers with your preparation (which certainly would include having completed the bike in plenty of time for extensive testing) and let lap times do the talking. A ton-up lap will be a historic achievement.

The lack of rivalry at the sharp end of the field doesn't bode well for the TT Zero race going forward, but that's a topic for the future. If the 100 mile an hour prize is awarded this year, it can only go to Czysz; the other teams aren't even in the same race. If it doesn't come this year, it will set the cause back at least a little. There's not long to wait now; the race is scheduled for Thursday at 1715h local time.