I got to meet the STORM Eindhoven team on their 80-day world tour, on day 56 as they showed their work in San Francisco's Embarcadero EV Week show, for Fleet Week.
I got some design information which was pretty interesting:
The bike's weight varies from 550-750lbs depending on the hex cel load.
Each hex package has 18650 cells with an individual BMS.
The motorcycle itself has a coordinator BMS which manages the interactions between the various power packs hooked in.
They spent two years designing and testing the bike, and are traveling with a spare motorcycle for parts and backup.
The frame is entirely custom designed around the battery module concept.
The powertrain itself runs at a much higher voltage (300-400V?) than the battery which has about the same pack voltage as the Zero.
The controller/inverter is German and they had early bugs to shake out with them at the start of the trip.
The hex packs run 3 in a series and are labeled for their position in the pack so that imbalances don't get combined badly. Up to 4 series can be loaded in parallel.
They indicated roughly 30kWh max capacity with all hex cell slots loaded. Range with that should be 250 miles.
The motor and controller have a modest liquid cooling system fed through two 4.5" fans behind the front wheel.
The hex cell arrangement has about 3-4mm of gap around each and some air flows through the gaps at speed for a little battery cooling.
One aerodynamicist modeled and designed the fairings, but they admitted that the lack of a tail was a deficiency.
They're all university students but the team is separate from the university for funding reasons.
Hex cells are charged overnight from local power only in a custom box frame.
Getting the battery transported from Asia to the US was difficult requiring certification and ultimately a specialized shipper.
Finally, photos!
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Topic: STORM Pulse tour visits US West Coast (Read 2315 times)