Lithium Ion motorbike prototype

How would you like to be the owner of a Lithium Ion motorbike prototype?If you can afford the $15,000 odd fee for a custom modification, a team at the Electric Motorsport shop in Oakland will take out the nasty engine in your ride and replace it with an array of Lithium Ion batteries.As a prototype, the company created a fully electric version of the Yamaha R1 which has a top speed of 100MPH, it goes 0-60 in around 3 seconds and has about a 100-mile range at cruise. The entire engine is missing. So are the tailpipes, radiator, gas cap, transmission and clutch. In their place: a wall of yellow batteries, an AC regenerative motor, an electric throttle and a three-pronged plug, which pokes out from the frame and connects to a standard outlet.Unlike the Tesla electric sport car, which is powered by thousands of tiny batteries, the R1 conversion uses just 28. Each of them is 90 amp-hours at 3.2 volts and 6.6 pounds. Together, they weigh less than everything that was taken off the bike to make it electric. While the majority of the batteries are concentrated in a Mondrian-esque block where the engine used to be, they’re also tucked under the seat where the exhaust was once located, to mimic the weight distribution of a stock R1.The Lightning Lithium is, after all, just a prototype — an idealistic vision of what could be. It was the brainchild of Richard Hatfield, a motorcycle enthusiast and solar panel importer based in Burlingame, and Todd Kollin, who’s been making electric bikes out of past-their-prime gas-powered ones for the last six years at his Oakland shop, Electric Motorsport. Right now, the shop does custom conversions of aging internal-combustion bikes, with a turnaround time of about 30 days.Within a couple years, the two hope to make a comparably priced production version of the bike using a custom chassis, as well as a smaller, less powerful $6,000 to $8,000 model.