Not content with producing a bike powered by electricity, White Motorcycle Concepts is redefining motorcycle aerodynamics as well. The radical new design channels air through the bike, rather than trying to push it aside and, in the process, increases downforce without increasing drag. Electric motors in the front wheel mean it's two-wheel drive and can recharge the batteries through regenerative braking.

Radical Aerodynamics Feature on new Electric Bike

There are some pretty amazing minds out there, capable of extreme lateral thinking. The latest evidence of this comes in the form of Rob White, veteran of motorsport engineering and now founder of White Motorcycle Concepts.

White set out to turn motorcycle design on its head and, on the evidence of the WMC250EV, he’s succeeded. There are some interesting technical developments but the most striking feature is the large hole running longitudinally through the motorcycle. Dubbed ‘V-Air’, it reduces aerodynamic drag by a massive 70%.

Incredibly Low Drag

“A Suzuki Hayabusa, we think, has got a CdA of around 0.35-0.36,’ White explained, ‘and in CFD testing we have achieved a drag coefficient of 0.11. That's a significant reduction in drag.” No kidding!

That’s clever, but it’s not the real party piece. The duct is exactly where the centre of pressure would lie on a normal sports bike and gives five times the downforce without resorting to add-on wings.

White again; “You need a relatively high centre of gravity for a bike to change direction,” he says, “But when you're accelerating the high C of G means the bike wants to rotate around the rear tyre. It wants to wheelie. As aerodynamic forces increase at high speed, then the centre of pressure on a bike is relatively high as well, and that is also trying to rotate the bike around the rear tyre.

“What we have got is a bike that has got nearly 70% less drag, an equivalent rear wheel load and five times more front wheel load.”

Electricity, not Petrol

White had originally planned to use a small turbocharged piston engine but with battery and electric motor technology advancing at a rate of knots, it was decided to go the electric route. Another benefit was the ease of fitting in the component parts of the drive train around the duct.

The chassis is milled from billet aluminium and the front wheel is hub-centre steered, actuated by steel cables from the handlebars. Not only that, but, in addition to the two electric motors driving the rear wheel, there are two more mounted in the front wheel hub, making the WMC250EV a two-wheel-drive motorcycle. Yet another benefit is that the two motors at the front can use regenerative energy from braking to recharge the batteries. This thing is really pushing the boundaries.

There is an incredible amount of intelligent thinking gone into this bike. For example, most electric bikes use a large rear sprocket to gain the correct gearing from the motor. But this causes excess drag. The WMC250EV uses a conventional chain and sprockets mounted inside the swing-arm, using smaller sprockets with attendant less drag. Because it is enclosed, it can’t get dirty and it uses a total loss drip oil feed, excess oil draining into a sump so the chain is not running in draggy oil.

The intention is to break the British Electric Streamliner record and then, if that is successful, to go for the World Record.

Time to Break Some Records

“If you want to demonstrate to the rest of the world that you’ve just invented a new aerodynamic concept that means you can go faster for a given power, the best thing to do is go as fast you can,” White said.

“That’s why we created WMC250EV high-speed demonstrator, the most radical version of this concept, to challenge for the world land speed record. It is electric, as that is the pre-eminent zero-emissions power source at the moment, but as the aerodynamic concept provides efficiency benefit, it could just as easily be hydrogen or any other future power source.

“The records we are aiming for are all champagne but actually they are perhaps the insignificant part of the concept. The real story is that while for any given amount of power you can go much faster, if you want to cap the speed for the normal drive cycle of a London commuter the technology can be transferred to allow the bike to go significantly further.

“Instead of the advantage being in speed it would be in range. That has a direct benefit for CO2 emissions in urban landscapes thanks to a level of engineering that offers massive market-disrupting gains.

“It’s a product of British engineering ingenuity and it has a real potential to disrupt the industry in a very positive way, becoming an important step towards the mass manufacture of non-fossil fuelled motorcycles, another milestone on the road to a zero-emission future.”

Efficiency, Not Speed, Is The Ultimate Goal

Of course, the real aim of the design is not to break records but to use aerodynamics to increase efficiency of a given vehicle. WMC are working on a Yamaha Tricity 300, incorporating the V-Duct technology into an existing machine. “We want to demonstrate that we can create a 15-20% improvement of efficiency on the Tricity 300 and a 70% improvement on the land speed record bike, to show that the technology works between those two points,” said White, “Obviously the benefits are reduced as speeds get lower, but generally speaking, at 100km/h on a motorcycle, 80% of the drag created is aerodynamic, so therefore if you can reduce the drag by 30 or 40% even at 100km/h, or 60mph, that's definitely worth having.”

This, ladies and gentlemen, is something very big indeed and the amazing thing is that it is all so logical. It’s another of those advances that make you think, ‘why didn’t someone think of this before?’