MotoCzysz breaks down, retires from TTXGP

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MotoCzysz_E1pc_breakdown.jpgPhoto: Amadeus Photography

Sad news at the TTXGP today, the MotoCzysz E1pc has broken down early into the single lap. By our reckoning, that leaves only seven bikes to complete the world’s first zero emissions road race.

  • johnny

    A big shame for them, but what an awesome bike this will be when they sort it out. Top marks for putting it together in such a short time.

  • v

    what went wrong?

    • http://hellforleathermagazine.com Grant Ray

      The announcers didn’t say. They just said that the bike had stopped and withdrawn from the race. It was within the first few miles, so I’m guessing the bike suffered a technical failure of some kind and not dead batteries. A real shame, but that’s racing.

  • jb

    mmm..seems like his piston powered bike broke on a regular basis as well…much noise about nothing.JB

    • http://cohobot.blogspot.com/ coho

      Snarky much?

  • Domenick

    I believe 13 bikes started and 10 finished, though one may have been foot-paddled across the line.

  • http://artistruth.livejournal.com will

    Damn shame.

  • Isaac

    No wonder why I didn’t see them on the podium. I was finding hard to believe that they came in dead last. Now I know why they did. Well, there is always next year.

  • Ron

    How about the Mission One?

  • digitsu

    The problem with Motoczysz is that he thinks that redesigning everything from the ground up in a short period of time is a viable design methodology. While any one of the new innovations in his bikes taken by itself would probably be a success given an ample design, test, and redesign cycle, he tends to throw many untested technologies together into 1 bike, and hopes that it will all just work out.

    New unproven designs (mechanical, electrical, or software) though innovative and holds promise of improved performance will always have initial bugs. Even if each component has even a small percentage of failure, if you put a whole bike together with unproven technologies, (new suspension, new transmission, new engine, new frame) then the failure of the complete system is much higher.

    It’s no doubt that his bikes break so often, and that the TTXGP winners were a bunch of guys who just modified a standard frame with a electric motor.

    While I admire his spirit and conviction, MC is not an engineer, but a dreamer. Scotty said it best in one of the Star Trek films with his quote when the newer faster but untested spacecraft breaks down, “The more they over tinker the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain”.

    • http://www.evfr.net Travis Gintz

      I couldn’t have said it better myself digitsu….

  • digitsu

    Eventually electric bikes may beat ICE bikes in races, but that depends more on riders getting used to the performance characteristics rather than the technology of the bikes.

    Kudos to MC for cranking out a (more or less) working bike in such a short period of time (both the C1 and the E1pc). But if he wants to ever be more than a prototyping company, he should think about spending more time to road test his designs.

  • citizenvern

    Ya but… none of you knows what went wrong. This is just a bunch of “untested”, speculative assumption that the problem was with MC’s engineering. Maybe so. We’ll see. Either way, kudos to them for exploring the possibilities. Winning by maximizing available engineering with incremental improvements is a good way to go, but it’s not enough to get us “dreamers” excited, win or lose.

    citizenvern