Electric Superbike to Challenge Gasoline-Powered Motorcycles

A former Boeing engineer who turned pro superbike rider has developed an electric motorcycle and plans to compete head to head on January 9 against conventional twin-cylinder, gasoline-powered race bikes at the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, CA.

“We expect to work hard to show the world that electric technology can achieve laptime parity with gasoline superbikes,” Chip Yates, the bike’s rider and owner of SWIGZ.com Pro Racing of Aliso Viejo, CA, says in a statement today. “We’re not going on track to make up the numbers; we’re going out to compete in order to raise our game and catch up to these gasoline guys.”

Anticipating the WERA Pirelli Sportsman Series superbike race on January 9th, Yates plans to demonstrate his electric superbike on December 15 at the Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, CA, as part of a private road test and media day. Yates asserts the electric motorcycle will prove to be the world’s most powerful and technically advanced electric superbike.

Chip Yates on electric superbike
Chip Yates on electric superbike


Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.