I Spy, With My Eye: FOUR motors? Team Catavolt and 200mph

Take a good look, I think what you’re seeing here is four of the new Motenergy BLDC motors hanging off the swingarm of this bad-ass Catavolt entry for the record at Lake Gairdner.  Yes, indeed, according to the Autoblog Green story, we’re looking at “four 45 kW (60.35 hp) motors attached to the swingarm to provide enough power for what they hope will be a 200 mph (322 km/h) dash.”

Here’s another angle:

…madness, but the most delicious kind.

This additional information from Jon at Catavolt:
“We are using 4 Mars (Motenergy ME0913) double stack motors run at 156v, (each motor is capable of over 45kw but my controllers will only feed them 45kw), 2 x Kelly 600amp controllers,
The frame is a VJF250 Daelim (Roadwin) 300mm or 1foot extended swing arm.
294 x 8amp hour 20c Headway P cells with Australian designed Batrium BMS.

One of the critical issues in high performance electric vehicles in battery management. Optimising the charging and controlling the discharging so that batteries remain within set parameters is critical for both safety and the protection of the expensive battery packs. After exploring this area we chose the advanced, cell level, battery management systems from Australian start-up company – Batrium Technologies – who are also sponsoring our efforts in this electric bike land speed record run.

The cell level battery management systems designed by Batrium Technologies provides voltage and current over-charge and over-discharge protection as well as providing critical battery temperature monitoring andlogging – ensuring the safety of the batteries at all times and providing us with logs of electrical performance. By maximizing the charge power, charging times are reduced and by ensuring that the batteries all remain within predefined temperature parameters, ensures maximum performance and long battery life.”

Thanks Jon!