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241 MPH Electric Sidecar Motorcycle Ridden by the World's Fastest Woman

KillaJoule and Eva Håkansson are two names which have entered the history books, at least the land speed history books. Eva has become the fastest woman on a motorcycle, even though her KillaJoule is actually more of a sidecar. What’s even cooler? The fact that she and her husband Bill Dube have built the KillaJoule and this contraption runs solely on batteries. Yes, it’s history in the making! Yahoo reports that this record-breaking run also represents the first time when an electric vehicle beats a gas-powered one in such an official, sanctioned event since 1899.
KillaJoule the electric sidecar 7 photos
Photo: Phil Hawkins
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The streamlined sidecar motorcycle is a 400 horsepower monster which can produce in excess of 800 lb-ft (1,085 Nm) of torque and it reached 240.726 mph (387.3 km/h) on the salt flats of Bonneville. It took Håkansson and Dube (both of them engineers) around 5 years to develop and build the KillaJoule, but it looks like their efforts really paid off, after the formers record was surpassed by over 25 mph (40 km/h). A123 Systems batteries have been used to store the necessary energy.

To make things even more interesting, Eva Håkansson has declared that after the Bonneville Speed Week, she and her team have returned to the Salt Flats for further testing, and managed to ride the KillaJoule at 270 mph (434.4 km/h), a speed which is seemingly the upper limit of what the vehicle can do, at least in the current trim.

However, it looks like the electric vehicles are making firm steps towards claiming more and more victories against their traditional internal combustion engine counterparts, and we might get to see this “battle” becoming fiercer by the year.

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