Speed / THE FASTEST ELECTRIC MAN

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MAX BIAGGI THE FASTEST ELECTRIC MAN ON EARTH

On 23rd February, the legendary motorcycle racer Max Biaggi was invited to the home of Venturi Group in Monaco to celebrate one of his greatest achievements: setting the world speed record for an electric motorcycle in the ‘less than 300kgs’ category. Over a one-kilometre course on the 22nd November last year, Max Biaggi and the Voxan team unleashed their battery-powered bike on the runway at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, a place that is used to launching missile-like vehicles. They recorded an official speed of 455.737 km/hr.

The former World Superbike champion was riding a Voxan Wattman, a feat of engineering designed by the Voxan Motors motorcycle company. A member of the Venturi Group since it was acquired in 2010, Voxan was able to draw on Venturi’s many years of experience building high performance electric vehicles, such as the first ever electric sportscar, known as the Fetish. Venturi is focused on pushing the boundaries of zero emissions mobility and its VBB-3 car is still today the world’s fastest ever electric car, having achieved a top speed of 549km/hr in 2019.

The Voxan Wattman had already broken 11 world speed records during one day in November 2020, all of them set by Max Biaggi at Châteauroux airfield in France. Every high-speed run is an opportunity for the team to add to the knowledge and experience of what it takes to travel at a velocity far in excess of most aeroplane take-off speeds, and what it takes to stay on the ground. Using the real-world data acquired on the test track, the engineers at Voxan developed the styling of the bike in order to improve its aerodynamics, which would enable it to reach even greater speeds and to operate in various wind conditions.

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Venturi’s electric motorcycle breaks yet another land speed record.

By Flora Hilger

© Jean-François Romero

The wheelbase was also lengthened to almost two metres in order to improve stability and, to get its power down on the track, a traction control system is employed. Off-the-shelf tyres are simply not up to the job, which also meant that they had to be specially developed by Michelin to cope with the torque and high speeds. To stop, the bike utilises only a rear brake and the electric motor, whilst doing away with a front brake or a parachute for safety reasons.

Venturi’s experience in motor racing brings with it some added benefits - the Wattman uses the same Mercedes EQ electric engine as Venturi’s Formula E car, but with upgrades taking the bike’s power to 435hp (320kW) and producing a whopping 1,360 Nm of torque. Finding a battery to fit the chassis was rather more difficult so the Voxan team designed their own in-house unit with the help of Saft, a subsidiary of TotalEnergies. The result: a battery that was more compact, lighter and eight times more powerful than those which were previously used. And fans of 80s pop videos will be impressed when they hear that the new battery is cooled by dry ice, rather than air.

When Max Biaggi, Voxan and Venturi all combine their various areas of expertise, great things happen. Over the course of 12 months, the Voxan team have set 22 world records in total, a feat that helps to accelerate the progress of electric motorcycle design, as new engineering techniques are developed and solutions to former technological challenges are discovered.

The Venturi-owned record-breaking Voxan Wattman and its fearless rider Max Biaggi will go down in history as being at the forefront of the rapidly advancing field of two-wheeled electric mobility.