Speak for yourself... I do think its impressive, esp if it wakes up a new generation of potential ev converts to the fact that giving up the polluting doesn't have to mean giving up performance.
And I don't think you get too many forehead bees with a full face helmet behind a full fairing on a dry lakebed 30 miles from any significant vegetation.
Some quick quotes from an interview about the record run..
Loz: So it's pulling like a monster, even at those speeds.
Yeah. Even at over 200 miles an hour, it's accelerating at pretty close to the same rate it does at 100. We couldn't get the throttle above 50 percent until we were at 94 mph. Even at full throttle above 94, it lit the back tire up a couple of times.
Loz: You've got a brave man on that bike. Who's riding it for you?
Jim Hoogerhyde, the guy that's been doing all the stuff at Bonneville for us. The amazing thing is, you can datalog his throttle, and he didn't even let off a full percent. He just breathed on it less than a single percent to get it to hook back up, and then he was right back into it again. And it lit up again, and he breathed on it that 1 percent and just pinned it again. (Laughs) My mind just wouldn't think that way, you know?
Loz: What sort of things are you changing to bring the power up?
The big thing is current, but you also change the timing of the magnetic flux. A lot of small parameters, trying to get everything as tuned up and happy as we can. But the big one is current.
Loz: You mean just purely trying to suck more power out of the battery?
Yeah. The batteries are not even close to their limit, but being able to take that DC power and convert it to AC power and control it, and not let all the smoke out of the electronics if you get something wrong. We have to kind of inch up on it a bit at a time. It's a lot of power, so when things go wrong, they go wrong in a big way, and pretty fast.