Can an Indian Custom Built EV Bike beat World Class Petrol Dirt bike?

Project SR has been on the mission to build best electric dirt bike which can beat ICE engine bikes in Motorsports. The journey started from 2019 with a vision to be the fastest on track while maintaining sustainability and with limited resources, overcoming various challenges faced while building a dirt bike from scratch.  

SR 14 build started from July 2023 keeping in mind to build a better chassis from the previous models to gain better handling and balance on train. The team decided to put body kit so that the bike gets a good look and the body line is good. After few weeks the chassis was ready, it was fully custom designed in their own workshop and manufactured in-house. The chassis was set to be assembled with other components like the controller, suspension, shocker, wheels, BMS, battery pack, Motor, etc. In the Rear Xpulse rally shocker was installed with our own frame and swing arm. In the front xpulse rally kit suspension was installed. We opted for 21 - 18 wheel setup with Reise Tyres as it more conventional and race worthy from our past experience and data. By November 2023 the bike was ready to be tested.  

On January 2024, Project SR faced huge challenge when fire broke out in the workshop which let to damage on many goods and inventory and the morale of the team. It was one of the toughest phase to get back to the normal and continue development of their bike. Overcoming all the difficulties the bike was ready to be tested on July 2024.

Date – 9th July, 2024 

Project SR Mission Log Day - 2016

Weather -  32 Degree Celsius average,10 kmph wind speed, 80% Humidity.

Location – Baruipur, Kolkata 

Testing location

The day have that the team have been waiting for past 1 year to test the SR14. As per theoretical data it was as per the team’s expectation, now the challenge was to get it done in reality. Rainy season has come by mid - June, but the team didn’t wanted to waste more time, so they started finding other location for testing as their own track which is located in Singur was very slushy as it was a bit low land. A place was found in Baruipur which was a bit rough terrain but it was our ideal place for testing because it had long straights which is required for Speed tests. Day 1 of testing was 9th July, which was unfortunately a waste day because all the bikes went to Singur instead of Baruipur as there was a communication mistake with the truck driver. He thought the bikes needs to be delivered to the regular place of testing (Singur). Nevertheless, our testing got delayed by one day but our motivation and curiosity got even more. 

Date – 10th July, 2024 

Project SR Mission Log Day - 2017

Weather -  33 Degree Celcius average,13 kmph wind speed average, 75% Humidity.

Location – Baruipur, Kolkata 

On 10th July, 2024 we planned our testing from 10pm before that we installed all the gadgets in the bike like Vbox, Gps logger, Gopro, etc which helped us to capture precious data. We expected our SR14 to do 0 - 100kmph in 6 seconds. We went to an abundant place in Baruipur and started finding a long straight which in not tarmac where we could test. We didn’t want tarmac roads because we previously had data of our bike on tarmac. We found a long straight of approximately 300-400 meters, it was a hard rocky terrain with very little elevation, which was perfect for our testing. We faced some issues while taking the bike to the track but the issues was quickly solved by our engineers.  

The first test run has been done by Uday Ganguli, our Project Lead. The time for 0-100kmph for first run was around 7 seconds. We knew there will be massive improvement in the time, as it was first run we were near to the limit of the bike. The next run we did was 5.44 seconds it was a massive improvement. We wanted to do more runs at that time but because of the weather it was not possible to do back to back runs. It was very hot above 40-degree ambient temperature, which led to too much heat in the controller and motor. The wind was not in our favor also, so we had to wait for some time to get the things get cold.

By mean time we started logging times of Kawasaki KX 250 and Kawasaki KX 450. All the runs of 0 - 100kmph was below 6 seconds. After our SR 14 reduced some temperature we did a run and it was 5.28 seconds and the other run was 5.33 seconds. We were very happy with the performance of the bike but we wanted to improve more.

We went to our base and the engineers and riders started studying the data collected from the first half of the day. We found that 0 - 70kmph our SR14 is quicker than KX 450 and KX 250. We started thinking out of the box how to improve our time more, the main issue was the weather as it was too hot so we were not getting the optimum output from our motor. As suggested by the test rider we wanted to confirm that the average should be below 6 seconds in large average test runs.

We charged our bikes and went to test again around 3pm the weather was bit cool than before we did around 5-7 runs and all the times were below 6 seconds and the average was around 5.35 seconds, which made us tick one of the goals of reliability. We studied all the data and we saw some scope of improvement of around 1 tenth in this scenario, so the team decided to do another day of testing.

Date – 11th July, 2024 

Project SR Mission Log Day - 2018 

Weather - 33 Degree Celcius average,12 kmph wind speed, 79% Humidity.

Location – Baruipur, Kolkata 

Day 2 of testing started at around 12'o clock in afternoon the weather was too bad it was very hot at that point of time around 44 - 46 degree Celsius temperature and it was very humid. We didn’t thought there will be improvement in our times. We did our first run and it was 5.46 seconds. In the next round astonishing performance put by our test rider and the time was 5.24 seconds for 0 - 100kmph. It matched our expectations from the setup we had.  

The next test which was not pre planned by us was the 1\4 mile test. We just wanted to find where we are. As we are more into motocross, supercross we don’t need high top speed and more than 100 meters straight data, but we just wanted to give a try. We found a road which was more than 600 meters, it had a slight curve in a middle, we were concerned by that it will reduce some speed, but our test rider said that it won’t be an issue, so we decided to do the test. We changed the VBOX settings for the ¼ mile test. We did the test, and it was around 16 seconds for the quarter mile. It could have been better if our top speeds were not locked. Our test rider reached the top speed of the bike by 150 meters and later stages was like just holding the throttle.  

We studied the data of the bike and set ambitions goals for next 3 months so that we could improve more and be more competitive on track. We wanted to be faster than yesterday and slower than tomorrow. There is always room for improvement and it is long process.  

“Finding opportunity is a matter of believing it’s there.” 

-Barbara Corcoran