A Visit to EnerTrac Corp.

I grew up in New York.  Out on Long Island specifically, and a good portion of my family still lives there.  As I write this, i’m in NY again because we’ve taken our new daughter Mira to my sister’s house in Rockville Centre to see her great grandmother and other family members in the area.  One extra added benefit of this trip is that Rockville Centre is less than half an hour car ride from Farmingdale, NY.

Why is Farmingdale important?  ‘Cuz that’s where the EnerTrac office and shop is located, and I had been emailing Mark Gelbein to setup a time for a visit to look around, get some instructions about the motor, and generally just say hi.

Josh and Mark Gelbein from EnerTrac Corp.

I showed up on Friday afternoon (Jan 15) to meet Mark Gelbein and also ended up meeting his son Josh who also works at the shop. A family business that’s building stuff that helps the environment.  Nice!

I showed up a bit late because i got lost getting myself to the Southern State Parkway, but

What i’m looking for in a bike

So, i mentioned in an earlier post that i originally thought i’d be able to build a bike for a couple grand.  Well, after thinking about my desires for an electric motorcycle, that cost jumped a bit….ok more than a bit.

What i’m hoping to get in the end is a motorcycle that will:

• go 65-70mph (highway speed)
• get at least 55 miles per charge, but hopefully more than that
• have enough acceleration to beat out your average car from a stop when driving in traffic.  This isn’t particularly hard since most people don’t gun it from the line at a stop light. But my scooter is underpowered so accelerates pretty slowly.

That being said, i decided to throw as much in the way of batteries as i thought i’d be able to get away with. A guy in Florida with the screen name “remotecontact” on elmoto.net started on a project similar to me a few weeks before i got started.  He started with a 2009 Ninja 250 and is planning on using the same EnerTrac hub motor, with 32 Thundersky 60Ah batteries.  that works out to 6.1KWh.