The Lightning LS-218 is an

electric motorcycle Electric motorcycles and scooters are plug-in electric vehicles with two or three wheels. Power is supplied by a rechargeable battery which drives one or more electric motors. Electric scooters are distinguished from motorcycles by having a st ...

engineered, designed and produced in America by

Lightning Motorcycle Lightning Motorcycle Corp. is an American manufacturer of electric motorcycles. CEO and Founder Richard Hatfield started the company in 2006 in San Carlos, California. Founder Hatfield looked to convert a motorbike to electric with lithium batteri ...

, that has been in production since 2014. It has held the title of the world's fastest street-legal production electric motorcycle since 2014. With a top speed of , the production LS-218 is faster than any other street-legal electric motorcycle, and tops the list of fastest production motorcycles. While the 218 mph top speed of the LS-218 was arrived at through calculations of power and wind resistance, the speed was proven at

Bonneville Speedway Bonneville Speedway (also known as the Bonneville Salt Flats Race Track) is an area of the Bonneville Salt Flats northeast of Wendover, Utah, that is marked out for motor sports. It is particularly noted as the venue for numerous land speed recor ...

using an LS-218 modified from street-legal form, using "high speed gearing and fairing". A race-modified LS-218 won the 2013

Pikes Peak International Hill Climb The Pikes Peak International Hill Climb (PPIHC), also known as The Race to the Clouds, is an annual automobile hillclimb to the summit of Pikes Peak in Colorado, USA. The track measures and has over 156 turns, climbing from the sta ...

in open competition against both gasoline and electric motorcycles, ridden by professional racer Carlin Dunne. The Pikes Peak victory was historic as the first time an electric motorcycle beat internal-combustion rivals in a professional road race. The Lightning team's Pikes Peak race was conducted entirely off-grid, and relied on solar panels to charge the LS-218 racer, making it the first vehicle of any type to win a professional road race using solar power. The LS-218's standard battery pack's capacity is . Adding a 20 kWh battery pack gives a range of .

References

See also