Isle of Man - Day 15 - Thank You!

The race is over, eSuperbike is packed up and waiting to be shipped back to Boston, and the MIT Electric Vehicle Team members have split off in all directions towards various summer adventures. The experience of building an electric motorcycle and racing it at the Isle of Man was amazing. The words and pictures here truly don't do it justice. Before we sign off and this blog goes quiet again for a while, the team would like to say thank you to our sponsors over the two years of this project.

THANK YOU...

...to BMW for the motorcycle frame, and even more so for the CAD files which allowed us to design the bike electronically before any parts were actually fabricated.

...to A123 Systems for building a custom battery pack to our specifications; for countless e-mails and phone calls as we trouble-shot our system and tweaked it for racing; and for coming to the rescue when we realized that only you had the paperwork needed to ship our batteries to the Isle of Man. In particular thank you to Yet-Ming Chiang, Brian Moorhead, Jerry Gohl, Doug Moorehead and Mobashar Ahmad.


...to Rahn and Mark at Rahn's Motorcycle Engineering for hours of time on the dyno without which we never would have understood our motors; and for the general support and encouragement of the team. Their relentless support was extremely encouraging and kept us going during rough times.

...to the MIT Energy Initiative, Transportation @ MIT and the MIT Mechanical Engineering Department for extensive financial support.



...to The Edgerton Center for an incredible workspace, access to tools and equipment and your general support of student teams at MIT. (the picture is of our bike in the back of the Edgerton Center pickup truck)

...to the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) and the International Design Center (IDC) for general support of student groups and new initiatives. Thank you in particular to Pofessors Dan Frey and Sanjay Sarma for your long term commitment to the project.

...to Derek, Scott and John at Boston Moto for the opportunity to test our bike during their track day at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway, and for your technical support and introduction to the world of motorcycle racing.
...to Mark at TurnOneGraphics.com for all of the extra work you put in to make our graphics look so good, and for your support and advice during our track day in New Hampshire.

...to Dave at Evomoto in Ramsey for always fitting us in for those final dyno sessions as we kept rebuilding our motors in the days leading up to our race.

...to the following companies for advice and equipment support as we brought our project to completion:
- KillaCycle Racing
- Kelly Controllers
- Boulder Electroride
- Woodcraft
- Lynch Motor Company
- Sharkskinz

Last but certainly not least, THANK YOU...

...to Allan Brew for piloting eSuperbike around the course safely (and faster every time), allowing us to take over your garage as a workspace, and generally introducing a bunch of newbies to the world of the Isle of Man TT.
...to Jan Brew for your wonderful Manx hospitality and English tea, and for allowing us to both take over your kitchen and send your husband out for more stress-inducing laps of the TT course.


From me personally, it's been an incredible ride both literally and figuratively. Thank you to the rest of the MIT Electric Vehicle Team for your hard work on the project both before and after I showed up on the team (Will, Manyu, Brent, Dianna, Dan, Romi and Mateo), flexibility when the team made tough decisions (Erick), dedication when the typical time constraints of MIT kicked in (Randall), focus when the going got tough (Radu), and for vision in the early days, innovative technical ideas in every aspect of the bike and relentlessly keeping the team on track (Lennon). It's been great working with you and we should all be proud of what we accomplished.

-Mark