The LightRider prototype you see here was made by
APWorks, an aerospace company that decided to develop a motorcycle instead of
calculating spaceship engines.
The 3D-printing technology allowed for the designers
to come up with that super-cool organic shapes. The frame is created out of
thousands of 30-micrometer thin layers in a metallic powder bed.
Bionic algorithms define the organic frame structure
using Altair’s OptiStruct. This aerospace-approved approach gives the
motorcycle superb stiffness and guarantees optimal use of material. The electric bike prototype weighs in at just 35 kg and
combining this with the 130 Nm of torque electric motor gives the
machine a power-to-weight ratio of a supercar.
The performance of the prototype here has
been limited. It can only go 80 km/h and reaches 0 - 45 km/h in 3 seconds. This makes it ideal for riding around the city. A full battery is
said to last you about 60 km, but the engineers made it
interchangeable, so you don’t have to wait around to recharge.
Since the company that created it is more into spacecraft, it won’t put it into
large-scale production. The project’s website reads that the company plans to
make an exclusive small series of LightRider bikes that will be street legal
for everyday use.
