Diesel Motorbike Created
by Justin Thomas, Virginia on 06.23.05
Star Twin, a company in Holland, has designed and built a motorcycle with a turbocharged, direct injection diesel engine. There's potential for biodiesel here, and reportedly the bike gets 150MPG. It's called the "Thunder Star 1200 TDI Sportbike". KneeSlider tells us that Star Twin started with a three cylinder diesel engine from the VW Lupo, redesigned numerous parts using SolidWorks 3D computer modeling software, and cast them in aluminum. The frame is their own design.
Power output begins at 80bhp and 165 foot pounds of torque, but a bit of remapping of the engine controls increases this to 120bhp and 250 foot pounds at 5500rpm. The bike weighs 450 pounds.
The bike is not to the production stage yet and they are exploring lots of different configurations, touring, commuter, etc.
:: Star Twin via MetaEfficient via Biodiesel Blogs via KneeSlider
The US military jumped on this quite a while ago out of a need to consolidate their fuels in the supply chain.
Not the most treehugger origins, but hopefully there's the potential for mass production.
Here's a few quickly googled links -
http://f1engineering.com/diesel%20bike%20specs.html
http://www.janes.com/defence/land_forces/video/m1030m1_diesel_motorbike.shtml
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=DVXA,DVXA:2004-46,DVXA:en&q=military+diesel+motorcycle
In the interview (german magazine article) on the company site fuel efficiency is given as 2.5l/100km, or 2l/100km in a less "sportive" edition, coming to 94 and 117.6 miles per gallon respectively.
As far as diesel motorbikes go the Royal Enfields with Diesel are cooler.
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_bikes.html
Of course a biodiesel Harley is most impressive, if one-of-a-kind, yet.
http://www.americanprofile.com/issues/20010930/20010930ne_1354.asp
Most motorbikes are already pretty fuel efficient. It's with emissions that they don't fare so well, usually. I'm curious to see how this bike does.
someone HAS to hack one of these SVO kits (>> http://www.plantdrive.com/page4/page12/files/page12-1001-full.html fer example) to fit this motorbike.
also check out Hayes Diversified Technologies for the US' military version. customers models aren't as pretty as the one above and delayed due to military need. and yes, not necessarily the greatest of beginnings, but the whole thing looks promising.