Picture this: On a nice summer day, you’re riding down the highway on a motorcycle with the sun shining on your face and the wind blowing your hair back. When people think about motorcycles, many have that scenario in mind and don’t immediately think about how innovative motorcycles can be, especially racing ones.
Brammo Motorsports, a leading electric vehicle technology company headquartered in Oregon, is at the forefront of high power battery innovation. Brammo designs and develops electric vehicles including the award winning Enertia® and Empulse.® They are essentially building some of the highest performing electric motorcycles, which are more green than their gasoline-power counterparts.
Below is a blog post originally by Allen Chen that appeared on TI’s e2e Fully Charged blog earlier this year. The Brammo eMotorcycle is also a popular demo that was showcased in the TI Village at CES 2014.
Battery management technology continues to improve how companies innovate and design with high-power batteries, now used in everything from power tools and robot vacuum cleaners to forklifts and grid energy storage systems.
One of Brammo’s top-line models is the Empulse R, a street-legal e-motorcycle with a track-dominating racing pedigree. Its Parker GVM motor delivers precision torque and speed, developing 54 hp at 6,000 rpm, and 66 lb-ft of torque. The Empulse R tops out at over 100 mph, and was described by one reviewer as being “absolutely as involving as its [internal combustion engine] predecessors, adding a level of feel they could never have."
Fueling this powertrain is the Brammo Power™ BPM1590 battery pack, a 10-kWh Lithium-ion workhorse delivering a combined city and highway driving range of 77 miles. Its nickel manganese cobalt oxide cells have a warrantee to at least 1,500 cycles, and can fully charge in less than 4 hours. The heart of the BPM1590 is TI’s latest battery management pack manager IC, which ensures a safe customer experience by maintaining constant vigil over the battery’s key parameters – voltage, current, and temperature – and disabling further charging or discharging when needed.
For accurate remaining distance reporting, the patented Impedance Track™ fuel gauging algorithm in the battery management circuit monitors how much energy has been added or removed from the battery cells – all while accounting for factors such as temperature, cell aging, and more. And to maximize the life of the motorcycle, our cell balancing technology keeps all of the individual cells within the battery always at identical levels, ensuring no one cell gets weaker than the others over time. All of this translates to an enjoyable, reliable, and thrilling riding experience for the end user.
We’re thrilled to have had the chance to work alongside Brammo’s engineering team to get develop and produce batteries used in existing and future motorcycles. Come visit us this week in the AutomotiveZone in the TI Village at CES, where we'll be featuring a special cutaway edition of the Brammo Empulse R. This demo model exposes the innards of this massively complex performance machine, giving you a rare opportunity to see just what it takes to create one of the most advanced battery platforms out there.
Additional Resources:
- Download the Battery Management Solutions Guide
- TI’s bq76PL536A battery gas gauge IC
- Check out all automotive and transportation blog posts at www.ti.com/behindthewheel
- Follow TI at CES2014 at www.ti.com/ces2014