IEEE Spectrum November, 2016 - 53

Take the 100-kW alternator that Cummins Generator Technologies provided to them gratis. The team had wanted a
smaller one, but apparently Cummins doesn't do small.
But the food bill comes out of the students' pockets. So does
the rent for the house, which they split evenly, and the transportation. Even bringing their own motorcycles out West is
their own burden to bear: Ohio State has a rule against using
school vehicles for private purposes. So while Buckeye Current
and its appurtenances travel in a trailer worthy of a rock star,
the personal gear mostly goes on the back of a pickup.
Even petty cash is scarce. When Brody Ringler, a mechanical
engineer, argues that the team needs a $10 infrared thermometer gun to quickly check the tires and other parts, BonnellKangas mulls it over for a good 3 seconds: "Okay, buy it."
On Friday afternoon, when the students figure out the inverter's problem and replace the blown fuses, I ask Bonnell-Kangas
what he'd have done that morning if he'd gotten through to
the Aussie company. Would he have maxed out his credit
card to pay the AU $6,000 (US $4,592) for a new Tritium
WaveSculptor200 inverter, plus the whatever-it-would-cost
to fly it the 14,000 km from Australia to Colorado Springs?
"I'd have paid it," he says.

Barber, the guy whose life depends on sticking to that slick
road surface, time is passing at a faster clip.
"It's wet up there, really wet," he says, returning from a
little reconnaissance.
In another hour the sun would burn away that water, but
the show must go on, and the electric motorcycles are the first
category to climb the mountain. Barber thinks that sticking
to the schedule is ridiculous: Surely, the famously waterproof
gasoline-powered bikes should go first, he grouses. Surely,
someone could go up there and sweep away the worst of the
wetness. But there's no time.
After some hurry-up-and-wait delays, Barber gets the goahead. He turns on the clanging noise maker, scoots off to
the starting line, and promptly enters radio silence as the pit
team unexpectedly loses contact with the bike's transponder. Now the team must follow his progress fitfully, through
a handful of visual sightings.
After an eternity, the news comes succinctly. "Our time is
11:16," says Brodsky, her ear pressed to a phone.
No 10-minute race record this time, or victory of any kind.
Ringler is plainly crushed. Brodsky says nothing. Bonnell-Kangas
conceals his disappointment. This was his last hurrah as team
leader; now he'll take up his first job, a research position at the
Detroit branch of Robert Bosch, the German auto supplier.
Hours later, after all the races are run and Barber can finally
walk the bike down, he is ebullient. Or maybe he's just glad
to be alive.
"You guys were great," he says. "It's as good as last year's
time, and on a wet road. And the bike was great."
He's a pro. And so, literally, were the guys who won the
category.
"The Victory bike was just so powerful," Barber says later,
while sitting on a couch back at the rented house. He was
referring to an electric version of a bike made by Victory and
ridden by Dan Canet. It posted a 10:17.8 time, about a minute
faster than the Buckeye Current.
"I don't know how they do it; Victory is very quiet about the
design," says Barber. When he isn't racing, he works a day job
in IT for Cisco Systems, in Manchester, England.

A c e d A y s t A r t s at the wretched hour of 1:30 a.m. Saying little, we drive in darkness, the mountain a huge
black hulk in the distance.
Poking along the final stretch, we jostle along with
vehicles from every category of racing-production cars, vintage cars, modified cars, dune buggies, trucks (even a semi),
and of course, motorcycles of various weights, power sources,
and designs. It's a surreal outdoor museum of automotive
oddities, "Jay Leno's Garage" taking a run on the wild side.
There are even low-riding buglike affairs with a sidecar, in
which a passenger, called the monkey, kneels in order to hang
off the side as a counterweight in a tight turn. (It's a living.)
The team pitches a tent in the pit area, turns on the generator, powers up the fluorescent lights, puts the bike up on stilts,
applies the blue Chicken Hawk electric tire warmers. They
matter because the tires are racing slicks, so-called for their
lack of treads, and they provide traction only when warm.
They cool down fast in this chill air and on the frigid surA v i d d i d n o t b e A t g o l i A t h , not this year. But maybe
faces; all around, the mountain walls are pocked with snow.
next year the team will build an automatic batteryWhile warming the tires, the team checks the bike's major
charging system. Maybe they'll revamp the power
systems and tops off the charge in each of the myriad battery
management system, inverter included. Or they could
cells. You have to do that just so, filling up one battery to a cer- follow the lead of vehicle manufacturers worldwide and pare
tain point, then catching up the others, then doing it again. It's weight from the bike.
the only way you can be sure not to overcharge any of them.
"I can't say what we might do," says Brodsky, diplomatically.
Well, that's not quite true: You could design an automatic "We'll decide these things together, after looking at the data
charging system, as the Victory Motorcycles team has no logs from today."
doubt done. They're not far away, in the stretch that leads
Brodsky, alone among the students, was present at the cretoward the burrito shack, and they are an actual company, ation. That was six years ago, when as a senior in high school
based in Iowa. All they do is make motorcycles.
she wangled her way into a new and decidedly bare-bones
Hand charging is tedious. But then what would you do operation. Now she has graduated. Next year she'll stay on
early on race day? The last few hours before the race seem to as a grad student-on a mission.
crawl, like in the old movies when the defense attorney and
"I'm the team leader next year," she says. "The rest of the
the defendant wait-and wait-as the jury deliberates. But for team voted me in." n

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum November, 2016