Matt Shumaker is well known in the DIY electric bike crowd over at Endless Sphere for making impressive bikes and electric drive assemblies. Lately he has turned his creative building talents to creating electric super trikes capable of great speeds, cornering, and amazingly efficient.
The motors he used in this creation are the Astro Flight 3220 designed for high-end RC models. It is 92% efficient, weighs only 5 pounds, and can put out up to 15-HP each (11,000-Watts).
At low speeds, the yellow trike below is as efficient as almost any commercially available electric bike. This trike has dual astro 3220’s and will go zero to forty in 4.5 seconds!. This particular trike weighs only 90-lbs, and was converted to a very quiet all-belt drive for the motor, instead of chain. It has whopping-huge 44V / 30-Ah battery pack made from Hobby-King LiPos that if you milk it gently, you could get a 35 mile range on this Trike.
The base frame he started with was originally a KMX Typhoon, and then he heavily modified it to his design. “…The frame was widened 5 inches, lengthened 3 inches, and lowered 3/4 inch. It will use 203mm Hope 4-piston hydraulic brakes…”
He chose 16-inch wheels with 39mm wide rims for the fronts, and a 20-inch wheel with a 47mm wide rim for the rear, and for tires he used Maxxis Hookworms . The rear tire is 1.95-inches wide.
Matt ended up selling this Trike for $7500 with a single motor (instead of dual like the build below). IF you are interested in building your own monster trike or bike, Matt sells small production drive units and motor systems and can be reached at Matt at electricbike.com. He also sells fully built ready to roll custom systems like this one from time to time. Matt built the drive system for the FFR electric trike (now re-named Outrider-USA), a ready to roll solution that is very similar to the trike below.
Check out the slideshow below for an example of one of Matt’s recent builds…wave your mouse over the photo to get his description:
50mph Electric Trike
Matt Shumaker builds a 50mph electric trike using a giant Astro Flight 3220 RC Motor and lipo battery packs from hobby king
And the resulting youtube videos showing this epic electric trike in action:
Here is the original January 2010 build-thread: http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=15634
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Written by Eric, February, 2012
