Electric motorcycle smashes records

The KillaCycle, an all-electric motorcycle, is now the fastest electric vehicle of all time.

At a drag race in Chandler, Ariz., the bike completed a quarter mile in 8.168 seconds, breaking the six-year-old record of 8.801 held by Dennis Berube with an electric car for more than six years. The bike cranked it up to 155.87 miles an hour. Even more impressive, it hit this level of performance twice, on April 3 and April 4.

The bike is powered by 990 lithium ion cells from A123 Systems, a Massachusetts start-up that is also making batteries for General Motors. (A123 also makes the batteries for the Atlas Powered Rope Ascender, a device invented at MIT that can scoot a person 300 feet up a rope in about a half a minute.)

An earlier version of the bike only had 880 battery cells.

"We all know it is quite a feat for a bike to take out a record set by a dragster, especially by such a large margin. This typically does not happen in drag racing, but we have the A123 Systems Li-Ion batteries that make all the difference. They are more powerful than any other Li-Ion batteries produced. They hold so much energy, we could make six or seven runs without recharging," the group wrote on its Web site.