Cedric's Electric Streamliner in 1995!

As electric motorcycles and scooters become increasingly popular, all of them manufactured with the same appalling aerodynamics as conventionally-powered machines, it seems appropriate to put up this ancient photo of Cedric Lynch and his pioneering electric streamliner soon after he built it, more than twenty years ago, back in September 1995. In those days it was powered by lead acid batteries. This photo was taken during a 12 hour electric event in Oxford, when Cedric's machine turned out to be the most efficient vehicle in the event.

UPDATE: Cedric Lynch has kindly sent me the following reminiscences:
"That event in Oxford involved riding around a specified circuit on the roads for 6 hours on each of two days, with the organisers measuring the total distance covered and the amount of electricity consumed on charging. 1995 was the year the Government charged me £50 for a year's road tax on the vehicle; they had decided that all vehicles should pay some tax, and set the level at £50 for any electric vehicle whether it was a moped or a huge bus or lorry. I couldn't refuse to pay it because being road legal was a condition of entering the competition.The tax would then have been £15 if the vehicle had been petrol powered. In the event I used less electricity per kilometre than any other vehicle except one assisted bicycle that also had to be pedalled and that covered less than half the total distance. I used less than a couple of other pedal-assisted bikes."
More details of the 1995 event in Oxford here: http://lynchmotors.co.uk/technical-reports/vehicles/electric-motors_oxford.html

Ironically, while Lynch Motors is still very much alive and well, and still based in Devon, Cedric Lynch is no longer involved with it. He set up Agni Motors with Arvind Rabadia in the Noughties and built the winner of the first all-electric Isle of Man TT in 2009. The 2009 Agni TTXGP winner can be seen here: http://bikeweb.com/node/1792
and 3 photos of the 2010 Agni racers can be seen in this same folder in which you're reading now.
In 2015 Agni Motors merged with Agility Global to become Saietta Group. Agility built a small number of electric motorcycles from 2010-2015 and since 2016 Saietta Group have had a new prototype under development, displayed at the Cenex Low Carbon Event at Millbrook in September 2017.

UPDATE: Tragically, the blinkered 'powers that be' at Saietta seem incapable of seeing the potential of the aerodynamic streamliner that Cedric rides to Saietta every day. He adds:
"I have done well over 60,000 miles in my vehicle and now charge it almost entirely from solar power. I have 160 watts of panels on the roof at home and 500 watts on the roof at work. I have read Royce Creasey's article about industry's resistance to making enclosed two-wheelers. I have noticed this. Saietta are not interested in developing a better version of my bike, even though they know that it can go well over 300km on a 5 kilowatt-hour battery." PNB

Cedric's Electric Streamliner in 1995!

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Sinclair/Lynch Synergy

It's a shame that Cedric has not met up with other visionaries like Sir Clive's nephew. The lack of enthusiasm in the 2 wheel World for hyper miler type EV's is telling. If you look at the projects attracting funding, they tend to be more of the same old thing, eg not very environmentally friendly Crotch Rockets or high performance low volume 3 and 4 wheeled, fairly inefficient sports and utility vehicles that don't look too radical. The issue with a truly ultra low carbon consuming vehicle like Cedric's is that, without the will to engage and fully and successfully promote and market the concept of a Cedric style vehicle and it's benefits, it is sadly dead in the water. A bit like the whole FF story really. A prototype vehicle needs to look familiarly pleasing to the eye. John Hilton who was the former boss at Toro track - the main company who developed KERS in F1 told me he liked Monoliner as a concept, but that it would not win any prizes in the beauty contest. As a man with £15m in his back pocket from the sale of his company and desperately looking to invest in a Motorsport project, he said he sadly was "out". That tells a valuable lesson. Irrespective of a vehicles intrinsic value in terms of performance and potential? If it doesn't look on trend or familiar, it will not succeed. No investor will wish to associate with a product that does not meet with their idea of cool. With a redesign like the one by John Keough, Cedric's ultra light cabin bike could hit the spot. Crowd funding is a possibility. It just needs a Champion to lead the project. Over to you Blez.

Stupid Beauty Beats Sensible Ugliness, Shock.

It's a constant source of dismay to me that people who are clearly very intelligent and full of all sorts of relevant skills and experience, allow the superficial ugliness of a brilliant concept to blind them to its clear superiority over conventional ways of doing things. And nowhere is this selective blindness more marked than in the field of powered two wheelers. PNB