Eva Hakansson smashes record at Bonneville Salt Flats with her home-built motorbike KillaJoule, beating previous electric motorbike speed record by 25mph.
Eva Hakansson is officially the fastest woman on two wheels, and she’s loving it. The 33-year-old PhD student in mechanical engineering at the University of Denver smashed records at Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah, when KillaJoule hit 242mph blowing the previous electric motorbike speed record out of the wind – and the most impressive bit? She’s built KillaJoule herself!
backyard racers with high-level engineering skills
That’s not all. In addition to being a new electric motorcycle record, Hakansson also beat previous speed records of any kind of sidecar motorcycle, including internal combustion-powered sidecar motorcycles.
This is truly a historic event
The Swede started this expensive project with her husband Bill Dube, a research scientist at theNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration(NOAA). It took a total of five years to complete the 19ft, 400 HP motorcycle due to their tight budget, and while it was a team effort, Hakansson manufactured approximately 80 per cent of the vehicle herself. The pair see themselves as “backyard racers with high-level engineering skills.”
The married couple built the KillaJoule not only to make history, but more importantly the electric speeder was built to show that eco-friendly doesn’t necessarily mean slow and boring.
Although the KillaJoule is a fun hobby project, its real purpose is to be eco-activism in disguise
Hakansson, who also built Sweden’s first street-legal electric motorcycle, the ElectroCat, wants to encourage women to pursue a career in science and engineering.
Check out the video of Hakansson in action below:
womeninengineering.org.uk 