Automotive X Prize update: The Peraves X-Tracer may be the most successful competitor, yet

Consumer Reports News: August 12, 2011 09:08 AM

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Motorcycles & Scooters

The first contestant for the Automotive X Prize competition to make it into production may well be the strangest: the X-Tracer, newly rechristened the Monotracer e150.

The X-Tracer is a 12-foot-long enclosed motorcycle with outriggers that looks like a fighter-plane cockpit on two wheels. The winner of the X Prize Alternative Tandem Class, it seats two the same way a fighter plane does, one behind the other. It is registered for the street as a motorcycle and you steer it with handlebars, but since the driver can't stick his feet out of the enclosed cabin when the bike stops, it has two outrigger wheels, controlled by a switch on the handlebars, that quickly pop down to balance the bike. (Once underway, the driver pops them back up.)

Peraves, the Swiss company behind the X-Tracer, has been making such bikes since the 1980s. Following the X Prize, the company decided to commercialize a version with a 150-kw (200-hp) electric motor from electric-car supplier AC Propulsion in California. It uses a 20-kwh lithium-ion battery.

The bike will need a special 80-amp, 240-volt charger to recharge in under two hours, or will charge in about four hours using a standard 240-volt, Level 2 charger. It can also be charged on a standard 110-volt wall outlet in about 16 hours, says Jim Larimer, president of 21st Century Motoring, the bike's U.S. importer, based in Richmond, Va. The company has "six or seven" orders for the Monotracer e150 in Europe.

21st Century Motoring plans to begin selling the electric Monotracers here in the fall for a cool $100,000 each. At least the 100 grand includes enough training to learn to use the e150s training wheels here, plus four days of intensive riding training in Brno, Czech Republic, as long as you pay to get yourself there.

Larimer says the manufacturer plans to build about 100 copies a year, with most for Europe and eventually about half for the United States.

21st Century Motoring has already sold four copies of the gas-powered Monotracer in the United States. So if you see one on a nearby street corner, be sure to wave. Not only is the driver sure to have talent and money, that big two-wheeled cigar may be having the biggest environmental impact of any X Prize competitor yet.