Motorcyclist USA — September-October 2017

46 | september | october 2017

SHIFT

MIKE SHAFFER

• there’s always been a cliché that
  all of the coolest technology mankind
  has come up with is hidden by the
  government or military. As it happens,
  motorcycling is no different. Meet the
  SilentHawk, built in a crevasse located
  somewhere between military R&D and
  the motorcycling world, by an engi-
  neering and science company called
  Logos Technologies. Essentially, it’s an
  Alta Redshift MX eBike—a 270-pound,
  40-hp, all-electric motocrosser built
  by Alta Motors in Nothern California—
  that’s been toyed with by some pretty
  smart people.

The key bit of kit that has been

adapted is a petroleum-powered, “gen-

set range extender.” It’s a tiny, liquid-

cooled rotary engine, roughly the size

of a grapefruit, weighing about 10

pounds and cranking out around 15 hp

and/or 6kW. That means charging the

bike’s 5.8kWh battery in the standard

2.5 hours at 240 volts (excluding

whatever equipment is plugged in),

as long as there’s some fuel in the

two-gallon tank.

What kind of fuel? It actually doesn’t

really matter. Kerosene, gasoline, diesel,

jet fuel—the engine doesn’t really care; it

just needs a heads up for what to expect

so it knows how to start. “Once the

engine starts it will automatically regu-

late itself to all of that,” says Alex Dzwill,

Logos’ lead engineer for SilentHawk,

adding casually, “it has a really compli-

cated ECU.” Running on any fuel is a key

facet for the military so that soldiers

in the field can use whatever they find.

Interestingly, Dzwill said that efficiency

isn’t affected by different fuel.

The technique of using the combus-

tion engine as a generator rather

than propulsion is alive already. It’s

a very similar system to the one used

INSIGHT

HYBRID FUTURE

Bring on the apocalypse, the SilentHawk has your back

MCY1017_INSIGHT.indd 46 7/25/17 2:07 PM