Electric Motorcycle Battery Breakthrough?

Electric vehicles have had sluggish sales primarily due to their limited range and high cost. Worth mentioning – you never know what you may ride one day – is a supposedly revolutionary electric vehicle (EV) battery technology able tol allow many EVs to double their range at the same battery cost that they have now. More importantly, the new batteries are easy to disassemble and repair.

It’s the discovery of NTS Works Inc,  the letters N T and S in the company name being the initials of Neal Tate Saiki, founder of the leading electric motorcycle company, Zero Motorcycles Inc. After retiring from Zero last year, Neal has formed the new company in Santa Cruz, California which focuses strictly on technology development.

The NTS Works battery pack is composed of small cylindrical lithium ion cells called 18650 cells. They were originally developed for laptop computers and the standardized size and shape has become the most popular in the lithium battery industry. The price for the cells has been steadily decreasing over the years while the energy capacity has been increasing. According to Neal Saiki, “Everyone in the EV industry has wanted to use lithium ion 18650 cells because they are light-weight and inexpensive, but figuring out how to build packs from thousands of these cells has stymied all the smaller companies in the EV industry. Only the biggest car companies have been able to do this up until now.”

The breakthrough in connecting the cells together was solved with an entirely different way of mechanically connecting cells together with pressure. “It’s similar to the way a flashlight battery is held in place by a spring, however, if you used a spring in an EV battery it would quickly melt due to the enormous energy in an EV battery. It has been incredibly difficult to come up with an inexpensive solution.” says Neal Saiki. The first application example from NTS Works is for an electric motorcycle with a 15 kilowatt hour (kwh) battery pack. This battery has 67% more range than the best electric motorcycle on the market today. It is also shaped in a thin package that allows a motorcycle to have a very low aerodynamic drag at freeway speeds. This will give freeway commuters the ability to ride for an hour on the freeway at 70 mph. NTS Works.

7 Responses to “Electric Motorcycle Battery Breakthrough?”


  1. 1 izadore007 May 22nd, 2012 at 8:50 am

    Sounds Great ! or doesn’t sound at all . I wonder if they could Build a Battery Bike and make it sound like a V-Twin, that sales would pick up ?

  2. 2 burnout May 22nd, 2012 at 9:58 am

    Excessive heat is the enemy to all batteries. Re-charging adds heat also. This is good info. I am glad to see someone trying but so far our current “new” batteries are not near where they need to be. peace

  3. 3 Troll May 22nd, 2012 at 10:42 am

    Still can’t do a 500 mile day….when (if) that happens, then they MIGHT get interesting.

  4. 4 Tom May 22nd, 2012 at 11:17 am

    Now if someone could make a dependable 6 volt for the old bikes that would be something.

  5. 5 Jonestown May 22nd, 2012 at 12:05 pm

    The problem with batteries is, unlike gas and a tank, the weight never changes. Dead batteries weight the same as fully charged ones. Pushing a dead EV is going to be a heavy long job. And AAA can’t bring you a gallon of power, yet. Now if some boffin makes a bike with electric motors, batteries and a small gas powered recharging motor…then maybe.

  6. 6 Lugnut May 28th, 2012 at 9:44 am

    Can they build an electric bike and make itr sound like a V-Twin? Oh Yeah. The good folks at Fisher-Price have been doing this for years. Maybe they will license their technology. If not, the old clothes pin and a piece of cardboard against the spokes isn’t half bad. You have to experiment and improvise a bit to find just the right cardboard.

  7. 7 Rocketman May 28th, 2012 at 12:56 pm

    This is an amazing turn of events.
    Really people is this how we think as Americans?
    No wonder we are falling behind the rest of the world.
    “Still can’t do a 500 mile day”?
    All I can say is “Troll” your name says it all!

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Cyril Huze