[NoCO2]

Hey, AndrewJ, thanks a lot for that link to the scooter parts and thank you and welcome to BarrysWorld as well. I was looking for some other batteries as well because I'm thinking of getting the parts separately now after looking around a bit and building a custom battery pack (for optimal space usage and power output) and possibly even go with a more powerful motor or possibly something other then a hub motor maybe moving to a small, 3-5hp motor from an industrial motor supply company and hooking it to the drive train via belt drive or something similar.

I have also been playing around with sketches today for a trike chassis that might accommodate a 5-10hp motor as well as a decent set of batteries and suspension system for adaptation for real world road usage. If I can get a hold of a scanner (and make a larger, more legible sketch) I will upload what I have been playing with. The only challenge I really face is safety, I am confident that if I toy around enough with ideas I will find a suitable way to make it work in the long run, but I have never designed a vehicle that was going to be used in real world, road conditions. The closest I have come is building downhill luge vehicles that approached the range of 50-60mph but we used those on closed courses where things were predictable.

Thank you also for that link to the Bug-E page. I will definitely take a look into those if for nothing more then reference for my own design, I may actually think of getting one if I find out more about them though.

::EDIT::
Also, just to add to my last post a bit, I crunched some numbers for the design I have laid out for the shell (just paying around with dimensions, not really shape yet) and assuming I can at least manage the Cd at or under .30 I can get my target speed of 45mph with just under 5HP which means I might even be able to pull off between 30-40 mph if I can get that kind of motor on my bike...hm...more thoughts to play with.

I also took a look into that scooter site, found some 3-5" suspension assemblies that are not only very cheap but could probably be easily mounted on an existing (or homemade) trike frame...I'm starting to think this could actually work...

::MORE EDIT::

Additional math with the most powerful motor I could find on the scooter supply website shows that with a 1200W motor I will get 1.6HP which will get me about 31 mph assuming no wind and no other resistance that is greater then my Cd calculations of .3 which means that in order to obtain the speeds I was looking for (IE 5HP motor) I'm going to need to find a 3700W motor...personally I don't feel like lugging one of these around...back to the drawing board.