Chip Yates

Chip Yates (born February 11, 1971 as William Morrison Yates III) is an American inventor and electrical vehicle pioneer best known for risky record-setting feats in electric vehicles of his own design. He designed and built the record-breaking SWIGZ.COM electric motorcycle, which in 2011 he rode over 200 MPH to 8 official World Land Speed Records, 4 AMA National Championship Records, the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb record, and the Guinness Book of World Records title of “World’s Fastest Electric Motorcycle”. Dubbed "the world’s most powerful electric superbike", the motorcycle is now on display at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, California.

To continue his stated mission to prove that electric vehicles don’t have to be slow and boring, Yates next designed and built an all-electric airplane based on a modified Burt Rutan Long-EZ which in July 2012 he piloted over 200 MPH making it the world’s fastest electric airplane in a flight that ended with an emergency dead-stick landing following an in-flight lithium-ion battery problem. On-board video footage shows Yates barely making the runway at Inyokern Airport after the flight. Dubbed “the world’s most powerful electric airplane” and renamed “Long-ESA” for Yates’ planned “Electric Speed and Altitude” world record attempts, the composite aircraft has been modified with a front-mounted recharging probe and ballistic parachute for an attempt Yates has announced he will make at mid-air recharging the on-board battery pack from another aircraft flying in close formation.

The former professional motorcycle racer and engineer received his private pilot’s license on July 12, 2012 after two months of training and days before the record-breaking electric flight on July 18, 2012. The construction of the electric plane, earning of pilot’s license and record flight all occurred within twelve months of Yates setting the electric motorcycle world records at Bonneville in July, 2011. The week following the record flight, the Long-ESA was displayed at the 2012 EAA AirVenture, Oshkosh Wisconsin, where Yates revealed the previously unseen cockpit video and telemetry from the aircraft in a presentation for the Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh Foundation.Using a patent-pending mid-air recharging concept and dubbed “Flight of the Century”, on May 22, 2012 Yates announced plans to build a 100 foot wingspan custom electric airplane that he intends to fly along Charles Lindbergh's 3,600 mile transatlantic route, receiving battery recharges from a series of five unmanned recharging aircraft enroute with the goal of matching or exceeding Lindbergh’s average speed.

His exploits in pushing electric vehicle technology earned recognition from the State of California in the form of Assembly Resolution #1740, presented to Yates in Sacramento during Senate and Assembly sessions on August 30, 2013