By David Dodge, GreenEnergyFutures.ca
Kumson’s Electric Race Team is the only electric quad racing team in Canada, and they’re tearing up the tracks on the circuit.
The family race team now has half a dozen electric quads thanks to Sam Kumson’s ingenuity and curiosity. He built the electric quads from the ground up, and yup, they’re fast and they jump off the line.
The story begins when Sam Kumson discovered solar. Back in 2009, the family loved quadding and had an enclosed trailer. They wanted to be able to charge things, so Sam did some research and added solar and some lithium-ion batteries to the trailer.
“I was just kind of blown away, and yeah, it kind of flew off from there,” says Sam.
That was a fateful project because it led to Sam, who is an electrician, getting into the solar business. These days, he specializes in off-grid solar projects and recently did a cool project on a cabin 2 hours into the bush north of Fort Chipewyan in northern Alberta.
Transforming quads to electric
He also had a passion for electric RC cars, so one day he wondered what it would take to cover the family quads to electric.
“I came up with the idea to take an electric RC car and put it into a quad frame. Which meant bigger motors, bigger batteries, that kind of stuff,” he says.
“So I sourced it out and came up with very different iterations. And yeah, I finally decided to build myself a BW 80. So this would be one of my first more finished builds.”
The Yamaha BW 80 is a fat-tired minibike that is super fun to ride, and Sam converted it to electric, and it’s still one of his favourite projects to this day.
“And then we went to quads once the kids grew up a little bit,” says Sam.
“For us, it’s super cool,” says Sam. “They’re maintenance-free; you just plug them in, lube the chain, and let ’em go.”
Birth of Kumson’s Electric Race Team
The electric quads were so much fun. Sam’s son, Isaac, asked if he could go racing.
Isaac says he enjoyed riding the electric quads and was watching people on YouTube who were racing quads.
“I thought I could do it,” says Isaac.
“And that’s what started Kumson’s Electric Race Team,” says Sam.
These quads are fast. They leap off the line and they are super fun to drive.
Hard to build?
So how complicated are these electric quads and are they hard to build? We wondered.
“There’s a lot of technical stuff that you can get into, but the basics of it are a motor, battery controller, and wiring harness,” says Sam. “And then adjusting your controls to what you want your controller to do.”
“So pretty straightforward,” I said to Sam. He said sure, and they burst out laughing.
Sananah drives a converted 170 electric side-by-side with a single seat in it. Isaac has a freshly converted Yamaha YFZ 450, and Theo, the youngest, has a converted Yamaha Raptor 250.
The kids have been racing for years and have never encountered another electric ATV on the circuit.
Aren’t electrics unfairly fast?
Sam overpowers each machine by a factor of about two, but then he tunes the throttle, tunes the speed, and matches the horsepower with the class the kinds are racing in so it’s fair.
“I can only give him what he can hold on to. He is only 10. Right? So, I’ve got to be modest. I’ll get the naughty finger from Mom if I give him too much power,” says Sam.
The trailer with solar on it transports the quads to races and charges the batteries anywhere. Each quad has a spare battery, so the team never runs out of juice.
Kickn’ Gas – The electric quad experience
I have driven motorcycles all my life, but never a quad, so Sam put me on one of his older model electrics when we went out to film the kids riding. He told me he set this one way down in terms of power and speed. On setting one, it felt pretty powerful to me.
Isaac has been racing for four years now, and I asked him if he wins races.
He said, “Yeah,” I said very often, and he said “Yeah,” with a bigger smile.
Indeed, the wall of the race teams’ shop is covered with plaques and awards.
“Once we put all three of them on the podium, it was a great day. So, three electrics on the podium that day,” says Sam.
The Kumsons took me out to a little practice track in the field behind their home, and while I was gingerly tapping the throttle to get to the field, the three kids went zipping by, blasting through corners with one wheel off the ground, flying over a small jump, and generally showing just how good they are with these machines.
You can see the kids and their machines in action in our video at the top of this story.
When Kumson’s Electric Race Team heads out on the race circuit, it’s a family adventure every year. I asked the kids’ mom, Kolbey Kumson, how she feels about all this.
“I’m at every race. I make sure everybody’s clean and eats, and if anyone gets hurt, I [provide] kisses to the boo-boos,” she says.
Kolbey is a quad rider too, but it’s the kids that do all the racing.
Aside from the amazing job Sam does of building these amazing electric quads, he surely must also be vying for the title of best Dad ever. The kids have had electric machines since they were very young, as evidenced by the video (see our video) of very small kids riding electric cars up and down the street from a very young age.
