Eva Häkansson

Eva Häkansson was born in Sweden to a family of engineers, mechanics, and motorcycle racers, her father Sven was the 50cc racing champion of Sweden, and her mother Lena was his mechanic: both are mechanical engineers, and her brothers are electrical engineers.  In 2007 Eva built the first road-registered electric motorcycle in Sweden, the ElectroCat, with her father. While writing a book about electric motorcycle design that year, she corresponded with Bill Dubé about his KillaCycle drag racer, and soon joined his team in Colorado: they were married 18 months later.  She was the last in her family to gain an engineering degree, taking a PhD at the University of Denver in 2016.

In the midst of her PhD studies, Eva designed and built the KillaJoule streamliner, mostly by herself.  In 2014, she piloted KillaJoule on the Bonneville Salt Flats, making her the fastest female motorcyclist in the world, in the fastest electric motorcycle in the world. In 2017 at Bonneville she achieved a two-way average speed of 255.122mph, but her ambition is to take the absolute motorcycle world speed record.  For that, she designed Green Envy, a streamliner with over 1000hp, while working as a lecturer at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.  Rain has twice halted her planned record runs at Lake Gairdner in Australia, but she hopes to demonstrate Green Envy’s potential soon.