Thumper Club Forum
Club House => Chatter => Topic started by: Propellor on October 01, 2017, 09:56:32 AM
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Looks like the move to electric vehicles is gathering momentum and is inevitable in the not too distant future. But talk of electric bikes is notably absent from the main media sites. How inevitable is a move to electric bikes? How do we feel about it?
On a technical front, the main problem with electric bikes, as I see it, is packaging sufficient battery capacity for decent power and range and the overall weight. Battery weight will no doubt come down but what can be done to reduce the weight of an electric motor? Copper and iron are the two main ingredients!
I can't say I'd relish the thought of riding an electric bike purely for pleasure tbh. But then I suppose don't knock it until you've tried it, maybe. I'm guessing as thumpers you probably feel the same?
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Range is always going to be the big issue - unless there is a massive increase in battery performance a bike is always going to be very limited ( That said I remember the the Harley 'Peanut' tanks of the 70's which weren't exactly touring!)
The electric TT bikes prove that the performance is there, but I can't see an electric bike having 'character' or 'Soul' in the same way that you get with some conventionally propelled bikes. .....purely a commuting option I think. :-\
If electric bikes appeal and you have very deep pockets these are 'the best 10'
https://dgit.com/best-electric-motorcycles-496/ (https://dgit.com/best-electric-motorcycles-496/)
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Unfortunately I feel that at 50, I will be one of the last generation to have the pleasure of motorcycling. The powers that be do not want motorcycles on the road at all, and are succeeding in that by gradually regulating motorcycles off the road. Just look at what's involved in getting a motorcycle licence now. There is only a trickle of younger people bothering with motorcycles at all. The government won't ban motorcycles. They don't need to, as it will just wither away. Discuss ;)
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I could fancy one of these
http://www.zeromotorcycles.com/eu/
There is an Australian chap on HUBB who has one. Charges on solar at home and the mains at work. Says its a good ride.
Issues are price, how you deal with worn out batteries (I hate the idea of renting as they'll claim you caused the wear and keep your money) and generating capacity. They are already saying that they'll turn off the car chargers when the grid can't keep up. Imagine getting up on Monday morning after say a big football match or the X Factor final and finding yourself stranded for hours. Or, will everyone buy Honda generators to beat the system!
Andy
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Unfortunately I feel that at 50, I will be one of the last generation to have the pleasure of motorcycling. The powers that be do not want motorcycles on the road at all, and are succeeding in that by gradually regulating motorcycles off the road. Just look at what's involved in getting a motorcycle licence now. There is only a trickle of younger people bothering with motorcycles at all. The government won't ban motorcycles. They don't need to, as it will just wither away. Discuss ;)
Sadly, I think you've hit the nail on the head :(
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Yes I would generally have to agree with Tim and Steve on the face of it, now at the age of 54 I genuinely feel very lucky to have come up thro biking the years I have. However I would also go with wot big bro (prop) says in "don't knock it till you've tried it". When one sees the Likes of the mugen at the TT it's pretty clear to see that the performance isn't really going to be the issue, performance +range maybe but I personally think I'd need a bike to have some "soul" to it. But hey like we say you just never know until you try one.
Cheers..Michael
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Apologies Prop, by the way. I didn't mean to hijack your thread. I have an open mind towards the electric bikes. I think it is inevitable, but can really only see them as congestion busters in large cities. I don't think governments will allow us to ride them on the open road for fun :(
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Hey!!.... back to my first love ... a combination!.... design the batteries flat, so they lie underneath the sidecar. hey presto ..
AND... no need to ballast the chair when unoccupied ... (as i used to, to stop me flying the 3rd wheel on lefthanders ) :D
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And, so long as they are made in a Slavic state, and are unreliable...... :D
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Apologies Prop, by the way. I didn't mean to hijack your thread. I have an open mind towards the electric bikes. I think it is inevitable, but can really only see them as congestion busters in large cities. I don't think governments will allow us to ride them on the open road for fun :(
Not at all.
Traffic congestion. Another brain teaser!
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I could fancy one of these
http://www.zeromotorcycles.com/eu/
There is an Australian chap on HUBB who has one. Charges on solar at home and the mains at work. Says its a good ride.
Issues are price, how you deal with worn out batteries (I hate the idea of renting as they'll claim you caused the wear and keep your money) and generating capacity. They are already saying that they'll turn off the car chargers when the grid can't keep up. Imagine getting up on Monday morning after say a big football match or the X Factor final and finding yourself stranded for hours. Or, will everyone buy Honda generators to beat the system!
Andy
They're suggesting that vehicle chargers will be a kind of stored energy bank. Perfect for smoothing out transients, when taken as a whole "system".
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I'm open minded about electric bikes, but the range and re-charge times are obviously the current( ::)) issues.
I do have issues with the green credentials though (and I think this also applies to the latest generation of IC powered vehicles that are packed full of complex electronics too). The biggest environmental impact any vehicle has is when it is manufactured. In fact the rule of thumb that I've seen is that the environmental impact of manufacturing is equal to the environmental impact of running the vehicle on fossil fuels for ten years. therefore to be truly green you want the vehicle to stay on the roads for as long as possible. Something like a small light IC engined fibreglass bodied car, with conventional ignition systems, economic to run and simple to fix would seem to fit the bill. Cheap and easy to manufacture, but nobody does.
Current IC vehicles (cars in particular) seem to be highly susceptible to being scrapped quite early in their potential lives due to problems with the complex electrical systems making them uneconomic to repair. Regardless of the lower emmissions etc, this hardly makes them green. The same of course applies to electric vehicles, but there you also have to add in the environmental impact of making and disposing of the batteries and generating the electricity at some sort of power station. The green thing is a big con IMHO.
I'd like a go on one of the Zero electric bikes though ;).
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I'm open minded about electric bikes, but the range and re-charge times are obviously the current( ::)) issues.
I do have issues with the green credentials though (and I think this also applies to the latest generation of IC powered vehicles that are packed full of complex electronics too). The biggest environmental impact any vehicle has is when it is manufactured. In fact the rule of thumb that I've seen is that the environmental impact of manufacturing is equal to the environmental impact of running the vehicle on fossil fuels for ten years. therefore to be truly green you want the vehicle to stay on the roads for as long as possible. Something like a small light IC engined fibreglass bodied car, with conventional ignition systems, economic to run and simple to fix would seem to fit the bill. Cheap and easy to manufacture, but nobody does.
Current IC vehicles (cars in particular) seem to be highly susceptible to being scrapped quite early in their potential lives due to problems with the complex electrical systems making them uneconomic to repair. Regardless of the lower emmissions etc, this hardly makes them green. The same of course applies to electric vehicles, but there you also have to add in the environmental impact of making and disposing of the batteries and generating the electricity at some sort of power station. The green thing is a big con IMHO.
I'd like a go on one of the Zero electric bikes though ;).
I look at it this way. Electric vehicles are only as green as the power generation source anyhow. The term "green" is somewhat confusing in itself, but if we concentrate on co2 emissions then if the entire grid was supplied by renewables there would be no co2 emitted either in driving electric vehicles or in making them. So the effort in cutting co2 needs to start at the point of generation.
When it comes to cutting what I see as actual pollution, particulates and nox etc then that's a connected issue but separate from the co2 issue.
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Plus you're going to have to emit co2 to make machines that don't emit co2! The process gotta start somewhere tho.
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Plus you're going to have to emit co2 to make machines that don't emit co2! The process gotta start somewhere tho.
Yes, exactly. I'm not suggesting we should ignore pollution, either of particulates or CO2 but it just annoys me that modern hybrid / electric vehicles are sold as a 'green' transport solution, whereas the truth, as always, is far more complex than that.
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Speaking of the TT Zero bikes,here is the one that we run at work.
[attachment deleted by admin]
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Current IC vehicles (cars in particular) seem to be highly susceptible to being scrapped quite early in their potential lives due to problems with the complex electrical systems making them uneconomic to repair.
We've had this conversation befofe, you are talking to club weilding cavemen about your computer. If they blame the demon box ask them why. Last week I visited the first customer who took a particular ECU type. This unit is still in service on the exposed chassis of a commercial trailer after 14 years. The same fleet was changing an earlier type dated 2000. At 17 years old it will have done millions of miles. The average trailer ECU lasts 8 years, longer than any other component except the axle hubs or the pneumatic back up valve.
Andy
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Great thread this. Very interesting :)
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Current IC vehicles (cars in particular) seem to be highly susceptible to being scrapped quite early in their potential lives due to problems with the complex electrical systems making them uneconomic to repair.
We've had this conversation befofe, you are talking to club weilding cavemen about your computer. If they blame the demon box ask them why. Last week I visited the first customer who took a particular ECU type. This unit is still in service on the exposed chassis of a commercial trailer after 14 years. The same fleet was changing an earlier type dated 2000. At 17 years old it will have done millions of miles. The average trailer ECU lasts 8 years, longer than any other component except the axle hubs or the pneumatic back up valve.
Andy
I guess everybody's experiences will be different, but I've been forced to scrap two cars so far, both about 8 years old, and otherwise fully functional because the ECU warning light was on and nobody could tell me what was wrong. I also know somebody who bought an expensive 2nd hand Merc, only a couple of years old which kept going into limp mode. He took it to 3 different Merc dealers, the 1st two diagnosed 2 completely different things and the 3rd advised him to buy a gizzmo off ebay so he could reset the ECU himself! My boss has just bought a 1 year old LandRover approved Range Rover Sport for circa 40k, and the dealers have had it more of the four months he's owned it than he has, sorting out issues with various electrical systems....
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I'll throw a curve ball in.
If the electric motor weight issue can be overcome, it does open up possibilities. Front wheel drive for example. And from there fully regenerative braking. ....?
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I'll throw a curve ball in.
If the electric motor weight issue can be overcome, it does open up possibilities. Front wheel drive for example. And from there fully regenerative braking. ....?
I think modern electric trains use regenerative braking, so the technology is already there I guess...
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Trains ..... and some buses apparently
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...and electric cars.
I read recently that Nissan have revised this aspect recently and are using the main foot pedal as down=power out and accelerate. Up=power in and decelerate.
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I take it that regenerative braking is were the braking action generates electric power? :-\
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I take it that regenerative braking is were the braking action generates electric power? :-\
Yes. The basic idea is that the more load is placed upon the generator (the motor in backdrive mode) the greater the rate of deceleration. This is one huge benefit of electric drive. The fact that a lot of the energy spent in accelerating can be recouped (reharvest is how they term it) in decelerating. As I understand it.
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Current IC vehicles (cars in particular) seem to be highly susceptible to being scrapped quite early in their potential lives due to problems with the complex electrical systems making them uneconomic to repair.
We've had this conversation befofe, you are talking to club weilding cavemen about your computer. If they blame the demon box ask them why. Last week I visited the first customer who took a particular ECU type. This unit is still in service on the exposed chassis of a commercial trailer after 14 years. The same fleet was changing an earlier type dated 2000. At 17 years old it will have done millions of miles. The average trailer ECU lasts 8 years, longer than any other component except the axle hubs or the pneumatic back up valve.
Andy
I guess everybody's experiences will be different, but I've been forced to scrap two cars so far, both about 8 years old, and otherwise fully functional because the ECU warning light was on and nobody could tell me what was wrong. I also know somebody who bought an expensive 2nd hand Merc, only a couple of years old which kept going into limp mode. He took it to 3 different Merc dealers, the 1st two diagnosed 2 completely different things and the 3rd advised him to buy a gizzmo off ebay so he could reset the ECU himself! My boss has just bought a 1 year old LandRover approved Range Rover Sport for circa 40k, and the dealers have had it more of the four months he's owned it than he has, sorting out issues with various electrical systems....
The final sentence (in bold) is not unique, I believe from speaking to many owners of these 'badges' of effluent living that these problems are 'normal' rather than 'exceptional'! ::) What nincompoop designs a vehicle that requires the body to be removed from the chassis to carry out some service and repair operations. The gearbox fails before 50,000 miles and the electrics, please themselves. :-X
Go and buy a SeriesII, at least they don't depreciate and spares are available. Jethro are you still with us? ;D
My regards, Bill
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Something like a small light IC engined fibreglass bodied car, with conventional ignition systems, economic to run and simple to fix would seem to fit the bill. Cheap and easy to manufacture, but nobody does.
Erm.... bring back the 2CV then... wonderful vehicle..... or a f/glass bodied morris 1000, ....
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You can eat a donkey after it breaks down ;)
Andy
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You can eat a donkey after it breaks down ;)
Andy
Runs on bio degradeable fuel, economical to run and easy to recycle, why did nobody think of this before? :o
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I keep thinging that an electric bike would be a perfect commuter for me. It's only 10 miles to work I can charge it there. Yuove got bike like the Zreo that put out more torque than most 1000cc inline 4s.
Then I look at the price >:(
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having given it some thaught.... i'm going for an eclectic bike ...
you know the sort.... sourced from many different ideas and places.
also it comes with your very own philosopher, who sits on the pillion and tells you what to think
pip pip
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having given it some thaught.... i'm going for an eclectic bike ...
you know the sort.... sourced from many different ideas and places.
also it comes with your very own philosopher, who sits on the pillion and tells you what to think
pip pip
Ahh......a Bitza!
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Now, I'vs been pondering 😈 , what would a Malcolm Newall, 'Quasar', with carbon fibre frame and panels and the TT Zero winning bikes power pack installed, be like for an enclosed cell, electric motorcycle? 😕 I think it would have potential.
I can hear the wheels whirring already. 😆
My regards, Bill
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Now, I'vs been pondering 😈 , what would a Malcolm Newall, 'Quasar', with carbon fibre frame and panels and the TT Zero winning bikes power pack installed, be like for an enclosed cell, electric motorcycle? 😕 I think it would have potential.
I can hear the wheels whirring already. 😆
My regards, Bill
Hi Bill
Mono tracer have had that one covered (see what I did there) for a while.
https://peraves.wordpress.com/
Cheers
Andrew
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;D thank you Andrew, NOW that will keep me amused for hours. A fellow tib and fib buster in hospital, will find it inspirational! 😊 With the state of his hands and arms as well 😨 he is going to need all the inspiration he can get. Also, was a good sprayer and powder coater as well. 😯
My regards, Bill
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Apparently passenger cars account for 12% of co2 emissions in the eu. I read this "fact" and wondered how much co2 is emitted by power generation, in the eu. Looks like 80%.
The eu are squaring up for tough pushes towards electric cars in 2021. But, assuming I've got my statistical "facts" right, can anyone else see a big snag in switching to electric cars without FIRST addressing the power generation issue? Maybe it's just me?
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Apparently passenger cars account for 12% of co2 emissions in the eu. I read this "fact" and wondered how much co2 is emitted by power generation, in the eu. Looks like 80%.
The eu are squaring up for tough pushes towards electric cars in 2021. But, assuming I've got my statistical "facts" right, can anyone else see a big snag in switching to electric cars without FIRST addressing the power generation issue? Maybe it's just me?
Nope, it's not just you Andrew. I think they're relying on a very slow switchover to electric, though even then I've seen no firm plans for boosting power generation and updating the infrastructure. Maybe its a cynical box ticking excersise and they are relying in hydrogen fuel cell technology to come to the rescue, or maybe it's all just politicians flim flam...
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Given the fashion element and high value of automotive purchases I think they've naff all chance of a phased introduction. "Roll up, Roll up, Trade your OLD, Diesel for a nice NEW electric before the trade-in value drops....."
There will be a backlash when the power cuts make a few people late for work. " Roll up, Roll up, lovely Hybrids, no need to wait for the power to come back on...."
Power stations cost money, take years and no one queues up have one in their garden.
Andy
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Why is the hydrogen cell not being pushed more, over electric? I know very little about it, but apparently existing service stations could be converted relatively easily, so the infrastructure is there already :-\
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Timbo- the hydrogen has to be manufactured, using power.
Andy- you're right, consumers are easier to goad/hoodwink/push around. Cars can be turned over relatively easily and generate a market. Plus, my appraisal of the statistics is far from accurate or complete, on reflection.
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So, is hydrogen excessively expensive to produce compared to electricity? Just asking, as I don't know. Is there an explosion risk with hydrogen power?
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The infrastructure is a dream for sellers of elven safety, risk assesments, approved parts, certificates of conformity etc. Hydrogen is the most leaky substance possible and mixed with air is rocket fuel, so some of this is justified, but its a closed shop and prices reflect this. I've sold valves where the paperwork was 70% of what was charged. The only people you can charge more are the MOD.
The process of using electricity to turn sea water into fuel and then the fuel into motion seems to add a process. Each process has losses so it should be less efficient, but I don't know for sure. If the fuel cells are easier to make, last longer and are easier to recycle it may be better. Fuel cells havd been about since the Apollo space programme, so by now shouldn't be rocket science.
I can see a mix of technology. A truck going across the USA on autopilot can do it in one go on a fuel cell or can refuel in minutes. The delivery van that goes from the DC to your house is stopped more than running so can be on batteries. A haulage company can have a fuel handling facility with trained people, you can just about trust Joe public and van drivers not to test his recharging point with their tongue .
Andy
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So, is hydrogen excessively expensive to produce compared to electricity? Just asking, as I don't know. Is there an explosion risk with hydrogen power?
I don't know about the economics of it tbh, but it seems too much of a roundabout way of getting energy into mechanical effort at the wheel(s), compared to batteries. You need to use energy to make hydrogen, store the hydrogen, release it to make electricity to power the wheels. I can see some instances where the shear size and weight of batteries are a problem, but will this issue diminish as battery technology improves? Musk unveiled a truck using batteries recently. I'm not sure of the environmental issues connected with the two approaches (battery/fuel cell).
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Nuclear fusion? Sounds very far fetched, but as it is a theoretical possibility is it, in fact, inevitable?
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Truck wise it goes hand in hand with Autonomous driving. Get rid of the cab, 90% of the wages bill and be able to work when the roads are at their clearest, range goes up, charging times are easier to plan and you have spare cash for the investment.
The retailers are ahead. All those shops no one goes to anymore are getting bigger and bigger warehouse spaces. The van that drops off the bread is starting to pick up the iron or hoover someone did as click and collect for the next store in the chain that doesn't have one. When the route is a circle of short runs not a series of runs making a star there is time to top-up charge.
Andy
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Railways dedicated for freight. Electrified lines. Freight only moves off peak or when renewable sources are over producing. Move slow. Can't have "next day" and save the planet.
Not till nuclear fusion come's on anyhow. 😆
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Sussed, "Thumper Club" takes over Cabinet positions!😆😆
My regards, Bill
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Sussed, "Thumper Club" takes over Cabinet positions!😆😆
My regards, Bill
Ha ha. Damn right 👍
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Well I think you've all got it wrong..... barges!!! They're the eco friendly answer to ALL our problems 😁😁😁
Oh and mark my words, it won't be to long before some "think tank" 😂😂😂 charges the government a wedge of cash to tell them that's what we need to start using
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The canals are being used to solve the housing crisis, except now there aren't enough berthing places. Plan B will be to get rid of the water and let people live in iron and wood semi-movable structures with limited sanitation on the resulting Super High Access New Town Innovations (S.H.A.N.T.I). ::)
Andy
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AndyM- chortle.
Is this a good time to mention hyperloop or not?
Light the blue touch paper....
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Aye Michael, its that horse poo syndrome again. Used to work on a horse barge and my sister was married to a lengthsman, with a pair. Hard graft for little money, but very satisfying if your health allows.
AndyM, highlights the problem only too well, the basic requirements of a waterproof, warm and sanitary home for ALL, regardles of race, creed or colour. It is a house or home, NOT AN "INVESTMENT"!😠
As for "Hyperloop", Mr Branson's splurge of cash may have been better spent on building hurricane resistant accommodation, on his island and for others in the region. Speaking of which our friends in Ireland and up the west coast may need similar aid after Tuesday 17th, coming! 😕
My regards, Bill