VTTW Board Index

A Harley just shouldn't sound like that. :dunno:

http://www.cnet.com/products/project-livewire/

A quiet bike is a more dangerous bike.  Let 'em know you're coming.

Until they can get more range out of a charge, it is just gonna be a novelty. They had one last weekend at Black Hills Harley Davidson. Kinda cool sound, cross between jet engine and something like the batmobile. Not near enough range to make a nice cruise through the Black Hills. Just a couple of months til the Sturgis Rallye.

The way I see it, for EVs (cars OR bikes) to go mainstream and not just be expensive commuter toys, they're going to have to solve three problems:

1. Number of public charging stations.  It's great to be able to charge your car in your own home, but if you want to take it on a longer trip, charging stations need to be at least as common as gas stations, and even more so until they get their range up to that of a gas powered vehicle.  This is probably a chicken/egg problem: people won't buy an EV unless there are more places to charge, but no one will build a large network of charging stations until there are more EVs on the road.

2.  As you said, range.  This is an area that is improving.  You still won't go 400-500 miles at a time like you can on gasoline, but the Tesla S can go about 300 miles at 60 MPH (or less if you go faster).  That would be acceptable, but...

3. It takes too long to charge.  If I had a Tesla and I wanted to take it to Florida, for example, I'd get about to Macon GA, and then, assuming I could find a charging station (see #1), I'd have to stop for about 6 hours.  That is unacceptable.  A charge needs to take roughly as long as filling a gas tank, or EVs are never going to catch on.  And I'm no engineer and have no clue of the technology involved here- but considering it still takes 2 hours or more to charge something as small as a cellphone, I would guess this is going to be toughest problem to solve.

I have no desire for one of these things, specifically one with an HD logo. First, EVs are expensive and the HD logo would add to that price. I wouldn't mind having something cheap to tool-around here on the mountain, but it would be a scooter before an EV. Second, I quit riding bikes (motorcycles) about 30yrs ago because I got tired of people trying to kill me every day.

G

Scarlett Johannsen is going to ride one in the upcoming Avengers movie.

But I doubt we'll be seeing one on Sons Of Anarchy anytime soon. :cool:

It sounds like a souped up RC car. It has the same whine, just a lot louder because of the horsepower. All EVs car or bike need a vehicle sound to identify them. Tire whine is not enough.

Like Greggo, I gave up riding a bike on public roads when a driver stared right it my face and turned in front away. She did not care that we had the right of way. And she was turning across oncoming traffic. I lost my nerve and decided I should not be driving a motorcycle without confidence. A rider always loses if the other vehicle is 3000 lb heavier. I see way too many car drivers driving scared or inattentive every day.

Removeable batteries are an obvious solution.  The charging station keeps them charged, and you just swap.  You don't own the battery, you just lease it. 

Hey, I need to start a bidness.   :naughty:

Not practical at this point.  Have you seen EV batteries?  They are either huge, or there are lots of them (like 10-20).  Depending on capacity, they can weigh half a ton or more.  They usually constitute over half the weight of the entire car.

Well since i do have an engineering degree I have studied this problem in detail.  The obvious solution is to build a vehicle with an onboard charging mechanism.  One way to do that is to use the wheels as a charging mechanism, converting the mechanical motion of the wheels into a charging part of the car, but as someone pointed out many moons ago TANSTAAFL  (There Aint No Thing As A Free Lunch) if you are using some of the mechanical motion of the wheels to charge the batteries then you are obviously losing some percentage of the charge in the batteries as a redundancy.  SO therefore sometimes you are going to have to recharge at a "filling station" and there just aint no way to speed up the laws of physics in regards to reinvigorating a battery.

Now the most viable option besides a gasoline powered vehicle is Hydrogen Powered Vehicles.  Either you can stop at a hydrogen refeuling station or you can put some water in a tank and provide hydrogen via a disolution of the H2O molecular bond.  Yeah that takes energy to accomplish as well so again your hard up against the problem of long term viability without the infrastructure in place.   The only way that you will ever get the internal combustion engine out of American cars is to create a power plant that runs as efficient when considering the cost per mile and is viable to be filling up at a station in 5 to 7 minutes and is capable of giving you a 500-700 mile range.  Those are the facts of life.....

 

I've wondered if "battery stations" are a possibility.  Where you have the same battery type that vehicles drive up and swap out.  Obviously, size of battery is an issue there.

The biggest drawback is a "standard" battery type, plpus changing out a battery would need ot be plug and play type of install since some people would end up dead if they are not careful changing out a battery.  And while weight is just one issue with a battery, there are other issues such as polarity and putting in the correct number as well....so the bigges thing is a "standard" battery and then making sure everyone understands how to change them out....and that is a bigger challenge than establishing a battery station.....

Now if we could figure out how to beam electrical energy through the air so that the batteries are recharged by these "through the air recharging waves" I would say it is a viable alternative.  Until that is discovered Solar Power cars are just as viable.