A total;y conventional E-bike and built right down the road from me. Got to go snag a ride.

[Motosportz]

I have been following this for years as this guy lives close. Seems to know his stuff. Has a funny story about the first time he got it going and cracked the throttle unleashing 60hp instantly and laying down a long black strip on the garage floor.

http://www.motoblog.it/post/33929/e...rsione-elettrica-della-honda-crf250r#continua

 

[Ruffus]

That suckers cool. Any idea how long a charge would last at that pace??

I take it there's no gear box?

 

[organ donor]

Endurance and weight?????

 

[rasputin]

according to their website, the battery will have 2.4 kilowatt-hours, of which 80%, or 1.9 kilowatt-hours, can be used.

if you want to use the maximum power of 48 kilowatts (65 hp), then you can go for 1.9 kilowatt-hours / 48 kilowatts = 0.04 hours = 2.4 minutes

in order to ride for 1 hour, you can use an average power of 1.9 kilowatt-hours / 1 hour = 1.9 kilowatts (more or less identical to a yamaha pw50).
1.9 kilowatts will take a 200 kg weight (115 kg dirtbike plus 85 kg rider) at 40 mph constantly, on pavement, on flat streets.

so i have some doubts about the specified "40-110 minutes" range of that bike.

r

 

[organ donor]

To be honest ... it´s not viable.

 

[ray_ray]

How about this one? It is built in Portland ..

http://www.gizmag.com/ryno-one-wheeled-scooter/20385/

 

[Motosportz]

To be honest ... it´s not viable.

I don't think any of the E-bikes really are. maybe the street ones for short commuting.

 

[ray_ray]

http://www.gizmag.com/motorcycles/

There is a pretty big showing here ... Scroll through the pages of that link ... This may be killing the 2t engine indirectly also ... Who wants to invest in a past technology? Who wants to bet on the future? One issue here is if all this works with a battery as engine, no one can make a buck off parts or maintenance ... Bad business model really and we know companies make a product to make money.

You gotta luv the PR shot of the Evolve scooters ....

I also read an article a few days back where another battery is on the way ... It is cheap, small, easy to re-charge and powerful ...

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/flow-batteries-0606.html

 

[Slowpoke]

To be honest ... it´s not viable.

Maybe not in its exact current configuration & you guys shouldn't try to assess viability with the math you're using as you don't have all the necessary information. I bet they can easily get 30-40 minutes, or more of typical riding out of that bike the way it's currently set up. Good enough for playing on an mx track. Perfect if you have an extra battery. Most average MX guys only ride an hour or two at a session anyways. My TXC310 only has a range of about probably 40 minutes at WOT under full load, yet I can usually get between 3-5 hours out of a tank the way it's ridden in real life.
Ebikes are here to stay whether anyone likes it or not. Ranges are now approaching acceptable levels for many users such as MX and shorter trail rides. By 2015, ranges will have doubled from where they are currently & costs will have dropped, which will satisfy 50-75% of the market. By 2018, costs will have dropped further still and ranges will be long enough to satisfy 90-95% of users. By that time over half of new bikes sold will be electric. The adoption curve will be like the 90's for computers- slow in 90-91, geometrically ramping up like wildfire by the end of the decade.- unless something even better comes along.........

I have a 2012 GG250 on order to compliment my TXC. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the last gas engined bike I buy......I wouldn't be buying another bike til about 2014-15 & it could very well be an e-bike then.

 

[rasputin]

This may be killing the 2t engine indirectly also ...

i rather guess that electric engines will replace the four-stroke engine. most cars and motorcycles will be electric, but there will always be applications where a combustion engine is necessary (forestry machines, drones). and an injected two-stroke engine does the best job there.

you guys shouldn't try to assess viability with the math you're using as you don't have all the necessary information.

well, we have the total energy of 2.4 kilowatt-hours. dividing energy by time gives the power number, dividing energy by power gives the time number. only chuck norris can beat physics.

• according to the german wikipedia website, 95 octane gasoline has a fuel value of 12 killowatt-hours-per-kilogramm, and a density of 0.74 kilogramms-per-liter.
• so 1 liter of gasoline weighs 740 gramms and contains 16.2 kilowatt-hours.
• the "average" efficiency of an otto-engine throughout his rev range is ~30%, the effieciency of the drivetrain (from the crankshaft to the inertia dyno roller) is ~85%.
• so including all these losses, from 1 liter of gasoline, you have a "useable energy" of 16.2 killowatt-hours * 0.30 * 0.85 = 4.1 killowatt-hours.
• the "average" efficiency of an electric engine throughout his rev range is ~95%, the effieciency of this drivetrain (from the motor shaft shaft to the inertia dyno roller) is ~92% (no clutch, no gearbox).
• so, 1 liter of 95 octance gasoline is equivalent to 4.1 kilowatt-hours / 0.95 / 0.92 = 4.7 killowatt-hours of electric energy.

so the 2.4 kilowatt-hours of battery are equivalent to 2.4 / 4.7 = 0.5 liters of gasoline. and the 70 kilowatt-hours in the tesla roadster are equivalent to ~15 liters of gasoline.

battery weight and volume

the usual in "18650"-type lithium (as used in the tesla roadster) and lithium-manganese batteries

• weigh 4 kilogramms-per-kilowatt-hour
• have a volume of 2 liters-per-kilowatt-hour

very good lithium-iron batteries on the other hand

• weigh 7 kilogramms-per-kilowatt-hour
• have a volume of 4 liters-per-kilowatt-hour

lithium and lithium-manganese batteries offer small weight and volume, disadvantage is their relatively low potential to deliver serious power. the lithium-iron cells are the other way around: lots of power, more weight and volume.
for a serious motorcycle, i'd always choose lithium-iron cells.

this means, in order to replace 1 liter of gasoline energy with electric energy you'd need to pick up

• 18.8 kilogramms (25 times the gasoline weight) / 9.4 liters of lithium cells
• 32.9 kilogramms (45 times the gasoline weight) / 18.8 litres / 4230 euro of lithium-iron cells

since you can use only 80% of cells' capacity, you need to multiply these values with ~1.25 still.

battery cost

the end-consumer price of these battery cells is 900 euro-per-kilowatt-hours, for large quantitites one can expect a discount of ~30 percent. i cannot tell about usa prices, i guess it's about 1000 dollars-per-kilowatt-hours.
so replacing 1 liter of gasoline energy with electric energy would cost you 4700 euro (or - guess - 5640 $).

conclusion
the 8.5 -liter fuel tank of your txc310 is equivalent to a battery of 8.5 * 4.7*1.25 = 50 kilowatt-hours. in order to have the same range/autonomy of "3-5 hours of real life driving", you'd need a battery that weighs 200 kilogramms, is 100 liters large, and costs 50000 dollars. wow.
battery technology need to evolve a lot before electric vehicles are "competitive" to combustion-engined vehicles. for the moment, the "solution" is to reduce the energy capacity until it is "sufficient" for some purposes, i.e. motocross, inner city traffic.

By 2015, ranges will have doubled from where they are currently & costs will have dropped, which will satisfy 50-75% of the market. By 2018, costs will have dropped further still and ranges will be long enough to satisfy 90-95% of users. By that time over half of new bikes sold will be electric. The adoption curve will be like the 90's for computers- slow in 90-91, geometrically ramping up like wildfire by the end of the decade.- unless something even better comes along.........

i doubt that the development will be that fast.

compared to computers, electric vehicles need quite a lot more materials, especially neodymium and lithium. the demand for these materials is already going through the roof. i do not see these materials' prices decreasing anytime soon. i know manufacturers re-designing their electric motors, because the neodymium prices have tripled within a year. so the direction at the moment is defined by economical matters, not technical (r)evolution.

also, the public power grid needs to be updated. the electricity wiring in my hometown may be sufficient for the moment, but with tens of thousands of people recharging their cars' batteries everywhere, some wires might run hot. plus, the private power grid need to be updated as well.

for small two-wheelers (mopeds and scooters in the "50-125 cc" class), which is the majority of the market, the range is okay, but the price is still a problem.

taking all costs into account, one such vehicle will have an advantage over the combustion-engined counterpart after 30000 kilometres. which is more or less the lifetime of that vehicle. so the question is: "the vehicle will cost me 4600 euro ('50cc') or 6100 euro ('125cc') for 30000 kilometres. do i want to spend about 50% of that money immediately and pay the rest over the lifetime period (combustion engine), or do i spend 95% of that money immediately (electric motor)".
(i have calculated the lifetime cost of quite a few 2012 vehicles just a few weeks ago)

financially, buying a combustion-engined vehicle means a sort of "installment payment". history has taught us that we humans are thinking in the near term. plus, i have heard rumors about a worldwide economic crisis. even when the prices drop significantly it will take a good amount of persuading to "go electric".

for motorcycles, weight and volume and price are still the problems. decide for yourself how far battery technology would have to evolve until the specs are sufficient for your own riding purposes and wallet.

r

 

[Slowpoke]

You're calculations are fine for a theoretical exercise, but pretty much not applicable for the real world as you're missing valid algorithms for real world power usage rates in typical usage conditions. Develope them, & plug them into your calcs, then you might start to get sort of an idea of what kind of range you can actually get.(that's the info you're missing)
You also need to drop your gas engine efficiency levels closer to 25% or less, as FCR equipped modern 4ts aren't anywhere close to 30% efficient. 2t's even less so. In fact the real world riding efficiency is probably closer to 15% because the throttle is open and closed so much on a given section of trail. Most riders open and close the throttle 1000's of times on a given afternoon ride. Each time that happens on an FCR, a shot of raw gas is used up just to get the engine to accelerate quickly(give it snap).It makes the bike fun to ride and helps power delivery be more 2stroky but makes it much less efficient.
Ebikes don't have that issue.
I think you're also overlooking the huge torque advantage the electric motors have over gas engines.
The motors have never been the issue with these Ebikes, it has always been the batteries, but that tech is changing so fast, that storage levels have doubled in just the last 2-3 years & recent developments have indicated a further doubling or tripling in just the next few years. That puts the ranges right in the sweet spot of the acceptance curve.
They also don't have to deliver identical power levels to start replacing the gas engine, especially for the average trailrider as you only need 15-20hp for most trail conditions.

 

[fran...k.]

So is this neodymium one of those rare earths that no active mines or processing facilities are currently up and running in my country?

It would be nice if they would specify how much altitude the little bike and a 175 pound rider could gain on pavement per charge instead of just some time in minutes.

I kind of got lost on the lifetime expense computation rasputin did. Got out some electric bills and in West Virginia (coal mostly) I came out with just less than $0.09 per kilowatt hour. In Connecticut (nuclear, natural gas and import it) $0.095 for the generation and $0.06 to transmit it. That is after backing out the $5 and $16 per month respectively for the privelage to hook up your meeter. the highest grade at the pump all taxes included is about $4 per gallon (not imperial gallon). So (going off of the up front % posted above) either I miss something or the internal combustion engine is getting some pretty pricey lubricants, chains and sprockets that the electric one doesn't. There must be some places probably quite rare where in the middle of the night electicity costs like two cents a kilowatt hour and I suspect that is how a lot of the cost to re charge for advertising is arrived at.

In another way it seems to me excavators have huge counterweights, tractors get their tires filled with fluid and hang suitcase weights on the front while I understand there is more of a pinch in diesel than gasoline as you only get so much of each out of refining crude. I guess it is more emissions driven than fossil fuel management.

 

[dukkman]

Here in Queensland Australia the powers to be have a program where home owners are encouraged to install Solar panels [ 1.2kw is the norm ] and the government pays a percentage of the installation.
Later they call the power generated "income" and tax the owner but that's another twist to the story.
An unforseen problem has arisen where the power grid cannot handle any more installations and applicants are now being asked to help pay for upgrades to the grid.
Not good.
If we here were to all buy lekky cars n bikes then the grid would collapse.

As a matter of interest.
$0.21 per KWH is about the norm here with coal fired power.
$27.35 meter reading fee.

 

[ray_ray]

i rather guess that electric engines will replace the four-stroke engine. most cars and motorcycles will be electric, but there will always be applications where a combustion engine is necessary (forestry machines, drones). and an injected two-stroke engine does the best job there.

Thanks for the numbers and I did not mean to imply the 4t is not going to the way side either ... Its going to the side also, same as a 2t ... I said 2t because we are all waiting for new ones like the second coming of Jesus or something ... I'm just not so sure on them arriving and staying anymore other than in their present form ... It is very hard to eradicate anything from earth ... I ride bikes with guys who have the 1st monshock design on their bikes and many bikes with a design from 30 yrs ago ... Parts? lol ... you can always make a part or substitute a part for a part ...

Many of those battery issues are addressed with the MIT ‘Cambridge crude' battery ... Of course they have new ones to deal with, primarily engineering issues ... But not the trivial ones of size, weight, recharging, and power as today ... The target of the team’s ongoing work, under a three-year ARPA-E grant awarded in September 2010, is to have, by the end of the grant period, “a fully-functioning, reduced-scale prototype system,” Chiang says, ready to be engineered for production as a replacement for existing electric-car batteries.

They only have 16MIL in research money and of course many have no reason to want this technology to see anything other than a lab ... So this shift to a new energy source for mankind is not without issues on a global scale ...

Here in Queensland Australia the powers to be have a program where home owners are encouraged to install Solar panels [ 1.2kw is the norm ] and the government pays a percentage of the installation.

The states did something like that as far back as the mid 70s ... taxes breaks and other ideas ... Just didn't fly and 40 yrs later we have almost the same problems ...

 

[organ donor]

The KCal cost of manufacturing a wind turbine or a solar panel cannot be retrieved in the lifetime of the product. Both need to be recycled after they have depreciated, and the environmental cost of dismantling and recycling the debris will definitely exceed the amount of energy produced during their lifetime. Adding to the expense of renewable energy, the power grid will have to be adapted and expanded and a method of storing non-peak electricity has still not been found. Half baked carbon neutral theories are having a crippling effect on our economies, leading to unemployment and waste of scarce resources . Even if politicians are fool enough to believe them and unprincipled enough to put them into practice, no one can expect me to purchase an electric bike that is approximately twice as expensive, has an endurance measured in minutes and cannot be re-charged when necessary.

 

[ray_ray]

The KCal cost of manufacturing a wind turbine or a solar panel cannot be retrieved in the lifetime of the product. Both need to be recycled after they have depreciated, and the environmental cost of dismantling and recycling the debris will definitely exceed the amount of energy produced during their lifetime. Adding to the expense of renewable energy, the power grid will have to be adapted and expanded and a method of storing non-peak electricity has still not been found. Half baked carbon neutral theories are having a crippling effect on our economies, leading to unemployment and waste of scarce resources . Even if politicians are fool enough to believe them and unprincipled enough to put them into practice, no one can expect me to purchase an electric bike that is approximately twice as expensive, has an endurance measured in minutes and cannot be re-charged when necessary.

It's so oblivious that America can't wipe it's own butt now ... Why not you ask?

I'm with the MIT guys .... we need a better battery ... They'll deliver ... Their present design will scale out to the grid size also ... Sorry, no new AA batteries ...

 

[Slowpoke]

One more thing I forgot to add to my post #11 above, Ebikes have the real potential for regenerative braking, which will extend range significantly.
Also, in Rasputins post he's using 30000kms as a lifetime factor. No performance 2 or 4t dirtbike will get anywhere near that life without significant $$$ in numerous rebuild costs, not to mention massive ongoing maintenance costs, which the ebikes won't share. A few lower performance bikes such as the DRZ and a few others can get that life, but the 30000km is certainly not the norm for dirtbikes, 5-15,000km would be a much more appropriate #.

The overall technology for Ebikes is by no means perfect, but it's coming & getting better all the time & the landscape of dirtbikes will look quite a bit different 6-8 years from now.

 

[rasputin]

You're calculations are fine for a theoretical exercise, but pretty much not applicable for the real world as you're missing valid algorithms for real world power usage rates in typical usage conditions. Develope them, & plug them into your calcs

i did that, in fact, by calculating from the total energy. by putting electric energy into a comparison with "fuel energy", one can get an impression about the energy that is available.
if you have a certain amount of energy, you can waste it within 1 minute, or you can cruise for one hour.

You also need to drop your gas engine efficiency levels closer to 25% or less, as FCR equipped modern 4ts aren't anywhere close to 30% efficient. 2t's even less so.

injected engines are that efficient. it doesn't make sense to compare "yesterdays four-stroke technology" with "tomorrows ev technology". please consider that on the other side i have also stated a "slightly optimistic" 95% efficiency for the electric motor. current motorcycle motors (i.e. agni 119) have a 90% maximum, so the "average" would be around 85%.

anyway, calculating with 20% for the engine (i.e. carburetted two-stroke) and 85% for the motor, the "comparison rate" is 3.5 kilowatt-hours of battery for 1 liter of gasoline.

• this means that the 2.4 kilowatt-hours of the "topic bike" are equivalent to 0.7 liters of gasoline.
• this means that the "txc310 replacement battery" would have a 3.5 * 8.5 *1.25 = 37.2 kilowatt-hours, 149 kilogramms, 74 liters, 37200 euro.
• consider a "direct electrical replacement" for your txc310: same weight, same range. let's say the txc310 engine (including exhaust and airbox) weighs around 45 kilogramms, fuel plus fuel tank weigh another plus 10 kilogramms. let's say the motor plus controller weigh 20 kilogramms. then the battery weight has to go down to 35 kilogramms, which means the weight has to go down by 75%. quite a challenge for battery development. now imagine using a "long-range fuel tank with 20 litres"..

in order to make these numbers "applicable for the real world":

• the 8.5 liters in your fuel tank will now result in "useable energy" of 23.4 kilowatt-hours. if this energy will be sufficient for "5 hours of trailriding", then you use an average power of 23.4 / 5 = 4.7 kilowatts (if you speed up and wastethis energy within "3 hours of trailriding", then you use an average power of 23.4 / 3 = 7.8 kilowatts).
• so calculating your "trailriding range" for the 2.4 kilowatt-hours battery, of which you can use 1.9 kilowatt-hours, means a 1.9 / 4.7 = 0.40 hours = 24 minutes

Ebikes have the real potential for regenerative braking, which will extend range significantly.

regenerative braking is currently said to extend range by 10-15 per cent. on high-power ebikes, however, regenerative braking is hardly used, because the batteries need periods of "low-load" to not overheat.

Also, in Rasputins post he's using 30000kms as a lifetime factor. No performance 2 or 4t dirtbike will get anywhere near that life

the lifetime calculations were related to "50-125 cc" scooters/mopeds, which is the majority of worldwide two-wheeler market. if you want to "electrify the planet", dirtbikes do not really matter.

The overall technology for Ebikes is by no means perfect, but it's coming & getting better all the time & the landscape of dirtbikes will look quite a bit different 6-8 years from now.

i totally agree. i am not arguing against ebikes, but i fill the "hype" with realistic numbers.

i have seen so much "misleading propaganda"... i have seen motor gurus propose the use of car tyres on motorcycles, because this would "reduce the rolling drag by 66%, cost only half the price, and probably last much longer, too". this implies that all motorcycle engineers as well as motorcycle riders worldwide are stupid, because they use motorcycle tyres on motorcycles. i could continue with firswt-hand stories for a few pages...

r

 

[Slowpoke]

i did that, in fact, by calculating from the total energy.

Umm, no you didn't. These have to be developed from real world usage stats. To get them you would have to gather data from several bikes and riders over an extended period, then develop the algorithm.

Yes, you have total energy, but that's really all you have. Most of the rest is really just guesswork.

Add in regenerative braking capacity(potential).
Again your numbers are fine for theoretical fun, but the real world stats of the bikes on the market have shown much longer ranges. Also, the 2.4 kilowatts on this particular example is the factor that will absolutely improve, as mentioned before, batteries are improving rapidly & costs are dropping.
Also, in the real world, I rarely use all the WOT HP my TXC can produce & often am using RPM to get torque- something the ebikes have from 0 RPM. You haven't factored that into your calcs either.
The engineers at KTM know all this or they wouldn't have spent several million bringing the new Freeride to the market.
Like I said you don't have enough info to truly develope real world range estimates.

 

[rasputin]

Umm, no you didn't. These have to be developed from real world usage stats. To get them you would have to gather data from several bikes and riders over an extended period, then develop the algorithm.

Yes, you have total energy, but that's really all you have. Most of the rest is really just guesswork.

you mean that i need to log data of how much power is used in each moment of 5 hours of riding, in order to calculate total energy, but that starting from total energy itself is wrong???

if i emptied a case of beer, i know that i drank 20 bottles. i can surely tell that, even without knowing that i drank two bottles of beer per hour, for 10 hours.

a whopper has 670 kcal of energy, no matter how fast or slow you eat it.

r