Energy, Global Warming, and Electric Bicycles (Energy Flow Analysis)

[flecc]

Good to see the Vectrix may yet live again Barry.

I very much agree with you about the attachent to cars that the population have, and we all hate public transport, but the infrastructure difficulties for an all electric independent transport future presents governments with an opportunity to say it's impossible.

My feeing is that they probably won't miss that opportunity to avoid repeating many of the ills that accompanied ic fast personal transportation.
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[jasono]

I don't think there's any point in continuing with old thinking about us all travelling in our own vehicles and repeating the ic engine mistake all over again, bringing with it all the attendant evils like road deaths and injuries, congestion and vehicle associated crime, to mention but a few.
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I with you on this. We don't want to simply change from x million ic engined cars to x million e cars. As a society and a species we have to change and be responsible for our actions

 

[Barry Heaven]

I have mixed feelings about public transport Flecc. My employer is the Environment Agency who, quite rightly, require that we minimise car travel for business use. As a consequence I travel by train which I now very much prefer compared to cars. I don't have to get stressed driving and I can do things on the train which I can't do in a car, such as reading.

However my situation, tickets being paid for by my employer and being a walking distance to a train station, makes it very easy for me. It is another story if you have to pay the outrageous prices that train companies can seem to demand with impunity and/or if you are not served by a convenient train station. It is a bizarre situation where it is often cheaper to drive, particularly if there is more then one person in a car.

 

[Mussels]

I have mixed feelings about public transport Flecc. My employer is the Environment Agency who, quite rightly, require that we minimise car travel for business use. As a consequence I travel by train which I now very much prefer compared to cars. I don't have to get stressed driving and I can do things on the train which I can't do in a car, such as reading.

However my situation, tickets being paid for by my employer and being a walking distance to a train station, makes it very easy for me. It is another story if you have to pay the outrageous prices that train companies can seem to demand with impunity and/or if you are not served by a convenient train station. It is a bizarre situation where it is often cheaper to drive, particularly if there is more then one person in a car.

You are fortunate to have an unstressful train journey, mine is like being in an overcrowded cattle truck except cattle have legal minimum standards to make them comfortable. Very little chance of being able to read on my train and often I am thankful when a slight draft comes my way with fresh air. At least the very high prices makes commuting on an expensive bike cost effective, silver linings and all that.

 

[flecc]

Barry and Mussels, I agree that the present public transport in the UK is totally unacceptable as a solution. That's one reason why I said earlier that the future electric world will be almost unrecognisable from today's one.

In a world without independent fast personal transport for all journeys, the public transport infrastructure will have to be better to the point of being unrecognisable. I'm sure that can happen simply because the vast resources that humanity at present puts into personal transport will be available for investment into public transport.

Britain is ideally placed to achieve this first, a small country geographically with 86% of the population concentrated in urban centres and only 2.5% truly living very remotely. All that's needed is the imagination to recognise the possibility and the will to capitalise on that, using our undoubted national design skills to solve the problems.
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[Barnowl]

Good thread. Reminds me of the government campaign on the telly for us all to do 5 miles less per week in our cars. How easy is that for e-bike owners and cyclists.

I haven't seen an electric or hybrid car yet I'd even consider buying. Best options, I see, are bikes for most local travel with economical petrol IC for distance and diesel for serious high milers. I agree public transport is good if you're lucky enough for it to be practical and tolerable.

PS: Renewable petrol. Any views on Petrol from Algae. There is no ‘food vs. fuel’ tradeoff. Its basic requirements are CO2, sun, and water. "Algae can flourish in non-arable land or in dirty water, and when it does flourish, its potential oil yield per acre is unmatched by any other terrestrial feedstock."

 

[Barry Heaven]

I think it's early days to judge if algae biofuels will be economically viable. I agree that it is much better than competing with food based crops. A good summary is at Algae fuel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[fishingpaul]

The electric car has been around for donkeys years,trouble is there has been little progress made in all of those years,imagine leaving the house in the morning and realising you have forgotten to charge the battery,how are you going to get home,its not like you can take it on the train or pedal it.

 

[Sir_Bob]

howdie

my friend had a spectrum electric vehicle in the 1983 and said he was like the first person to do it.

if everybody use this then there will be no pollution in the world and my asthma would be better. i spend 12 hours in waiting hospital before i get seen firs.

thx

Bob

 

[lemmy]

The electric car has been around for donkeys years,trouble is there has been little progress made in all of those years,imagine leaving the house in the morning and realising you have forgotten to charge the battery,how are you going to get home,its not like you can take it on the train or pedal it.

One of the reasons I bought an electric bike was to transport me around central London and the suburbs for my photography. I looked at electric scooters but the range and battery charging time was the deal breaker.

The e-bike means I can still get home if I need to go further than planned, albeit tired and possibly unhappy.

If we could standardize on battery fittings for each type of vehicle as, for example domestic gas cylinder fittings are standard, then we could operate in a similar way. Pay a deposit on the first battery then drop by a charge facility and swap as necessary. The whole thing can be 24 hours and automated as gas cylinder swapping is in France. Drop off your flat battery and pick up a charged one for a standard fee. If home is within range then charge it yourself, of course.

I can see this happening on the continent but I cannot see it happening in the UK, because as with city bike hire facilities, trams and high speed trains, as a nation we seem fundamentally opposed to new ideas and investment in the future.

Incidentally, my Peugeot 207 diesel transported 5 adults and their luggage from London to Sancerre in France at an average mpg of 61.5 return this year. I wonder whether any electric or hybrid car could better this in terms of efficiency. The trip computer was 1.5mpg optimistic compared to brim to brim measurements.

 

[emissions-free]

If we could standardize on battery fittings for each type of vehicle as, for example domestic gas cylinder fittings are standard, then we could operate in a similar way. Pay a deposit on the first battery then drop by a charge facility and swap as necessary. The whole thing can be 24 hours and automated as gas cylinder swapping is in France. Drop off your flat battery and pick up a charged one for a standard fee. If home is within range then charge it yourself, of course.

I can see this happening on the continent but I cannot see it happening in the UK, because as with city bike hire facilities, trams and high speed trains, as a nation we seem fundamentally opposed to new ideas and investment in the future.

I can't really see this happening for many reasons, although I agree it would make sense in a lot of ways:
- technology is moving so fast that it would be bad to stick with a standard type battery as it would quickly become obsolete.
- I could never see the various manufacturers sticking to a standard battery type as innovation is what can give them the competitive edge.
- I feel having to stick to limitations of the battery would stifle development of the e bike, such as innovative battery locations, packaging etc.
- I don't think people would like to be leasing batteries.

However technology can mean that interchangeable batteries are not required. If you can have a fast charger which is both small and lightweigh, there is no longer any requirement to swap batteries. The battery technology is already there, but not sure there is a small and light charger that will deliver the current required. Maybe they could have a smart charger station that could read a card that has your battery cherging requirements and follow that. It's all very possible with present technology IMO

Unfortunately most people everywhere like to keep the status quo. It's safer and easier than change. There's also lots of big profit driven organisations that will do everything in their power to continue maximising their profits. So it's not so easy to make worthwhile changes

 

[Barry Heaven]

You are fortunate to have an unstressful train journey, mine is like being in an overcrowded cattle truck except cattle have legal minimum standards to make them comfortable. Very little chance of being able to read on my train and often I am thankful when a slight draft comes my way with fresh air. At least the very high prices makes commuting on an expensive bike cost effective, silver linings and all that.

Not always Mussels! It's rarely like that old train commercial by Virgin or someone similar where the passengers were depicted as genteel relaxed characters putting their feet up and curled up with a good book whilst a glorious pastoral scene unfolded out of the window. The Redditch to Birmingham early train is more like your description. But even when it is like that I prefer it to driving nowadays.

What does make me pine for the car is those few occasions when they stop the train several stops too early with an explanation of either rails having buckled in the heat or leaves, for some reason, managing to halt a 300 ton train etc. Typically they also haven't organised a bus service to take the stranded passengers onwards

 

[Straylight]

- technology is moving so fast that it would be bad to stick with a standard type battery as it would quickly become obsolete.

Really? It seems depressingly slow to me, yes we hear about new developments all the time, but there's hardly a 'moore's Law' in terms of bringing the new innovations to market. As e-bikes seem to be somewhat standardised with regard to voltage mainly being a choice between 24 & 36v, then as long as the new batteries comming on stream conform to these standards, I don't see a problem with regard to natural replacement.

- I could never see the various manufacturers sticking to a standard battery type as innovation is what can give them the competitive edge.

The innovation, or rather the upshot of it, seems to me to be mainly in the areas of energy density & discharge rate, and these could easily evolve within a regulated set of standards. In fact wouldn't these give the companies involved a level playing field in which to compete? Along with a set level for production quality.

- I feel having to stick to limitations of the battery would stifle development of the e bike, such as innovative battery locations, packaging etc.

The innovation would come from designing your package around a standard powerpack. This hasn't stopped say the car industry comming up with all sorts of variations built around a fairly common transmission system.

- I don't think people would like to be leasing batteries.

Personally I'd welcome it, as the one concern I have with regard to e-biking is the cost of buying a replacement battery, along with the fact that I'll be tied to one source for that replacement. You could say that there's always the DIY route, but this hardly makes for an attractive consumer product - particularly when trying to market the concept to the masses.

 

[emissions-free]

Really? It seems depressingly slow to me, yes we hear about new developments all the time, but there's hardly a 'moore's Law' in terms of bringing the new innovations to market. As e-bikes seem to be somewhat standardised with regard to voltage mainly being a choice between 24 & 36v, then as long as the new batteries comming on stream conform to these standards, I don't see a problem with regard to natural replacement.

The innovation, or rather the upshot of it, seems to me to be mainly in the areas of energy density & discharge rate, and these could easily evolve within a regulated set of standards. In fact wouldn't these give the companies involved a level playing field in which to compete? Along with a set level for production quality.



The innovation would come from designing your package around a standard powerpack. This hasn't stopped say the car industry comming up with all sorts of variations built around a fairly common transmission system.



Personally I'd welcome it, as the one concern I have with regard to e-biking is the cost of buying a replacement battery, along with the fact that I'll be tied to one source for that replacement. You could say that there's always the DIY route, but this hardly makes for an attractive consumer product - particularly when trying to market the concept to the masses.

I don't really disagree with most of your points but sticking to a standard battery back type would also likely dictate where it would be located as well. If all the companies fitted battery packs onto a rear carrier then it wouldn't matter what type of battery they used and connections they supplied. It would still be very straightforward to change the whole rear rack with battery and all connections. At the end of the day it's only a battery that will supply a certain voltage within limits and into a fairly well defined load as the motor power is restricted to 250W rated. If you buy an e bike with a rear rack mounted battery, there's no need to stick the manufacturer if the original fails. Even other battery locations could be made to work with an aftermarket battery by changing connector or simply gutting the original case and fitting a replacement pack inside. If e bikes become more common place, I cannot see why this sort of thing couldn't be done. It could be done now, but there isn't enough demand for the services to become a viable business..... maybe

At the end of the day, the controller takes a positive and a negative wire from the cells/BMS and the connections and cases are simply packaging and have no effect on the performance of the bike (as long as they are sufficient for the requirements). As long as th replacement battery supplies approximately the correct voltage to the controller and doesn't sag too much under load, the bike will perform just fine.

I think things have moved on a lot with batteries. It wasn't so long ago that even very big manufacturers were having major problems with batches of batteries and failures were very common. Now it seems you can get cheaper packs from the likes of Ping which seem to be living up to their claims. There are higher density batteries but you sacrifice some cycle life. It doesn't seem to take so long for the latest high tech cell technology to filter down in some form to the more run of the mill, reasonable cost products. You don't seem to hear about battery issues so much these days either, as long as the buyer doesn't think he can get a LiFePO4 from HK that could run a car for 200USD

There's a real incentive for a car to share a common drivetrain especially if both brands are owned by the same corporation. Big investment goes into the design, manufacture and tooling. E bikes are generally manufactured by smaller companies and the type supplied to Europe are still a very small player when compared to say the Chinese market. Putting a battery pack together is simply a case of stringing together cells in the required package to meet the requirements, fitting the correct electronics to keep it happy and putting a nice shiny box around Manufacturers are never going to agree to some form of standardisation and to be honest by the time the beurocrats had got their acts to gether to put some guidlines together, it would likely be so far behind the times, it would be comical...

Like I said I don't diagree with some of your points, just cannot see them actually happening. Nice to have a little friendly discussion with you

 

[lemmy]

I'm in complete accord with your remarks, Straylight.

I think that there are two approaches to e-bikes at the moment, the enthusiast and the consumer. The Panasonic system seems to me to be an example of the consumer approach and many such users would welcome leased batteries.

Nothing to stop you buying one if you wish, of course.

 

[emissions-free]

Yes, but not everyone wants to spend circa £2000 on a bike with a small motor and battery. I'm sure there are lots of companies who will happily lease a battery to you for £200-£300 per year if there was demand. You could then relax in the knowledge that you'll never have a problem with a battery, whilst the enthusiast could buy a new battery every year for that price. It's like paying some exorbitant extended warranty for electronic goods. Better just take your chances and replace them when they go wrong. For sure in the long run, you'll be better off.

Connecting and diagnosing a typical e bike is no more challenging than stringing together an in car entertainment system. They're not magic and most of them have very similar and relatively interchangeable parts. If they can become a bit more common I'm sure the mystery surrounding them will dissapear and hopefully there will be businesses that can repair them at a rasonable price, as there are in other parts of the world.

Anyway, I need to get some sleep, so I'll have to bow out of this discussion for now

 

[Straylight]

Well, being something of a realist, I can see that en route battery swapping stations for e-bikes are a far off fantasy, and that a leasing scheme would only be of use for comitted regular users.

I do believe though, that Lemmy has a point, and think that in the long run, if there's any chance of making this form of transport popular within the mainstream, that the enthusiast image will become harmful. This is why I was wondering in this and another thread some time ago, wether the setting of some standards in the industry, even with regard to basics such as connectors and control interfaces would benefit the industry as a whole. This would allow people to mix and match controllers, motors, throttles etc. and make the whole thing more inviting at the entry level.

 

[Bandit]

Well, being something of a realist, I can see that en route battery swapping stations for e-bikes are a far off fantasy, and that a leasing scheme would only be of use for comitted regular users.

It's evidently how the Nissan/Renault electric cars are going to work, so there must be something in the idea. I guess what might be needed to turn the fantasy into reality are much better battery management systems (with data storage etc) so that the swap retailers would know when to "retire" a battery at the end of its lifespan. To maintain consumer satisfaction I would also guess that the batteries would need to be kept relatively "new" so that they gave consistent performance - but that's really no different from the car hire market, where the cars need to be new(-ish). And there would be an after-market of ex-rental batteries.

 

[Barry Heaven]

It remains to be seen if battery swapping becomes a reality. Project Better Place's system looks like becoming a reality in Israel - Better Place | Israel progress. Perhaps this is an example of a necessity becoming the mother of invention as Israel desperately want to become independent from Arab oil.

Regarding the leasing of batteries, Shai Agassi, the CEO of Project Better Place, has made the point that with EVs the battery is the main cost whilst electricity cost is relatively modest. He compares this with petrol engined car owners being expected to buy all of the fuel the car will use in its lifetime in one go at the start. Looked at that way battery leasing doesn't look so odd. This principle is the same with us pedelec riders. The cost of the battery only makes sense when it is averaged out over the long haul whilst the cost of each recharge is hardly worth worrying about.

 

[Barnowl]

I still don't get the electric car thing. Leasing batteries or not.
It makes much more sense, for my bank balance and the environment, to keep my money in my pocket, drive a smaller car, change it less often while driving much less, or even not at all.
Also most of us could drive more slowly, reduce unecessary braking through anticipation, not accelerating hard and avoiding short journeys with a cold engine. Don't carry unecessary weight, keep the tyre pressures correct and the engine well maintained. What a huge change that would make.
Personally I don't think battery powered electric cars are ever going to cut the mustard.

The algae looks like a good bet though. Green too..