alexk-il

What is the air pressure in your wheels? I used to experience punctures due to a low pressure in the wheels. I'm currently doing fine with 60 PSI, but most of my experience colleagues at work keep telling me I need to get all the way up to 80psi to be on the safe side.

By the way, looks like the Mayor himself is using an electric bike on throttle, which is supposed to be illegal in Europe

I was given a choice by the dealer - either to get the bike with something like a 30% discount or to pay the full price with the cycle to work scheme. It was no brainer to me.

There are two types of riders; those who have gone down, and those who will. Regardless the type of your bike, wearing a helmet is always a good idea.

I just checked the wiki: ...By hijacking this process, exogenous opioids cause inappropriate dopamine release, and lead to aberrant synaptic plasticity, which causes addiction... I'm confused, this doesn't sound good... Eh... Should I be worried?

Just keep doing that for a month or two and you will get hooked to feeling "high" after you get off the bike. I just can't get enough of it .

Priceless... And I just get out of my head that smile of the "thumb up lady" at 39 seconds...

You derestricted your bike and made a documentary video of your son illegally riding it on UK public road. I guess now he will be supporting you for the rest of his poor life

My 2C's. If you decide to go with modifying your rear hub, don't forget to check if there is enough room both for the hub and for for the 9 gear sprocket that your bike have. Great bike, by the way.

And of course, the oil barons haven't spent a penny to fight back. And UK government had not increased the taxation on the bio-fuels to make them economically inefficient for most of us, it was probably done by the bad boys as a part of the nuclear conspiracy. And the CO2 has zero effect on the greenhouse effect... And we don't need to worry, we'll die before it becomes a problem. And it is up to the next generation to admire our wisdom and to find solution if the unlikely problem of the global warming will still be there. And it is the Sun to blame, anyway... I think we need to have a beer together. Any plans to visit NI. Beer is on me Alex

DaaFallus is daa fast beast!!! It does make some noticeable noise, however is is no that bad either. Would be interesting to compare this to the video of your son riding the KTM on the same road. Thanks for sharing

Nice bikes! Since the freewheel spin test is meaningless with the crank motor, I wonder how easy is to actually ride them unassisted compared to each other (and possibly to a similar type non-electrical bike). Thanks Alex

It has nothing to do with your personal believes or the earth running out of oil. It is all about releasing huge amounts of accumulated CO2 and energy to the Earth ecosystem at higher rates than Earth is capable to naturally remove/dissipate. "To avoid a global warming of 2.1°C, it is estimated that a concentration [of CO2] of less than 450 ppm needs to be maintained if other gasses were to return to pre-industrial levels. ... At the current accelerated growth rate, exponentially extrapolating the Keeling curve, this concentration will be reached in 22 years. Even with constant concentration growth, with the current 2.2 ppm/yr, this concentration will be reached in (450-390 ppm)/(2.2 ppm/yr)=27 years." 2011 + 27 = 2038 which is 12 years short of that nuclear fusion heaven, which in turn is unlikely be deployed worldwide as the main energy source. This would be similar to the following claim - Don't worry about possible nuclear terrorism in 2050. Hiroshima's history teaches us that the human cleverness will always come through and make it up for the survivors. Oh, yeah, tell this to your kids...

OK, I give up. I'll stop playing with the numbers and will get back to the main idea which triggered this arguing. As a result of the efficient energy transmission in electrical cars, all fossils accumulated over billion years will not be burned out over a period of 200 years period as I claimed. The fossils will be burned out in a 230 years, all the sun energy and accumulated in fossils over billion years will be released with a nice load of CO2 at a slower rate and this is what is going to give our planet another 30 years before the global warming and pollution will make the planet unfit for living. OK, ok, the electrical motors will be even more efficient in the future. I agree to add another 20 years to the total of 250 years... The batteries will be lighter? They will use kryptonium to reduce the friction? Great, can we close the deal on 265 years? 266? 267? Congratulations, my friend, you've won. P.S. By the way, this 200 year fossil burning period has started back in the end of the 19th century, so some of us may live long enough to see the results of these fossil burning adventures

Trex, Nice theory, however it is totally irrelevant: 1. Most of the fossil burning power plants today are Coal/Gaz generators. Replacing engines in cars is not going to make more efficient use of energy from that point of view. However electric cars is a nice step towards the world with no more oil left 2. I'm glad you mentioned the Carnot theorem. It is good to refresh my knowledge of thermodynamics. Anyway, the T(Hot stream) is the flame temperature of burning fuel. Surprisingly, in high-pressure Diesel engines, the adiabatic flame temperature may be higher than in less-pressurized generators, so I am afraid this inevitably means that diesel generators are at least equally efficient (if not more) than simple oil burners. Sorry, your formula doesn't support your claim. 3. Diesel + Electric motor is a hybrid solution, which is, as I mentioned in one of my previous posts, more reasonable than a pure electric car mostly due to power regeneration. As for vessels, submarines, and locomotives, the main drive behind the diesel-electric transmission is simplicity of the mechanical transmission, low maintenance and eliminating the need of geared transmissions. However, "Hydraulic transmissions are claimed to be somewhat more efficient than diesel-electric technology", so the direct diesel transmission technology is not that hopeless. Alex

Hi Trex, Are you trying to imply, that in case of diesel fuels 80% of energy is lost as opposite to the crude oil fired generators? Well, the petrol and jet fuel are still used in internal combustion/engines so the energy is not lost. And the rest is used for plastics/food industry which makes burning crude oil for energy even more inefficient. But they usually don't in US or Europe. Year 2004 power plants statistics for UK: gas – 39.93% (0.05% in 1990) coal – 33.08% (67.22% in 1990) nuclear – 19.26% (18.97% in 1990) renewables – 3.55% (0% in 1990) hydroelectric – 1.10% (2.55% in 1990) imports – 1.96% (3.85% in 1990) oil – 1.12% (6.82% in 1990) Whatever the efficiency of burning oil in power plants, it is so insignificant, that it can't be seriously considered for the comparison. True, if you compare pure electrical vs diesel/petrol motors performance. Not true, if you check the numbers for the whole energy flow cycle from fossil to your engine/power plant. And no, you can't burn all oil in generators, we still need jet fuels, plastics and food components. Replacing the fossil fuels with nuclear ones is still not really much better since the energy still released into the ecosystem adding its part to the global warming. The only true way to enjoy the efficiency of electrical motors, is to use the renewable energy sources, such as bio-fuels, hydro, wind plants, etc. And frankly, I don't really care where I burn the bio-fuel - in my car or in the power plant, as long as it is not fossil based.

We need to realize that fossils had actually accumulated the sun energy (through the photosynthesis process) over a few billion of years. Releasing all that accumulated energy back to planet (either by burning in engines, houses or power plants) over a period of only 200 years may not be the smartest thing to do for the human kind. Replacing combustion engines by electrical ones makes little difference (except for more efficient energy recycling) So my only claim is that unless we learn to reuse the Solar energy which is delivered to Earth anyway, all other energy releasing technologies are almost the same from the point of view of the global warming. Therefore, burning bio-fuel vs burning fossils can make all the difference. Add to this wind turbines, solar panels, etc. and we'll get a hope.

I guess you haven't look at the article I've attached to my post. Otherwise you would know that the efficiency of the electric motors is strongly affected by the load. Anyway, let's play with your numbers. Let's take the 50% efficiency of the gas generators and pretend that there are no oil/coal burning power plants. Let's assume the electrical motor in a car always runs at optimal load (no stops at traffic lights, no heavy traffic) and ALWAYS has the efficiency of 78%. Multiplying 50% by 78% gets you 0.5 * 0.78 = 39%. Let's compare the resulting overall 39% efficiency with the 40% efficiency of a diesel engine (as per your other post). Do you still think, the electrical engine is the winner? And since we also have the coal burning power plants as well, the overall efficiency may be even less favorable for electric engines.

1. Statistically, there is a significant drop of rate at which new reserves are discovered. As was true in the 1950s and '60s, but then finds increased again in the 1970s and '80s. This could be easily explained by the fact that most of US oil reserves were either depleted or already discovered. This created the strong push to discover more reserves at least convenient locations. Today, the situation repeats itself on a bigger scale. 2. Despite of the shortage of refineries, there is no rush in building new ones. Perhaps these guys know something which we don't. Waiting for governments to make up their minds. Assuming governments to be stupid and inefficient could be one explanation. Assuming, that they know something we don't is another one.

Agree, however this fact alone doesn't proof that fossil-fired power plants are more efficient. In fact, it could be the other way around. From the wikipedia: 1. "The diesel engine has the highest thermal efficiency of any regular internal or external combustion engine due to its very high compression ratio. Low-speed Diesel engines (as used in ships and other applications where overall engine weight is relatively unimportant) often have a thermal efficiency which exceeds 50 percent" 2. "Typical thermal efficiency for electrical generators in the industry is around 33% for coal and oil-fired plants" If you combine the power plant inefficiency with inevitable energy loss of electric motors (could be up to 50%), you'll get Diesels as clear winners.

There are claims that the peak was already reached around between 2004 to 2008 (if I recall the numbers correctly). Sorry, can't provide links, (neither you do with your claims), but there are quite a few supporting evidences that prove the opposite of your claims 1. Statistically, there is a significant drop of rate at which new reserves are discovered. 2. Despite of the shortage of refineries, there is no rush in building new ones. Perhaps these guys know something which we don't. 3. I've heard Putin's speech when he declared that Russia can no longer base its long term financial future on oil export and Russia needs urgently to start industrial and technological reforms

I think the idea of saving the world with electric cars is oversimplified. It is based on a perception that using electricity in the cars does not require burning fossils, which of course is wrong. Most of the electrical plants today still burn fossils to make the electricity that pushes electric cars. The energy conservation law implies that approximately the same amount of fossils per mile is required to be burned either in the car or in the electric plant (plus-minus difference in nominal efficiency of engines). Therefore the only effect of burning fossils in power plants and not in cars would be moving the energy/pollution production away from big cities to less populated or less important locations. Of course on the long run, the whole planet gets equally polluted and heated. Using nuclear plants to produce electricity (20% in US) may have the advantage of cleaner energy, with a zero carbon emission, however the energy is still released from nuclear fuel into the planet ecosystem, contributing its share to the global warming. And of course there are some other risks involved in nuclear energy production. The only advantage of the electrical cars over petrol/gas based is the ability to regenerate the energy when cars decelerates. From that point of view, hybrid cars are equally efficient as a fully electrical ones. I truly believe that the only way to achieve the energy efficiency in this planet is to stop releasing new energy from natural sources (fossils/nuclear fuel) to our poor planet, but to efficiently reuse the solar energy that is added to our ecosystem anyway. In this sense, burning bio-fuels, using solar power plants or wind turbines could could make the difference.

I use "My Tracks" application from Google on my Android phone. My Tracks for Android

Absolutely!!! I was basically laughed at work when I discussed with colleagues my plans to start cycling to work Holland style - easy, relaxed cycling, casual clothing. However, there is another reason (at least in Belfast) for cycling fast on public roads. Drivers here are easily upset by slow cyclists, so maintaining a reasonable speed it is simply the matter of survival.