Electric Motorcycle

[JPaganel]

I suspect that having dodged the "peak oil" bullet with fracking/oil shale, the petro-financial Powers That Be will be able to keep the transportation electo-genie in the bottle and maintain a fossil-fuel based world economy for several more decades.

If we're still around then my guess is that the Rockefellers et.al  will morph over to dominate the new technology and shift their economic power base when it is most advantageous for them to do so.  But we'll be burning gasoline a long time before that happens.

Now, about those ice caps....

Loosen up that tinfoil helmet there.

There is no conspiracy keeping EV down. What does it is the crappy low energy density of our battery tech. As soon as there is an insta-charge battery the size and weight of a gas tank that can take you as far as a gas tank does, we will all plug in.

[Burns]

 Loosen up that tinfoil helmet there.

There is no conspiracy keeping EV down. What does it is the crappy low energy density of our battery tech. As soon as there is an insta-charge battery the size and weight of a gas tank that can take you as far as a gas tank does, we will all plug in.
[/quote]

"conspiracy" is a meaningless concept in this (and most) contexts. Money is the prime mover.  As long as fossil fuels can be produced in sufficient quantity and priced low enough to make competitors cost prohibitive the money for developing alternative technologies will be limited.  As to the political power of the petro-financial sector you might research the history of Iran and the BP/CIA involvement there.

[mr blackstock]

Riders of the next generation will flock to electric bikes, ease of maintenace etc.  they will pass us effortlessly on our old "combustion engined" bikes, make fun of us, develop phrases like "dino riders" or "BMW riders" all the same stuff we said when we first got into riding and saw guys on a 1950's bike?!

Me, I love the sound of an air cooled bike, bangs, rattlles, and shakes.  I dislike fuel injection too, I remember my first bike with C.V carbs... I thought that would be a flash in the can.  But people love what they are used to.  Digital media has been around for awhile now, and people are still shooting super8, 16mm etc. 

cheers, Gareth

[ribbert]

....... Digital media has been around for awhile now, and people are still shooting super8, 16mm etc. 

cheers, Gareth

Gareth, you're scaring me, you don't live that far from me and you're telling me the locals still use film camera, movies at that.

Noel

[ribbert]

That's very cool Noel, what year was the article?

Not sure, but it I remember it was later than you would think, I'll try and find it and post it.

Noel

[ribbert]

Would people still bother to build things like this if all you needed was a bigger electric motor and a few more batteries and would it be as exciting to watch with a "whirring" sound track.

Sort of Ken Block meets Monster Jam

http://www.topgear.com/uk/car-news/bj-baldwin-trophy-truck-recoil-2-baja-1000-2014-09-17

(scroll down to the video)

Long live the internal combustion engine!

Noel

[JPaganel]

Money is the prime mover.  As long as fossil fuels can be produced in sufficient quantity and priced low enough to make competitors cost prohibitive the money for developing alternative technologies will be limited.  As to the political power of the petro-financial sector you might research the history of Iran and the BP/CIA involvement there.

Battery tech is necessary for far more than transportation, and money for R&D comes from a lot of places where fossil fuels are not a competitor. It's also important to note that the US military has a great interest in batteries for things other than vehicles, and when they want something they fund the research pretty well. There is no lack of money. Batteries are limited by physics and chemistry. Barring a major scientific breakthrough, our batteries suck.

[Burns]

Battery tech is necessary for far more than transportation, and money for R&D comes from a lot of places where fossil fuels are not a competitor. It's also important to note that the US military has a great interest in batteries for things other than vehicles, and when they want something they fund the research pretty well. There is no lack of money. Batteries are limited by physics and chemistry. Barring a major scientific breakthrough, our batteries suck.
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"cost effective" and "U.S. military" are terms that border on mutually exclusive. The recent experience with jet fighters suggests that DOD operates more as a contractor profit-center than an innovator.

I do not accept your assumption that physics and chemistry bar the development of suitable batteries, or for that matter that batteries are the only route to electric powered transportation.  But I do recall the history of the EV-1 and how battery technology was "parked" when the cutting edge patents for bought by TEXACO.


Of course there is a lot more to transitioning from a fossil-fuel based economy to a more sustainable alternative than battery technology but ignoring the economic reality of the power of vested interests in the status quo is its own "tin foil hat" kind of thinking.

[mr blackstock]

....... Digital media has been around for awhile now, and people are still shooting super8, 16mm etc. 

cheers, Gareth

Gareth, you're scaring me, you don't live that far from me and you're telling me the locals still use film camera, movies at that.

... I shoot 16mm film, yet not so funny when one realises we ride 20 year old plus bikes 

[JPaganel]

"cost effective" and "U.S. military" are terms that border on mutually exclusive.

Yes, but what does cost effectiveness have to do with it? What I said was that if the DOD wants something, they will toss money at it, which is kind of the opposite of cost effectiveness.  And they do want good batteries. So, there is funding. Military wanting stuff gave us the Internet.

I do not accept your assumption that physics and chemistry bar the development of suitable batteries, or for that matter that batteries are the only route to electric powered transportation.

Why do you think this is an assumption? Look at the absolute best batteries we have - they are still large, heavy, and cumbersome compared to chemical fuels. Batteries are certainly not the only way for electric transportation to exist, streetcars have been around for about 100 years, but for untethered transportation that's about it. Unless you are sitting on some great discovery  in energy storage the world is not aware of.

But I do recall the history of the EV-1 and how battery technology was "parked" when the cutting edge patents for bought by TEXACO.

It's un-parked now. BASF bought Ovonics two years ago. Where are those quantum leaps in battery tech?

Of course there is a lot more to transitioning from a fossil-fuel based economy to a more sustainable alternative than battery technology but ignoring the economic reality of the power of vested interests in the status quo is its own "tin foil hat" kind of thinking.

The reality is that there are competing interests, and not just "the man" who wants to keep us down.

[Burns]

Yes, but what does cost effectiveness have to do with it? What I said was that if the DOD wants something, they will toss money at it, which is kind of the opposite of cost effectiveness.  And they do want good batteries. So, there is funding. Military wanting stuff gave us the Internet.

Cost effectiveness has everything to do with it.  The military can/does fund things that will always be beyond the reach of the general public.
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Why do you think this [that physics and chemistry bar the development of suitable batteries]is an assumption?

because you are saying that the way it is now is the way it will remain.  Nothing in technology is static and I see no basis for assuming that the ultimate level of battery technology has been reached.

BASF bought Ovonics two years ago. Where are those quantum leaps in battery tech?
TESLA is one place and TWO YEARS is not much compared to THIRTY YEARS

[ The reality is that there are competing interests, and not just "the man" who wants to keep us down.
That is a straw-man argument as I'm sure you are aware.  Of course there are competing interests but the petro-financial sector is the 300 pound gorilla in this game.  It's interests are not to "keep us down" but to maximize profits and it's not going to sit idly by while trillions of dollars of its assets are rendered unmarketable.

since you mentioned streetcars I assume you are aware of the GM-Standard Oil-Firestone coalition that virtually destroyed that form of mass-transportation.

Old songs just get new verses.

[JPaganel]

Cost effectiveness has everything to do with it.  The military can/does fund things that will always be beyond the reach of the general public.

Yeah, all those medical advances never make it to civilian hospitals. And clearly we are not using something developed from a DOD-funded project to post right now...

because you are saying that the way it is now is the way it will remain.  Nothing in technology is static and I see no basis for assuming that the ultimate level of battery technology has been reached.

First, I did not say it will remain this way. I said it will remain this way until there is some major scientific breakthrough. Second, I don't think the ultimate level has been reached.  However, battery tech has had only minor incremental improvements for a long time, and it's unlikely that the current path is going to make them comparable to chemical fuels any time soon. The guys at Zero Motorcycle certainly seem to think this way, what reason do you have to distrust people who are actually making and selling an electric bike?

Technology isn't static, but some things move slower than others. One of the problems for batteries is charge time, and that is a thing that is limited by physics of how we do it. You can only have wires so big and only so much current running through them.

TESLA is one place and TWO YEARS is not much compared to THIRTY YEARS

Tesla what? Their batteries still weigh 1200 pounds, have charge times in hours and will get bricked if you forget to plug it in for too long. And it's not two years - it's two years plus supposedly revolutionary tech they already have. No idea what thirty years you are comparing that to.  

That is a straw-man argument as I'm sure you are aware.  Of course there are competing interests but the petro-financial sector is the 300 pound gorilla in this game.  It's interests are not to "keep us down" but to maximize profits and it's not going to sit idly by while trillions of dollars of its assets are rendered unmarketable.

since you mentioned streetcars I assume you are aware of the GM-Standard Oil-Firestone coalition that virtually destroyed that form of mass-transportation.

Old songs just get new verses.

I note that you don't actually mention what these other magical non-battery means of untethered electric transportation might be. You need a way to store energy, and you need a way to convert it to electricity. There isn't much of anything that doesn't burn some kind of fuel, since fission reactors are kinda cumbersome, and fusion isn't here yet.

The oil industry assets won't be unmarketable even if we go 100% electric. Oil is a lot more than fuel.  "I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Plastics. "

[Burns]

luckily humanity is not limited to my personal imagination, but I can easily envision a transportation system in which the road itself is electrified and vehicles need carry only enough storage capacity to make the short hops onto them. Those roads would of course recharge the car during the trip.

If I let my imagination run a bit I'd get to mag-lev vehicles with bullet-train performance.

Those vehicles would probably be made of plastic, but since we won't be burning them the demand for their petroleum raw material will be drastically reduced from current levels and that great cash cow will have been put out to pasture.

The technological breakthrough in that scenario is not better batteries but cheap production of electricity.

My favorite candidate is geo-thermal.  Iceland is 100% energy independent because of their geo-thermal electric production.

But, to close the original loop, I doubt that the economic powers that be will allow any such thing to happen in my life time.

Just my opinion.

[JPaganel]

luckily humanity is not limited to my personal imagination, but I can easily envision a transportation system in which the road itself is electrified and vehicles need carry only enough storage capacity to make the short hops onto them. Those roads would of course recharge the car during the trip.

If I let my imagination run a bit I'd get to mag-lev vehicles with bullet-train performance.

Those vehicles would probably be made of plastic, but since we won't be burning them the demand for their petroleum raw material will be drastically reduced from current levels and that great cash cow will have been put out to pasture.

The technological breakthrough in that scenario is not better batteries but cheap production of electricity.

So, fancy streetcars. With all the limitations thereof, such as having to stick to the rails, whatever form the rails take.  And a technological and infrastructural change on par with Mr. Fusion. If you're gonna go that deep into sci-fi, might as well leap straight to magic.

My favorite candidate is geo-thermal.  Iceland is 100% energy independent because of their geo-thermal electric production.

You might note that Iceland has no magic streetcars. Also, Iceland is unique in it's geographic and geological position, and what they do isn't very easily replicated elsewhere. Not everybody is an island on top of a volcano. Actually, pretty much nobody is.

But, to close the original loop, I doubt that the economic powers that be will allow any such thing to happen in my life time.

Yep. It's not that your pie in the sky plan is unfeasible at current levels of technology, it's the powers.

[red]

All IMHO:  What you really need is just enough batteries to power a maximum acceleration, for whatever time it takes your bike to get from zero to "ludicrous speed."  You need just enough fuel cell power to maintain a high cruising speed, with any surplus power going into the batteries.  Fuel cells can run on hydrogen (gasp! ) which you can crack from water at home using wind or solar power.  Fuel cells also run on Natural Gas, maybe not so well, but LNG or CNG is cheap, available, and in the USA, it's locally produced.  The bike is still an electric bike, with any level of performance that you may want, but as a hybrid, now it has range, rapid refueling (or swap in a full cylinder, as the propane industry does now), and low fuel costs.  My US$0.02 worth.

Google Corporate now runs on Natural Gas fuel cells, with no outside electrical power at all.  This solution is not Science Fiction anymore.

Cheers,
Red