Electric motocross

[Waiex191]

I think this electric motorcycle stuff is a fad. The next revolution in motorcycles is being developed in England.
https://youtu.be/6hUMXWNcwx4

[ZOA NOM]

I think this electric motorcycle stuff is a fad. The next revolution in motorcycles is being developed in England.
https://youtu.be/6hUMXWNcwx4

Be still my heart... did you see that SHOP?!

[red]

You are correct Jack, for long hauls, the electrics are not there yet. That's why I stayed with the short haul scenarios. The current Max range of the Tesla tractor is 300-500 miles. Load capacity for Tesla's are ok at 80k lbs. Operating cost per mile is better than diesel.  We shall see....

Pat,

Maybe not the independent truckers, but the big fleets could have sub-stations with tractors charged and ready to go.  Driver pulls in with a low charge , unhooks the trailer and puts the tractor on charge.  Then the driver picks up a fully-charged tractor, hooks up to the trailer, and down the road it goes.  Buy the driver some coffee, while at the charge station.  Those fleets always have empty tractors parked, so this type of operation would not be any big deal, for them.
.

[Millietant]

You are correct Jack, for long hauls, the electrics are not there yet. That's why I stayed with the short haul scenarios. The current Max range of the Tesla tractor is 300-500 miles. Load capacity for Tesla's are ok at 80k lbs. Operating cost per mile is better than diesel.
Since 2018 Tesla has been running their fully loaded trucks from their battery factory in Reno, NV. on the I-80 up over Donner Pass (Tahoe) down to the Tesla car factory in Fremont, CA. (Bay area) It's a 7 hour 260 one way trip and they regenerate enough energy on the down hill run (Tahoe to Sacramento) that they don't need recharging in Fremont. They can make the round trip on one charge. In fairness, they do the return leg to Reno with a reduced load.
I think economics, low cost per mile and low maintenance costs will be the selling point for these trucks, along with having to comply with super restrictive air pollution regs where trucking is concentrated.

https://www.tesla.com/semi

We shall see....

Pat/Red and everyone else....don't get me wrong, I don't think electric vehicles are bad.....its Battery Electric Vehicles that I believe are a disastrous mistake............the future of motor transportation cannot lie in robbing the earth of rare minerals in an even more devastating way than the damage we're doing mining fossil fuels - if the growth of BEV's reaches the levels that our Govt's want, in the timescales they want, we will run out of land deposits of cabalt and we're going to be mass dredging immense areas of the ocean bed, around the globe, destroying sea life and sea life habitat on a scale will devastate the oceans.

Elon Musk has already said we can't continue with current battery technology because of the shortage of cobalt he is predicting - and no-one seems even remotely close to having another product to take the place of cobalt - and yet he's still pushing ahead making massive amounts of batteries using cobalt as one of their key elements, at his new super factories !!!!

Natural gas powered vehicles aren't the "clean" answer either. In Europe, 20 years ago, LPG an CNG cars were being promoted and subsidised heavily but the Govt's as a clean alternative to petrol/gasoline and diesel - I ran a LPG powered Volvo V70 for 120k miles between 2002 and 2005 and I loved it (much cheaper to run than a diesel due to low fuel price), but when the time came to get another one, I found out that because the "clean" credentials of natural gas power had been de-bunked, all subsidies had been removed across Europe and manufacturers were no longer offering gas powered options - they were all focussing on the "cleaner" diesel engines that were being produced !!!!! (go figure).

There is another potential solution (but not without its own problems) - we already have electric buses and long haul trucks running here, but they use hydrogen fuel cells for their power generation. It's not their range that is important to their operators, but their quick refill times - only about twice as long as a full diesel fill up !!!. They're "green", efficient and quiet 

Around 12-15 years ago, at work, we ran some hydrogen fuel cell 60 tonne capacity dump trucks on a 6 month trial in a quarry . Those things were absolutely awesome. The power and torque available immediately made them amazingly rapid and they were incredibly quiet. If they hadn't been so expensive (and if installing the hydrogen tankage suitable for our fleet hadn't been so expensive), we would have loved to have swapped every diesel dump truck in every quarry (we ran about 200 quarries in the UK) for them.

It just seems that someone is going way out of their way to "big up" BEV's......and the cynic in me believes that's mainly because too many Govt's (particularly the US Govt) have supported/funded Tesla to such an extent that allowing it to fail would be catastrophically embarrassing for them.

Battery electric motorcycles have the place in the bike world.....but its a very limited and specialised place - and its not on the open roads.

[Millietant]

You are correct Jack, for long hauls, the electrics are not there yet. That's why I stayed with the short haul scenarios. The current Max range of the Tesla tractor is 300-500 miles. Load capacity for Tesla's are ok at 80k lbs. Operating cost per mile is better than diesel.  We shall see....

Pat,

Maybe not the independent truckers, but the big fleets could have sub-stations with tractors charged and ready to go.  Driver pulls in with a low charge , unhooks the trailer and puts the tractor on charge.  Then the driver picks up a fully-charged tractor, hooks up to the trailer, and down the road it goes.  Buy the driver some coffee, while at the charge station.  Those fleets always have empty tractors parked, so this type of operation would not be any big deal, for them.
.

With the driving time regulations for truck drivers here, Battery Electric trucks could actually work !!! Most of the grocery and foodstuff delivery done in the UK, is on 40 tonne capacity tractor/trailer units (semi's) which generally don't cover any more than 250-300 km's in a full driving shift - with regular, enforced breaks for drivers that would allow decent recharging times.

I don't believe you have the enforced driving hours limits that we operate in Europe and neither are your trucks electronically limited to 56mph - because of this, the factors around recharging and truck range here are totally different to those in the USA - so the need to have double the amount of tractor units than you would otherwise need, is eliminated.

Again, through my work, we tried to run/manage an Infrastructure Services contract (highway maintenance/inspection etc) using BEV Renault Kangoo vans, instead of diesel engined versions. Our client asked us to do this and said they were willing pay a premium for it. What they didn't factor into their thoughts was that the vans wouldn't last a full shift without needing to recharge, so our staff had to stop what they were doing when they hit their range warnings and head back to their base to plug in the van to recharge and take another van out. We ran a 24 hour service, so the operational cost of the lost working time due to travelling backwards and forwards was huge and it also meant we needed additional manpower - on top of that, the range and recharging limitations meant we actually needed 3 times the number of BEV vans than we did diesel vans (which would sometimes run 5 or 6 shifts on a single tank of diesel). Within 6 month's our client cried "enough", they simply couldn't afford the long term cost of us complying with their wishes and our entire fleet of leased BEV's was replaced with (1/3 of the number of) diesel powered ones.

The problem is too many people and businesses are jumping on the Electric bandwagon on the basis of flawed logic, unobtainable savings and BS marketing. But if the truth were common knowledge, no-one would be buying electric vehicles and the oil companies would have an even tighter grip on our money and our economies.

I really do hope someone (much cleverer than me) finds a breakthough in powering electric vehicles soon..........

[ZOA NOM]

This thread reminds me of something that happened last weekend in Abu-Dhabi at the final Formula 1 weekend of 2020. Fernando Alonso drought out his 15 year-old F1 car all three days for "nostalgia" laps for all those in attendance. The reaction is reverberating through the F1 world at what F1 has lost since the days of the V10 sounds. Calls for F1 to do something about its lost wow factor are increasing...

https://youtu.be/Ltx15RVvF5A

[red]

The problem is too many people and businesses are jumping on the Electric bandwagon on the basis of flawed logic, unobtainable savings and BS marketing. But if the truth were common knowledge, no-one would be buying electric vehicles and the oil companies would have an even tighter grip on our money and our economies.
I really do hope someone (much cleverer than me) finds a breakthough in powering electric vehicles soon.

Milletant,

I agree.  Using rare materials for batteries is a dead end road.  There are many materials that can work in batteries, but so far, we have only the exotic or nasty stuff.  Saw one outfit on the 'Net making batteries with seawater inside.  Jules Verne would have been delighted; his imaginary electric Nautilus used seawater as a power source.  There are plenty of people who see the problems posed by today's batteries, and there are a lot of new ideas out there.  Tunnel vision is a bad plan there, and some do know that.  Hang tough.
.

[Millietant]

And now, here we go.....the UK Government are finally admitting what some of us have been saying for years now - the switch to electric vehicles is going to create an an astronomical hole in tax revenue...........which means that the only way electric cars can remain cheap to run (bearing in mind that over 80% of the cost of petrol/diesel here is in taxation), is if the rest of the non-electric-vehicle-driving population pay a substantial increase in taxes on other things.

So effectively, those of us who choose not to drive (or not to own) electric vehicles, will be paying for those who do.....even if we choose not to own/drive any sort of vehicle.

Apparently, according the BBC, this is breaking news !!!!!..................the more enlightened amongst us have been saying this for years, but we've just been shouted down as luddites until now  

[ZOA NOM]

Can somebody explain exactly why fossil fuel is a finite resource? Did the process of dying, decaying, and tectonic pressure stop happening? I submit that you can't burn it faster than it's created. Discuss.

[Pat Conlon]

Can somebody explain exactly why fossil fuel is a finite resource?

I submit that you can't burn it faster than it's created. Discuss.

You would just argue with me, so why not listen to the experts in the oil and financial industries?
Google the term: Estimated Ultimate Recovery (EUR) for oil reserves.

[ZOA NOM]

That's an interesting formula for calculating expected reserves from a known site.

Check out what may lie beyond...

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/how-much-oil-left-earth-2016-11-18

[Pat Conlon]

Interesting to point out the difference between Technically Recoverable oil and Economically Recoverable.oil
That is a moving target.
It's safe to say that with the maturation of the various renewable energy sources, the Economically Recoverable part of oil production equation will be impacted.... just as natural gas prices impacted coal production. e.g. Why own a fossil fueled car when an electric car is cheaper to operate?
We will always need oil, just not as much.

Regardless...I believe Rick answered his question.

[giantkiller]

I'm all for electrical vehicle power. It's awesome.  I  remember many years ago. A fellow took an old mail jeep. He wanted the  least aerodynamic vehicle he could find. To prove the  power of electric motors. Was going to make a 10 second vehicle.  Last I saw he was having a hard time finding strong enough drive shafts  kept twisting them off. My old man when I was a kid  said he wished he could put an electric motor in his car. (Had many muscle cars . 10 that I  can remember) " Most powerful motors around! "
I love my internal combustion bikes. Can  never get enough power. But I can't wait until I can afford the power available from electric vehicles. And the chance to play around with altering it for insane power.

That said. I will hope I get to be the gray haired uncle with the gleaming Red Barchetta. (Fj1350r)

[JPaganel]

And now, here we go.....the UK Government are finally admitting what some of us have been saying for years now - the switch to electric vehicles is going to create an an astronomical hole in tax revenue...

They will make it up with registration fees and possibly mileage taxes easy enough.  That means they won't stay cheap, though.

I submit that you can't burn it faster than it's created.

And you say this based on... what, exactly?  A cup of oil will burn in a few minutes.  A heap of plant matter will take weeks and moths to simply rot, and a lot longer than that to become oil.

Even when the process is done artificially, such as thermal depolymerization, it takes a fair amount of time.

Plus, it's not about burning every last drop. It's about using up what is easily and cheaply accessible.  If it isn't cheap, it might as well not be there.

[T Legg]

Nobody knows for sure how all oil is formed. The process of abiotic production has been demonstrated to be possible by experiment. There are several oil fields that after being depleted have refilled. Some attribute it to oil from high pressure deposits migrating into the depleted fields but others,the Russians for one believe it comes from deep within the Earth and as it rises it becomes a food source for micro organisms along the way giving it it's biological signature. Using this theory the Russians have drilled more than three hundred wells at depths greater than eight miles. It is certainly a fact that all organic matterial present now developed on an Earth that was once sterile. I for one plan on burning as much gas with my motorcycle as I can. I also love my bultaco 370 Frontera two stroke.