601–610 of 616 posts
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Ten years ago it was a problem. Good, even some great, stuff out there, today.
It's still a problem today, 2025. I think the LiveWire S2 models come closest, but they still have anemic range. (And we're ignoring cost, which is also much higher.)
Cost is a challenge.
These things go 175 miles, up to 450+ miles if you have money.
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It's still a problem today, 2025. I think the LiveWire S2 models come closest, but they still have anemic range. (And we're ignoring cost, which is also much higher.)
Problem implies “it’s not happening”. Cost is a challenge. These things go 175 miles, up to 450+ miles if you have money.
> These things go 175 miles, up to 450+ miles if you have money.
Only the heaviest models, ridden extremely conservatively.
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That can be offset by not requiring the same sort of range that's typically assumed to be required. While I'll be likely be riding my ICE bikes for decades because one of the things I do on them is trips with 1000 or 1500km days, truth is the vast majority of my riding is sub 25km round trips from my place. Most of my friends places, a lot of the places I shop or socialise, and the office (which I pretty much never g…
25km range is department-store electric scooter territory. A motorcycle that can do highway speeds could expend that entire range in 15 minutes or less, which would be quite a high discharge rate and also an unusual user experience for most. Maybe what you want is a large electric bike like a Surron or similar?
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Problem implies “it’s not happening”. Cost is a challenge. These things go 175 miles, up to 450+ miles if you have money.
I mean, sales are largely "not happening." Livewire sells ~600 bikes a year. Buyers have the same objections I do. > These things go 175 miles, up to 450+ miles if you have money. Only the heaviest models, ridden extremely conservatively.
Buyers don’t know they exist, if they’ll struggle to register them, or how to work on them!
The heaviest ones seem like the same weight as a 600cc or 1000cc crotch rocket - am I missing something big?
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I mean, sales are largely "not happening." Livewire sells ~600 bikes a year. Buyers have the same objections I do. > These things go 175 miles, up to 450+ miles if you have money. Only the heaviest models, ridden extremely conservatively.
> Buyers have the same objections I do. Buyers don’t know they exist, if they’ll struggle to register them, or how to work on them! The heaviest ones seem like the same weight as a 600cc or 1000cc crotch rocket - am I missing something big?
> The heaviest ones seem like the same weight as a 600cc or 1000cc crotch rocket - am I missing something big?
Livewire One is 560 lb! Energica Ego was 570! 600s and liter bikes aren't anywhere close to that -- low 400s lb for 600s, and 430-440 lb for a liter bike.
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Exactly. Main problem is battery energy density. Cars can drive about 20 kilometers on 1 liter of gasoline. In comparison, Tesla's 4680 cells are at about 272-296 Wh/kg and CATL's Kirin Battery at about 255 Wh/kg. A bit efficient EV often uses 200 Wh/km, so for 1 kg of battery the electric vehicle can only reach 1-2 km. An order of magnitude difference. Theoretically, batteries could go to 1000 Wh/kg some day, which…
https://ev-database.org/cheatsheet/energy-consumption-electr... The Model 3 manages < 140 Wh/km, and many seem to be under 150/160/170.
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Nah, the main thing is that electric motors are already far better than they need to be -- even assuming the claims are all true, it would only make a small difference. Shaving a couple percent off the total vehicle weight would still be a very good thing, but improving batter energy density by 10% or so would be a bigger deal for most EVs. There might be some niche applications where the battery weight isn't the big…
> A light-weight plug-in electric chainsaw would be pretty awesome. These already exist, in both plug-in and cordless / battery powered.
At 30 amps and 220 volts, that would be about 8 horsepower. I think most motors that size rated for that much continuous power would be rather heavy.
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Mid-air: yes. A boom with a charging cable or even beamed energy would be much easier. On the ground: swapping batteries is faster, and batteries are cheaper than planes or drones. You want the expensive part back in the air as soon as possible so you don't need as many of them. On the whole this probably also simplifies logistics: in civilian aviation airport space is limited, in wartime it's easier to transport one…
That's a future thought when it comes to electric aircraft - remote/emergency refuelling. I know they have tested lasers, and even sent a megawatt in 30 seconds over a distance of a few miles, though current convention of the laser back into usable power is around 50% efficiency. All gets down to a needed leap in electricity production and wished the World would get together on fusion reactors and knock it out the pa…
Could lead to significant efficiency gains for EV's, because 1/4 of the motor weight means better power-to-weight ratio... a lot of things will automatically get better. YASA was founded in 2009, a spin out from Oxford University following the PhD of founder and still CTO, Dr Tim Woolmer. "Over the decades that followed both of these technologies were explored. But despite the potential for weight reduction, smaller…