Inspired by Tesla, the Swiss bicycle entrepreneur Thomas Binggeli founded Stromer in 2008 as a way to tackle problems like traffic congestion, health, and sustainability, so I took the latest version for a ride in the City of Angels to test whether a post-car future is actually in our future.
Sales of e-bikes have been booming in the last decade, with double digit growth in 2015. A recent Navigant Research study estimates that by 2025 the e-bike industry could see revenues of $24.3 billion, up from an estimate of $15.7 billion in 2016.
Part of that boom is powered by lower-cost technology. As opposed to electric scooters or motorcycles, an e-bike requires some amount of pedaling, so longer commutes provide a light workout. And you don’t need a separate license to operate it. An entry-level e-bike will run about $500, but at $9,999, the ST2 S I’m riding is the most expensive on the road.
The world’s first open source piece of hardware was the bicycle, according to the Open Source Hardware Association. To be more precise, it was the draisine, introduced as a two-wheeled human-propelled walking machine in 1817.
Technologists of the day added things like pedals, chains and rubber tires, as the bicycle became one of the world’s most widely used and loved machines. Nearly two centuries and a couple billion bicycles later, entrepreneurs are applying computer controls, GPS and wireless connectivity to bikes to help save the world’s cities from automobile gridlock.
FlyKly Smart Wheel “looks like any other rear wheel, except that it has a monster-sized hub stuffed full of electronics,” Gizmodo says. It’s like the Prius of bike wheels — it stores energy as you pedal and while you’re going downhill. And then it uses that energy to speed you along, if you want, at up to 20 mph for 30 miles. It also can track your routes, speeds, and times, and suggest better routes.
Vanmoof’s 10 is a sleek new electrified bike that could make any commute incredibly easy and high tech. The Dutch bike company‘s electric-assist city bike features an array of gadgetry like smart sensors, GPS tracking, an onboard computer and of course an electric power-booster. The super smart bike uses Vanmoof’s lightweight frame and has an integrated 209Wh battery system for smooth riding.
Made from anodized aluminum, the Electrified looks like your typical stylish city bike. The bike’s front hub houses a 250W electrical motor which can power up to a speedy 37 miles per hour. The battery reaches its full charge in just three hours, making it easy to regain its power while you work.
Kevin Kelly has a post on his research into electric bikes - Electric Bicycles.
I am trying out electric bicycles. Today e-bikes have a limited range of 20-30 miles (50km) because of battery constraints. So most e-bikes are sold for daily commuters, especially in a hilly city like San Francisco. Zip to work and back with no car, faster than public transport. You can get some very good e-bikes these days. Millions of them are sold and used in China, and there are also very good models from Europe.
But I am looking for a touring e-bike, one that could give me mild assistance over 80 miles. I am doing a 1,000-mile tour with my teenage son and his cousin, and I can’t keep up with them, particularly on the hills. So I need a very mild assist to “flatten the hills” yet lightweight enough that for the rest of the time while I am pedaling, the bike with motor is not a burden.
Eric Hicks, the expert at ElectricBike.com recommended I try out a German Stromer e-bike. The legendary bike rental store Blazing Saddles rents e-bikes to tourists near the Golden Gate Bridge, so I headed there last weekend. The Stromer uses a motor on the back wheel, called a hub motor, and retains some of the chain derailer shifting. When the motor is off you can pedal as normal (the motor doesn’t impede your pedaling), and you pedal even while the motor is running — thus it is called Pedal Assist. You can set the amount of assist you want, from very low to very strong. The motor will only assist when you pedal. So it is not a lightweight motorcycle, but a pedal assist bicycle. A downside of the a hub motor is that changing a flat is a huge project. ...
The Blue Oval brand has revealed its new E-Bike concept pushbike that it says “could be an innovative solution for urban mobility". The E-Bike concept is part plug-in and part pushy, with a conventional cog set at the rear wheel and a front wheel-mounted electronic hub that can also be used to propel the bike.
"The e-bike market is growing very, very rapidly, with some 30 million units sold globally last year," says Axel Wilke, director of vehicle personalisation from Ford’s European service division. "We see e-bikes as an important element of urban electric mobility. More and more people are using e bikes for short distance commuting and they are becoming comfortable with the concept of electric mobility."
Ford says it has taken inspiration from technology used in formula one in the form of “magnetostrictive" materials, which “are used to convert magnetic energy into kinetic energy, and vice versa", with sensors able to provide “a seamless integration of the power of the legs with the power of the motor" by switching between or blending the two power sources “within a hundredth of a second".
The trapezoidal frame is constructed of lightweight aluminium and carbon fibre, tipping the scales at just 2.5kg. The frame houses the integrated lithium-ion battery which is good for 85 kilometres on a full charge, and takes just two hours to charge to 80 per cent or four hours for a full fill.
Despite Ford admitting that bikes like this are important for the future of transport, the US-based company says it isn’t planning on bringing the E-Bike to production.
The NYT has an article on electric bike riding in Switzerland - Over the Alps on a Bike With a Boost. I had one of these things overtake me (startlingly quietly) as I was riding up a hill last week - they are looking quite sleek nowadays.
THE road east out of Sörenberg rears up into a series of steep turns that climb the Glaubenbielen Pass, the high point of a road the Swiss Army punched through the Alps more than 60 years ago. Though the occasional car and bus make the journey to the top, these days much of the road belongs to cyclists.
On a cool afternoon in mid-July I was one of them. I hadn’t ridden much all season, yet something primordial kicked in when I spied another biker just ahead. His calf muscles were swollen like Salamanca hams, and he was stooped over the bars, sweat dripping onto the pavement.
Easy pickings, I thought, as I tore after him. Within moments I’d reeled him in. He, gasping; me, hardly out of breath: I felt, well, guilty. “You’re cheating!” he panted in German as I sped by. “You’ll be out of power soon!”
He was right: I was cheating. With the mash of a button on my handlebars, a 250-watt electric motor had spun to life and increased the power of my pedal strokes by 150 percent. Suddenly I had my own domestique, a 26-volt brute that seemed to grab the saddle and shove me onward every time I pedaled. In a few minutes, I had reached the summit, taken a short walk and realized that cycling big Alpine passes with some breath to spare might not be such a bad way to cheat.
Here in the United States electric bikes are slowly becoming more popular — you can, for instance, take e-bike tours in San Francisco and Napa Valley. In Europe, the trend is more developed with robust rental schemes in places like Britain’s Lake District, Versailles and Amsterdam. But it is the Swiss who have embraced the concept with the most imagination.
For 50 Swiss francs a day, about $62 at $1.25 to the franc (with discounts for multiple days), you can rent an electric bike from one of 400 rental stations around the country and then set out on some 5,600 miles of well-marked bike paths. With hundreds of places along the way to obtain fresh batteries free, you don’t need to be a whippet-thin racer to roll for days through the spectacular Swiss hinterlands — up steep mountain passes and past soft meadows, burbling creeks and curious cows. You’re free from unforgiving train schedules and away from the tourist hordes but still have access to all the traditional Swissness you can take at inns and restaurants along the way. And since sweating is cheap, a famously expensive country just became a little more affordable.
Saul Griffith, inventor, multiple entrepreneur and MacArthur fellow, is knee-deep in a new electric bicycle project: Onya Cycles! Griffith and his team, through their incubator Other Lab, have built a series of innovative, and heavy-lifting, electric bikes that are meant to replace local car trips to the store, including the tilting electric tricycle called the Front-End Loader, the Mule cargo bike, and the super-cute ET. For this week’s episode of GigaOM TV’s Green Overdrive video show we hung out with Griffith and took the Front-End Loader for a ride. Who needs a car when you can turn to pedals and batteries.
The SMH has an article on a concept electric bike from Lexus - Lexus's hybrid bike.
Lexus’s Hybrid Bicycle concept features a 240-watt electric motor that boosts man-made torque (pedalling) for more effortless riding.
Unlike a regular bike that is rear-wheel drive, the 17kg carbon-fibre concept uses a belt-drive arrangement and an electric eight-speed gearbox from Japanese component specialist Shimano to put power to the road through both wheels.
The rider has a choice of Eco or Power modes, while the all-wheel-drive bike also mimics the regenerative braking of the Toyota/Lexus Hybrid Drive System by recharging the lithium-ion battery with the kinetic energy captured whenever the rider squeezes the callipers.
ELECTRIC bikes could be the answer to traffic congestion, the obesity crisis and our carbon footprint. But over-regulation and a cycling culture that looks down on battery-assisted bikes as "cheating" have slowed their take-up in Australia, enthusiasts say.
However, changes proposed by the RTA could allow more powerful models on our roads.
The bikes do not need to be registered as long as their maximum power is 200 watts or less. But some models can have throttle control and resemble mopeds, with users being booked for riding them without registration.
''The beauty of this is people who are way past riding a bike can suddenly ride again. It integrates casual exercise into people's daily lives,'' says Mike Rubbo, 71, a filmmaker and e-bike enthusiast who runs the blog situp-cycle.com. ''It's the ideal urban transport vehicle.''
Overseas, e-bikes with up to 1000-watt motors are permitted in some jurisdictions. European e-bikes are typically 250 watts. In response to a growing push to allow e-bikes without registration to be used in Australia, the RTA has submitted a report to the federal government proposing changes to regulations.
"Times have changed and bikes have changed so they need to bring the law into line with Europe, which is what they're proposing," said Paul van Bellen, co-owner of Gazelle Bicycles Australia, a "bikes for transport" shop in Matraville.
The Sydney Metro Authority folded last month after the Premier, Kristina Keneally, abandoned the controversial $5.3 billion, seven-kilometre underground line between Central and Rozelle and announced instead an extension of the light rail to Dulwich Hill and a line between Central and Barangaroo.
Under a proposal the Herald understands the department is considering, there would be no light rail stops at Lewisham train station and New Canterbury Road, which several popular bus services - including 428 between Canterbury and the city and the 444 and 445 between Campsie and Balmain - use.
''This makes no sense,'' the deputy mayor of Leichhardt, Michele McKenzie, said. ''The light rail stops should be at the quickest interchange point with other modes of transport. In our case, stops need to be at the main western [train] line and Canterbury Road.''
Cr McKenzie and public transport experts fear the proposal will prevent the light rail reaching capacity.
The minister's spokesman said work was under way on a pre-construction study for the light rail extension, which would take three months. ''No decision has been made on the exact locations of stops for the light rail,'' he said.
Garry Glazebrook, an urban planning expert at the University of Technology, Sydney, who was invited to sit on the government's transport planning taskforce, said light rail was a flexible form of transport that could fit around existing land use and encourage new, more dense land use and improve street life. ''The stops can be 200 metres apart or a kilometre apart,'' he said.
''Your aim, when designing a system, is to pick up the major catchments of people.''
WorldChanging has a post on electric bikes and some of the trends favouring their rise as an alternative form of transport - The Parable of the Electric Bike.
Technology, overseas markets, and political trends all bring good portents for e-bikes.
Trend 1. Technical innovation keeps improving electric bikes. The latest Giant, with lithium ion batteries, reportedly has a real-life battery range of 50 miles, doubling what previous models achieved. Sanyo has introduced a European style city bike (pictured below left) with impressive power-system integration. Trek, a leading American bike maker has entered the e-bike market with designs that may prove appealing to muscle-powered cyclists because of their high-performance feel (pictured below right).
Meanwhile, garage inventors keep coming up with intriguing innovations like the StokeMonkey (which I've described previously); Electric Mountain Drive from Oregon’s Ecospeed; and this VoltWagon electrified trailer that hitches to a regular bike and hauls cargo effortlessly.
Luckily for e-bike makers, advanced battery research is in its heyday, thanks to billions of dollars of investment from public and private institutions around the world. The hunt is on for better batteries not only because they’re essential to electrifying transportation and getting the world off of oil but also because they’re needed to harness intermittent, renewable power sources such as the sun and the wind. As battery improvements emerge, electric bikes stand to gain quickly.
. . .
Trend 2. Electric bikes are spreading like wildfire in China and are catching on in parts of Europe as well. As David Goodman recently wrote in the New York Times:
In China, an estimated 120 million electric bicycles now hum along the roads, up from a few thousand in the 1990s. They are replacing traditional bikes and motorcycles at a rapid clip and, in many cases, allowing people to put off the switch to cars. . . . From virtually nothing a decade ago, electric bikes have become an $11 billion global industry.
In the Netherlands, a third of the money spent on bicycles last year went to electric-powered models. Industry experts predict similar growth elsewhere in Europe, especially in Germany, France and Italy, as rising interest in cycling coincides with an aging population. India had virtually no sales until two years ago, but its nascent market is fast expanding and could eclipse Europe’s in the next year.
China reportedly had 56,000 electric bikes in 1998. Getting to 120 million in 12 years’ time is a phenomenal change, even in a country as populous as China, and e-bikes don’t appear to be slowing: USA Today reports that sales in China are expected to reach a staggering 22 million in 2010 alone, bringing the number of e-bike owners in the country to one tenth of the population. It’s an impressive example of electrifying the transportation sector. It’s also good news for e-bike prices: mass production on that scale has brought production costs down, and just as Chinese-made motor cycles have spread quickly in Asia and Africa, e-bikes are now radiating from China as well.
. . .
Trend 3. Political trends are encouraging for electric bikes as well. Despite disappointment at Copenhagen and slow progress on a climate bill in Washington, DC, climate change, oil addiction, and the chance to transition to a job-generating clean-energy economy remain potent political issues across much of the industrial world, prominently including the Pacific Northwest.
To seize the opportunity for a clean-energy revolution and move beyond carbon, we need to get completely off coal and oil quickly. Efficiency, compact communities, and transportation alternatives are our best friends in these tasks. But even with great success on all these strategies, we will still need some way to propel our trains, buses, trucks, and cars. The main no-carbon candidates are biofuels and electricity. We’ll need some of each, but electricity has tremendous advantages. It can come from many different carbon-free sources, can travel easily by wire, and can integrate the transportation sector with the rest of the electric grid in ways that make each stronger and more economical.
An impressive array of political and industry leaders have recognized and embraced the pivotal role the electrification of transportation can play in advancing a clean-energy economy. That’s why, for example, the 2009 US federal stimulus included a bevy of investments in research on advanced batteries and electric vehicles.
Electrifying bikes is a perfect first step in pursuit of vehicle electrification, because battery-assisted two wheelers are an easier engineering challenge than are electric cars. Frank Jamerson of Electric Bike World Report told USA Today, "The electric bike is the first wave of the electrification of the personal transportation industry."
Vehicle electrification is an energy storage problem, not a propulsion problem. Electric motors are much more efficient than fossil-fueled engines, but storing electricity is dramatically harder than is storing liquid fuels. For example, you can fill the tank of a gasoline-powered car in five minutes then drive on that fuel for several hours at highway speeds. Conversely, you need to recharge the Tesla Roadster, a $100,000 all-electric sports car, for roughly an hour for each hour of highway driving. (It takes 3.5 hours to charge fully. Its range is 244 miles, which it could cover in 3.5 hours at 70 mph. A Chevy Volt, which takes longer to recharge, has an electric-only range of 40 miles, after which it runs on a separate gasoline engine.)
Simple physics favor e-bikes over e-cars. Bicycles, even ones loaded with batteries, weigh less than their riders. Electric cars, in contrast, weigh many multiples as much as their drivers. Consequently, most of e-bikes’ battery charge can be spent moving the mass of the rider, but most of electric cars’ charge must be spent moving the bulk of the car itself. What’s more, part of e-bikes’ energy comes from leg muscles, again reducing the required battery power. In auto parlance, e-bikes have human-electric hybrid drives.
For these reasons, electric bikes are in the cat bird seat of electrified transportation at a time when many forces are aligned to speed electrification.
Technology Review has an article on "the beginnings of a marketable electric motorcycle" on The Isle Of Man, as electric motorbike manufacturers compete in the zero-emission version of the TT bike race - The Electric Acid Test.
The Isle of Man is a small British possession in the Irish Sea. Inland, a native breed of four-horned sheep graze in verdant fields. On the coasts, castles touch the sea. The Manx have their own (albeit dead) language, their own money, their own laws, and--tellingly for this story--no national speed limit. This quirk of governance makes the place a natural host to a bloody ritual that has taken place nearly every spring for a century: the Tourist Trophy. The TT is not a motorcycle race but the motorcycle race: the first, the most famous, and by far the deadliest.
It's also a party: 40,000 bikers invade the island determined to scare the wool off the sheep while screaming through the Snaefell Mountain Course, a winding circuit of public roads cordoned off for the event. The circuit climbs from sea level to 1,380 feet, snaking for almost 38 miles through 200-some turns on country roads that cut through village, hamlet, and farm. Much of the track is hemmed in by dry-stacked fieldstone walls topped by spectators drinking their pints. There is no safe place to crash. Racers die or are maimed every year.*
As in warfare, the carnage is accompanied by technological progress. Soichiro Honda came to the race in 1959 having declared five years earlier that it was time to challenge the West. Less than a decade later, his company won the world manufacturer's title in every class: 50cc, 125cc, 250cc, 350cc, and 500cc. Not long after that, the British motorcycle industry was itself conquered, wiped out by mismanagement and superior Japanese technology. Ironically, the technical advances that made racing bikes so fast led the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM), the sport's governing body, to decertify the race in 1976, calling it too dangerous. Thus, pros no longer ride the TT. However, the race's bloody reputation makes the TT, if anything, even more prestigious than FIM-sanctioned events. To compete in it, in the words of the legendary FIM rider Valentino Rossi, "you need to have two great balls."
This year, the Manx government added a futuristic new event to the June race schedule. The TTXGP, for "Tourist Trophy eXtreme Grand Prix," was billed as the first zero-emissions motorcycle race. While any technology could enter, as a practical matter zero emissions means electric. Even the FIM got on board, making the TTXGP the first FIM-approved TT race in over 30 years and the first officially sanctioned electric-motorcycle race ever. "It is either going to be the most important day in the next hundred years of motorcycling or a complete debacle," said Aaron Frank, an editor for Motorcyclist magazine who traveled from Milwaukee to watch the race. "But either way, it's worth watching."
As the day arrives, everyone watching knows that the TTXGP will be slower than the "real" motorcycle race, the TT, because the TTXGP is an energy-limited race. In effect, the "gas tank" of an electric bike is minuscule, so to win the TTXGP the bikers must mind their energy consumption. In contrast, the gas bikers in the TT run with their throttles wide open. However, batteries' energy density has been improving at a rate of about 8 percent a year, which means that even without any other technological progress, electric bikes should run head to head with gas in about 20 years. The TTXGP is intended to make the future arrive sooner. The winner will not just be the fastest in an esoteric class but the front-runner in the greater challenge ahead: creating an electric bike that can compete in the $50 billion world motorcycle market. In that sense, the TTXGP is the proving ground for the next Honda.
Twenty-two electric bikes show up to compete. While many of the entries are experimental one-offs from technical universities or obsessive hobbyists, three entrants are so-called factory teams: Brammo, Mission Motors, and MotoCzysz. All of them hail from the West Coast of the United States. Brammo is in Ashland, OR, Mission Motors in San Francisco, and MotoCzysz in Portland. And all are entering the consumer market with an electric bike. Brammo is set to sell its motorcycle off the floor at Best Buy: it's a $12,000 runabout with a top speed of 55 miles per hour. For the TTXGP, Brammo has upgraded almost every component in its bike to create two 100-mile-per-hour crotch rockets, both entered in the race. The Brammo racers are fast, light, and nimble but under-spec'd compared with what Mission and MotoCzysz trailer in: full-size race bikes heavy with batteries, capable of reaching 150 miles per hour. The Mission bike will sell for $69,000; the MotoCzysz will probably sell for slightly less.
Mission and MotoCzysz are both targeting the high-end superbike market, and both promise to ship products in the next year or two, but that is where the similarities end. Mission's charismatic young CEO, Forrest North, is a computer geek who likes to speculate on the future of software design: he fantasizes about a wheelie- popping autobalancing "Segway app" for a bike's control computer. (Though he hastens to say that Mission itself is not working on such an app.) MotoCzysz founder Michael Czysz is a designer--and his bike is a looker. Exposed battery packs protrude from each side, a fresh take on the naked-sportbike style of the insanely popular Ducati Monster. The packs are modular and swappable, and the bike is "green," Czysz explains, "because it's upgradable." Even Infield Capital's David Moll, one of the investors behind Mission Motors, is impressed when he sees the battery- as-engine design. "I've got a dog in this fight, but if that doesn't excite you," he says of the MotoCzysz entry, "then there's something wrong with you."
Brammo, Mission, and MotoCzysz are directly competing for the capital that's needed, in enormous quantity, to introduce a new vehicle to the American market. Brammo has the early lead in the money race: a $10 million investment from Best Buy's venture fund and Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital, as compared with Mission's $2 million in seed capital. Bringing up the rear is MotoCzysz, a company essentially funded out of Michael Czysz's back pocket. While both Mission and Brammo hope to win the TTXGP in order to generate publicity and thus orders, MotoCzysz needs to win, or at least place, in order to woo enough capital to enter the marketplace. It's anyone's race to win, of course, but in most motor sports, the factory teams with access to deep corporate pockets are the first to cross the finish line. Behind them come the privateers--scrappy dreamers and shade-tree mechanics who are short on resources but long on heart.
So it's all the more surprising that in the week before the race, a dark horse emerges, freaking out all the factory teams. The fastest bike in the TTXGP prelims--two qualifying runs around the island--turns out to be from Team Agni, a total unknown, a mere privateer. Millions of American research-and-development dollars find themselves chasing the tail of a no-money ratbike engineered in India. ...
Do you see any sign of an electric bicycle when you look at those pedals pictured above? That's the remarkable stealth of Gruber Assist, a $2,473 kit for any bicycle that gives you electric motor-assisted cycling on the sly. You can either retrofit an existing bike or get an entirely new bicycle from Gruber with the motor installed.
The pedal is just the tip of the iceberg — the motor and electronics are hidden inside the seat tube with the battery tucked away in a saddlebag, and it's controlled with a handlebar-mounted switch. Gruber Assist's 200-watt motor will deliver 100 watts of power to the rear wheels, and runs for between 45 minutes and 1.5 hours on a charge, depending on how much you pedal.
Electric bikes are so much fun, but they can look a little clunky. This is the most discreet electric bike configuration we've seen yet, because hey, it's almost invisible. It's so stealthy, an unscrupulous cyclist could almost slip one of these into a racing bike, unnoticed. Almost.
The next time you change a bike tire, think about upgrading your power as well. Scientists at MIT are testing a new power generation, storage and propulsion system known as the GreenWheel that will turn any pedal bicycle into an electric hog.
"Just take the wheel off, put a GreenWheel equipped wheel on in its place, plug it in and it should work just fine," said Ryan Chin, one of the GreenWheel designers. "The whole thing has been designed so all the parts except the throttle are enclosed in the wheel."
From the outside, the GreenWheel has the radius of a small dinner plate and is about 2 inches thick. Inside the aluminum frame sits the three major GreenWheel components: an electric generator, batteries and an electric motor.
For now, installing GreenWheel on your own does require a moderate level of technical knowledge or a trip to a bike shop. The GreenWheel can be installed on any bike frame or wheel size, but the original spokes have to be replaced with shorter spokes. Michael Chia-Liang Lin, a master's student at MIT developing the GreenWheel, called his parents in Taiwan, who own a bike shop, to figure out how to respoke the wheel.
Under its current configuration, a bike powered solely by a single GreenWheel (front, rear or both wheel can be equipped with a GreenWheel) has an estimated range of 25 miles. Pedaling the bike doubles the range under electric power, provided the rider isn't traveling at the nearly top speed of 30 miles an hour. The bike can be charged by pedaling or by plugging it into the electric grid.
A GreenWheel equipped bike is a smooth ride, as Discovery News found out during a recent afternoon test ride around MIT's campus. Turning the handle mounted throttle, like any motorcycle, just a few small degrees produces a noticeable increase in power and a light electric hum. The handle-mounted throttle is connected wirelessly to the electric motor in the wheel.
The GreenWheel is also durable. The team estimates its range at 40,000 miles, or about eight years work of travel at an estimated 20 miles per business day.
"You'll have to replace the bike before you replace the batteries," Lin told Discovery News.
The SMH reports that while Honda is giving up on formula 1 racing, it is expanding into electric motorbikes and lithium-ion battery production - Honda to build electric motorcycle.
The Japanese car maker Honda has announced that it will develop an electric motorcycle as part of its program to develop more efficient vehicles with lower emissions over the next two years. Details of the plans have not been revealed yet, but the motorcycle is expected to go on sale in 2010. ...
Honda earlier took the motor sport world by surprise by withdrawing from Formula 1 racing as part of its cost-cutting measures in response to the sharp downturn in sales.
In another development, the car maker said it had reached an agreement with GS Yuasa Corporation on a joint venture in manufacturing and selling high-performance lithium-ion batteries for the next generation of hybrid vehicles. Honda is considering adapting hybrid technology for medium and premium class models.
If riding your Segway around town seems too pedestrian, how about a little one wheeled fun? The concept's similar with Focus Design's $1,500 SBU--for self-balancing unicycle. Like the Segway you nuance your way around.
"The rider controls the speed by leaning forward or backward to speed up or stop. There is no need to pedal, in fact there are no crank arms, just foot rests. The SBU keeps upright by utilizing advanced electronics including accelerometers and gyroscopes with sophisticated balancing algorithms. It's truly an experience like no other. "
Though the photo makes it look like the SBU is coin operated, it's really your own electric powered vehicle. Able to run down pedestrians at a speedy 8.5 mph the SBU will keep on going for up to 12 miles on a charge. Since it's reasonably light at 25 pounds, you can carry it with you once you arrive at your destination.
Here's my favorite part from the FAQ.
"It's about half as easy as riding a conventional unicycle. The average user needs about two hours of practice before he/she can have a decent ride. The SBU is a rider-assist machine, a combination of the rider's balance and SBU control."
Earth2Tech reports that EEStor has signed another customer for its ultracapacitor technology, an electric bike manufacturer - EEStor to Super Charge Electric Bikes.
We still haven’t seen exactly how secretive EEStor’s ambiguously named Electrical Energy Storage Unit (EESU) works, but the Cedar Park, Texas-based startup has been racking up the technology partners. Light Electric Vehicles Company (LightEVs) says it has signed an exclusive agreement with EEStor to use the EESU in two- and three-wheeled vehicles. This follows partnerships with military-industrial giant Lockheed Martin and electric car maker ZENN. EEStor is aiming to start commercial production of its EESUs sometime in 2009, though its not clear which partners will get first dibs.
According to the Eugene, Ore.-based LightEV’s website, it is working on electric propulsion systems for electric bicycles, scooters, motorcycles, and three-wheeled vehicles, which will be built in partnership with existing manufacturers and under its own brands. John Stephens, Executive Vice President, said in the release that LightEVs plans to use EEStor’s technology to make an electric bicycle with a 100 mile range and is considering developing a three-wheel, two-passenger electric vehicle with a range of up to 500 miles on a single charge and a top speed of 85 mph. Impressive sounding, but we’re still waiting for details on how the technology exactly works and performs.
LightEVs describes EEStor’s technology as a “multilayered barium titanate ceramic capacitor,” and the company has said its units are based on “ultra capacitor architecture.” EEStor expects its technology to provide 10 times the energy of lead-acid batteries at one tenth the weight and half the price.
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