electric Fun Motion

YikeBike, love at first sight

2011-01-10T21:51:00.000+01:00

Another very interesting concept. Damn interesting

Do you kike it?. No, I don't, I LOVE it

Gocycle by Karbon Kinetics

2010-12-07T16:41:00.000+01:00

Another interesting product. This time from London, UK.

A nice pedelec concept thought to avoid unpleasant bike experiences:

Arrive to work hot and sweety. Obviously is an electric assisted bike, with a 250W engine and 173Wh batteries
Having to change from bike to office clothing. ¿?
Getting dirty chain grass on the pants. Protected, maintenance free chain
Fixing a messy flat tyre. Easy to replace, pitstop style wheel replacement
Having it being stolen. Patent pending integrated locking.

And everything fitted on a beatiful infected magnesium frame on white or black colors. Cute!

More LEV concepts

2010-11-15T16:44:00.000+01:00

Conway E-Rider electric mountain bike:

More info here: http://www.gizmag.com/conway-e-rider-electric-mountain-bike/16305/

KTM eGNITION:

More info here: http://www.ecofriend.org/entry/ktm-egnition-bike-assists-pedaling-with-a-1000w-electric-motor/

3-Element eSpire:

More info here: http://3-element.com/blog/?page_id=1468&lang=en-us

Stealth Electric Bikes. Bomber:

More info here: http://www.stealthelectricbikes.com/bomber/bomber.html

M-55 Bike:

More info here: http://www.m55-bike.com/en/m55-bike-models/the-beast

Yes M55, yes

2010-11-08T14:43:00.002+01:00

Pics from Laguna Seca

2010-07-25T08:58:00.001+02:00

Just some photos directly from Laguna Seca.

Look a differences at the finishing level from the MotoCsysz from the rest ... light years

Track Testing with MotoCzysz

2010-07-13T11:11:00.002+02:00

Nice info from Jensen Beeler from Asphalt&Rubber

Over the long weekend, Asphalt & Rubber got the chance to swing by Portland International Raceway for MotoCzysz’s first track test with the 2010 E1pc electric race bike. It’s hard to believe, but this was Michael Czysz’s first time riding his creation on the track. The session was prompted by Czysz’s need to get ready to race the E1pc at the up-coming e-Power Championship race at Laguna Seca. Czysz had hinted to us several months ago that he might pilot the electric race bike at Seca, and now has confirmed that intention to race the bike himself.

Getting to tag along during the new E1pc’s first actual track test, we got to see how the 2010 MotoCzysz E1pc compared to ICE track bikes while lapping at PIR.

More at the original post

Fun at the Quantyaparx

2010-05-18T19:45:00.000+02:00

Quantyaparx Friends Race from Carles Carrera on Vimeo.

The Big Four and electric motorcycles

2010-05-07T10:58:00.000+02:00

Why aren’t the Big Four filling the market with electric motorcycles?. Because the market and the technology is not ready. Full stop.

At least not ready enough for their requirements.

They always do the same, they spot the niche, develop the prototypes, watch the competitors, evolve the prototypes, and when they are ready (reasurring the market potential is big enough, and that the motorcycles are well developed), they actually launch massively their models and get the whole pie. Then the rest start to play catch up, and because of the delayed start we never catch them. That’s an old story.

So, does this means there is no need to do anything,?. Just the opposite. We have a new opportunity, a big opportunity to help create and mould the market, a new market in which if we work hard, fast and well, maybe this time, the Big Four won’t be Big.

Mark your calendar

2010-04-01T19:00:00.002+02:00

Following a note from egrandprix.com, I'm very pleased to have this conference on my hometown: Barcelona:

EMXGP will be launched in October 2010 within the city of BARCELONA!

After extensive research conducted by EMXGP, we are pleased to be able to share with you the revised date and venue for the launch of EMXGP 2010. Barcelona will host EMXGP 2010 on October 16th/17th. This date allows teams to have more development and practise time before taking the roads and it delivers on our promise to build a city road race for zero carbon vehicles to demonstrate going green doesn't mean racing slow! This exciting event will herald a new start for car racing and will kick off a week of activities surrounding sustainable technological development both on and off the road.

EMXGP will be complemented with a Zero Carbon Transport Conference hosted in Barcelona on October 19th/20th to explore the various dimensions of our industry and more. This is will be unique global gathering of experts, enthusiasts and industry to share ideas, explore solutions and make new partners. Building bridges between international communities to share ideas and debate potential solutions to the looming energy crisis as well as examine developments that could affect how we all live.

The final event will be the TTXGP Grand Final in Albacete on Oct 23rd/24th. This rounds off 9 days of intense, epic and tangible racing for the future, both on and off the track.

So there we have it, eGrandPrix Spain 2010, is set to be the largest gathering in motorsport history for zero carbon racing. eGrandPrix Spain 2010 is the platform to show what the very best of motorsport can do in delivering meaningful and timely solutions to the challenges we face both as an industry and as contributors to the environment.

Full details of the conference, ticketing, sponsorship opportunities will be announced shortly. The rules will be published shortly but like the TTXGP, they will be focused on safety and will allow innovation and the freedom to innovate and create the best racing experience as possible.

More details will be forthcoming over the coming days and week as we co-ordinate with our delivery partners, but we are proud to let you have an invitation to be part of the next chapter of motorsport. You will not want to miss this party.

EMXGP 2010, October 16/17, 2010 Barcelona - Spain

Zero Carbon Conference 2010, October 19/20, 2010 Barcelona - Spain

TTXGP Grand Final/UEM 2010, October 23/24, 2010 Albacete – Spain

MotoCzysz Electric D1g1tal Dr1ve

2010-03-18T19:00:00.000+01:00

Very interesting the proposal of MotoCzysz showed at Asphalt&Rubber, actually is the same concept I belive in. Medium and small sized motorcycle manufacturers, infact the whole world apart from the Big Four, and maybe BMW, do not need to invest lots of time and money developing their own propietary electric powertrain … at least for the moment, until the technology reaches maturity.

It’s a similar approach used for the GPR EV.

The motor is a powerful one, they declare 100hp in continous mode … depending on the real application, or best said, race duration, it’s maybe too -or unnecesary-, powerful. How many KWh do you need to store in your battery pack to get all those “horses” to the ground during the whole race?

Apart form that, considering it’s liquid cooled it’s also quite light with it’s 35Kg.

The battery pack it’s beatifully designed, and I should say, it’s the first battery pack that could appeal the standard motorcycle user. Beatiful design. With all the 8 batteries connected in parallel to generate the incredible amount of 240V, and considering all the monitoring systems on each individual pack, the weight figure it’s also very good on 63,5Kg

But what I can’t understand is the layout of the full motorcycle showed on the article: I should me missing something, and if someone realises it, I will appreciate the feedback:

¿Is the battery pack a stressed member of the frame?. It should be, based on the layout, and that would be a big mistake

¿Does the motor fits into the swingarm?. That would be a huge swingarm.

¿Does it makes sense building a very stiff steering tube, while creating a extremely flexible-weak point on the top-rear corner of the battery pack?

For sure the concept it’s not finished and we will hear more from them, but the conclussion is that they seem the most advanced team for the coming race season … what I do not know is if they are the most advanced from a technical point of view or from a marketing point of view …

EV Batteries

2010-03-11T19:00:00.000+01:00

In this post I will introduce the importance of the batteries, it’s functions, challenges and will present what I think is a great breakthrough, the UBM of DPS.

The batteries are the heart of the electric vehicle, and have some tough requirements to deal with:

They should addapt as much as possible to the vehicles requirements in terms of shape, volume and mass
They should have a maintenance cost as low as possible
They should be safe for the whole vehicle life: temperature must be controlled to avoid overheating, overcharging or undercharging must be controlled and crash protection of any single cell must be prevented
They should communicate accordingly with the motor controller giving a receiving information about current, temperarute, voltage, errors, history, etc…

Battery development for a new project of vehicle with it’s own peculiarities is very time and cost consuming, so as I wrote in previous posts, there is no reason in re-inventing the wheel for every new project. Nobody rethinks the combustion engine principles at every new motorcycle concept. Why doing that with batteries?. Because development is in a early stage you must answer. OK, maybe, but I won’t take that path, and will go for a standard solution, off-the-shelf.

And here is where DPS appears with it’s UMB technology, as a partner in the GPR EV project.

The UBM, is a Unit Battery Module, formed by battery cells of Lithoum or Nano-lithium which integrates in a single unit the thermal management system, universal interface to control systems, integration and calibration software tool, tracking and memorization of battery operaton and a simple connection in serial or parallel to build a battery pack with the desired units.

This is a huge breakthrough, with a lot of advantages:

Impact protection at UBM level. In case of a impact only one UBM can be damaged so you don’t need to replace the whole battery pack.
The overcharge protection is again at UBM level, not at full battery pack level
The isolated cells allow for problem isolation. Failed cells are separeted from the others
Since the battery pack is formed by UBM’s, and the UBM’s of battery cells with separators, the assembly is at UBM level and more standarized
Obviously, if something fails, it fails a UBM module, not at battery pack level.

Interview Justus Hagen from Vema Gmbh

2010-03-04T19:00:00.002+01:00

Let’s start introducing Justus, he is the General Manager of Vema Gmbh , and is head also of the “DPS Drive-train Campus for Electric Vehicles” which means the possibility to codevelop with them the whole electric powertrain (batteries, controller, motor) the same way you can codevelop an ICE and buy it to build your own vehicle.

Yes, co-develop or one-stop development by one party is all possible. Usually the provider of the most expensive and most difficult part of the drive-train takes the lead in pooling partners together. This is the battery system integration (or drive train integration) company. It’s very rare or not evidenced that other off-the shelf component makers would lead the co-development coalition, such as motor, charger or controller leading the effort to build the entire drive-system. In DPS’s case, we’re so happen to have the “integration ready” lithium battery building blocks that make integration with other components, much faster and easier and less costly, when comparing with conventional integration methods widely used today.

Efmotion.com : Justus, thanks for your quick introduction of Vema, but can we start by presenting yourself for the efmotion.com audience?.

Justus: Yes, sure, I am the head of DPS Europe operations which will manage the European market development and product services for DPS. My background is automotive OEM related for my entire businesslife. Therefore our European team is all set to understand and meet professional customer expectation on both - the product and the product integration side

E: Can you describe a little better and with your own words what the “Drive-train Campus for Electric Vehicles” means?.

J: In my mind, this has two-fold meaning: 1.) an educational forum for different drive-train “component makers” to see how a group of partners put a electric drive system together in a relatively short time ( 8 weeks?); 2.) DPS’s battery system plays a time saving role as it’s designed for the ease of integration with a platform approach in mind. This means: with several lines of products, we can scale to meet customer’s varying needs.

E: Are you concentrated on motorcycles or are you also focused on cars and other means of mobiblity vehicles?.

J: Both. Our immediate effort for generating business and revenues are in two-wheel and ATV sectors. Our effort in automotive sector reflects our long term experience and technical knowledge. We are in joint developments with auto makers to position ourselves for the eventual explosive growth of the EVs, PHEVs.

E. But let’s talk about motorcycles and other “fun to ride” motion concepts that is the main subject of efmotion.com. What is your business approach regarding motorcycles?.

J: Our business in motorcycle addresses two segments: specialty (sports) vehicles and mass produced vehicles. They have two different user base and two different price points. They should be branded differently based on the end users. This will demand us to develop different lines of product with different features to serve these two sectors. So far, our product is an overkill, technically, for the mass market motorcycles. We will develop such versions of products for mass market use. Due to the large volume in the mass market sector, we hope to use the mass market to support the specialty market which has limited volume with much smaller customer base.

E. You know that my vision of the current e-motorcycle business is to develop top performance motorcycle with the higher fun factor possible. What are the current limiting factors of e-motorycles for competing face to face with ICE motorcycles?.

J: Battery power and cost; and robust management system using IGBT to enable the drive system to cope with varying conditions.

E. And when do you believe we can buy an electric powertrain with similiar power/weight ratio to the actual high performance ICE powertrains?

J: Give us the spec, so we talk about this more specifically. It could be this year or later based on your spec. If the cost is not a top consideration, it is very possible to find the right power-train.

E: I know you agree with my vision, but only in part, because I think you believe also in commuting motorcycles and scooters. Feel free to explain us a little bit about it.

J: The disruptive part of DPS’s technology is “integrated battery platform” technology models; this enables us to serve a wide range of customer bases without reinventing the core technology – the system integration and control technology. We need to use this advantage to “aggregate volumes” from different customers and vehicle sectors to reduce the overall costs for each customer; also allow us to stay in business in this early stage of the electrification of transportation. Economically, we cannot afford to only build sports motorcycles as these are low volume items. Our corporate mission is to change the world by changing the way how people move around and have fun. These are two different but equally important aspects of changing the world. It’s a life style change toward sustainably doing the things people love to do.

E: I don’t know if this happens to you, to me it happens always: when I start to talk to people from outside the industry about electric motorcycles, always, I repeat always, someone has known someone that knows some other one that has showed them an incredible battery that fits in his hand, only a little bigger thar our cellulat battery. I always say them this is sci-fi, and that maybe one day we will see this technology but that for the moment we are ages away. Do you have a hint on how many “ages away”?

J: These batteries usually are in the labs, if they really exist at all. If they are already here, why it takes someone who knows someone and then knows someone who have seen it? Why cannot this person bring you to see it and to hold it in your hands and to put on your motorcycle to try it? As far as we know, such tiny form of a battery is for different device, usually for consumer products and power tools; not for transportation or high power density racing motorcycles. Anything is possible, this small form of battery could happen in our life time, but when in our life time it can be truly affordable and meet all requirements of a racing motorcycle is more likely decades away

Quantya Test at Quantyaparx

2010-02-25T19:00:00.026+01:00

Nice test at the Quantyaparx of Sant Feliu de Codines, Barcelona, ran by Lluís Auroux.

We had a nice conversation with Lluís on the Quantya bike, the Quantyaparx, electric motorcycles in general, components, design and business that began to fade away with the cool of the evening, so we decided to stop the conversation and go to the test for a quick 20 minutes session.

Once sat on the motorcycle, it feels quite good, I would say a cross between a 125 enduro, and a downhill mountainbike, but I should say the style, aesthetics, and mechanical components should improve, specially if you consider, that you’re paying around 9.000€ for the vehicle. The potential customer, like it or not, would compare what he can get out from 9.000 of his hard earned euros investing on a ICE motorcycle and on a Quantya.

Once understood the concept of this vehicle, and when starting to move it with the power off, it gives you a hint about what is going to come: a very light and fun motorcycle, specially at a track builded milimetrically for the Quantya as this Quantyaparx is.

Once the switch is on, it's time to get used to the lack of brake pedal, as both brake levers are on the handlebar, and to the lack of gears. You should take a lap or two to familiarise also to a tight track like this one, and to the slippery conditions of the day, with all the track still damp from the heavy rains of the day before. But from the second lap, when you ask the bike to start delivering what it has in his batteries, it does!!. surprising you with it's extrem agility and the ability to help you turn powersliding the rear wheel.

The acceleration, thanks to the nice torque figures characteristic of electric vehicles is very good and the sensation of speed that it delivers it's really good fun. The motor performance, as Lluís remember us, it's limited at about 70% for the use at the track, and because of that when you start riding as it should be: letting the bike run on the corners without losing too much momentum, you can feel the speed limited at the next straight.

I'm really bad out of the tarmac, and feel like a fish out of water on a motocross track like this one, and partly because of that, partly beacuse of the tension of the test, I started to get pumping forearms just 10 minutes on the test, which means I'm too tense, but at the same time, that this small motorcycle it's really fun.

A little pause to comment with Lluís and back at the action for ten minutes more of pure riding pleasure at this muddy track attached to the village, otherwise impossible if these motorcycles were powered by an internal combustion engine.

Watching the motorcycle laping from the outside, and rode by a good rider, it's quite fast and seems really small, even smaller than a 50cc motorcycle.

In conclussion, a fun motorcycle, and a nice product that is in the verge of starting to be an interesting option to buy, that needs to improve mechanically in parallel with the natural improvement of electric powertrains and the reduction in cost of batteries to start to be attractive to current ICE motorcycles customers and why not, new customers from outside the current motorcycle market. It’s strange, but what I like the most of the Quantya is at the same time it’s weakest point frome a possible customer point of view: it’s simplicity.

Well done Quantya!.

The importance of the mechanical platform in electric motorcycle development

2010-02-18T19:00:00.002+01:00

Electric motorycles are too expensive for the moment, due to the high cost of new technologies that have not reached it’s maturity, and so, have not reached mass production and economy of scale. So what the majority of electric motorcycle manufacturers do is to use a cheap mechanical platform to compensate, what I think is a mistake. A big one.

Let’s develop a little bit my reasoning.
A high performance electric road racer motorcycle, capable of being at the front at any electric racing series around 20-30 minutes with top of the range mechanical components could cost around (*) 20.000 € to give you a round figure. These 20.000 € are composed by around 17.500 € for the electric powertrain and 2.500 € for the mechanical platform.

Or putting it in percentage to let it be clearer:

12,5% for the mechanical platform
87,5% for the electric powertrain (batteries+controller+motor+wiring+)

The electric powertrain costs are there and won’t change for a quite a long time, due to the lack of economy of scale. The mechanical platform costs can be reduced applying simpler, less developed, and lower quality components, and that’s a trap. A dangerous trap to avoid.

If you fall in that trap you will have a 19.000 € motorcycle, instead of a 20.000 € one. That’s 1.000 € less, quite a lot in euros you may think, but only a 5% lower in percentage.

Your customer (if you get one) will have a state of the art electric powertrain under his butt, but he will never realise it because the bike will feel cheap, ugly, shabby, simple and will give him poor performance, and will not help him to believe he’s a good rider, and even will not be fun to ride.

In conclusion, increasing the general quality and performance of your motorcycle through a better mechanical platform, won’t increase the total cost as much as increases the perceived value for the end customer.

If we talk about a simpler motorcycle, a downgraded version of the previous example, the cost(*) would be around 7.500 €, composed by around 6.300 € for the electric powertrain and 1.200 € for the mechanical platform, or putting into percentages, 16% for the mechanical platform and 84% for the electric powertrain. The percentages are more or less the same but you should take into account that as higher the total cost, lower ther percentage of the cost due to the mechanical platform, and as lower the total cost, higher the percentage of the cost due to the mechanical platform. See graphic.

Don’t you believe you need state of the art mechanical components as well as you neeed state of the art electric components?. And don’t you believe you need a team of mechanical engineers as good as your team of electrical engineers?. Maybe, I’m wrong. In the end, I’m only a mechanical engineer with way less experience in EV motorcycles than in ICE motorcycles.

Please, let me know what do you think?

* Industrial cost, considering short series of 20 bikes a year

Sizing Formulas and assumptions. EV Theory III

2010-02-11T19:00:00.002+01:00

The sizing process is not an easy one, but let’s use a little bit of common sense:

Face it, your EV will not be the world’s first EV, so don’t be stupid and have a look at similar EV performance figures and technical data. If the performance and data are given on a test at a magazine article, much better than relying on the manufacturer figures. And your EV, will be generally inspired on a similar internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle, from which you can extract performance figures and technical data. As with EV, is better to get the data from a test than from the manufacturer figures. That’s benchmarking.

From both sources you can get important reference data regardig power necessary to drive at a determined speed, voltages, motor power, ranges, accelerations and so on.

As any sizing method, wathever is economical budgeting or dam engineering you have to use a top-down method, and a bottom-up method and check both results are similar. The benhmarking in the previous paragraphs is a top-down method. For the bottom-up method you can use the sizing theory in the previous post EV Theory post combined with the following formulas and assumptions.

As a rule of thumb, a vehicle requires between 45 and 95 Watt-hours per Kilometer. The lighter the vehicle the lower this number. For a light electric motorcycle we can consider 55 Watt-hours per Kilometer. So if you want a 100 Km range, you will need a 5,5 Kwh battery pack.
To get the Range in Km there is a known formula: Range (Km) = 250 * Capacity (KWh) / m (Kg) ^ 0,6. That I guess is more adequated for a car than for a motorcycle, or what is the same, it will give you a Wh/Km ratio nearer to 95 than to 45. So for a motorcycle I would use: Range (Km) = 350 * Capacity (KWh) / m (Kg) ^ 0,6. So a 5,5 Kw motorcycle, that would weight approximately 140 Kg, will travel 100 Km.
To determine Power of a vehicle: Power (W) = [mass (Kg) * 9,8 * velocity (m/s) * rolling resistance] + [0,6465 * Coeficient of Drag * Area (m^2) * Velocity (m/s)^3]. The rolling resistance of a motorcycle tire is about 0,006. Coefficient of Drag of a motorcycle is between 0,5 and 1,0, but we can consider 0,65. The frontal area considers de rider. As a rule of thumb and if you don’t have any reference data you can multiply the vehicle width per the total motorcycle height including the rider and per 0,7, that will give you arround 0,45 for a light vehicle. If we want to wonder the Power needed to move this vehicle, of 140 Kg as in the previous calculations at a speed of 100 Km/h, we get around 5,6 KW or 7,6 CV.
If you want this vehicle to travel for an hour, you will need a 5,6*1= 5,6 KWh battery pack, similar of the rule of thumb at point number 1.
So we have an electric motorcycle with a battery pack of 5,6 KWh, that will weight around 140 Kg, at 100 Km/h during an hour traveling 100 Km.

And what would cost that battery pack?. Ummm … great question, my references now for high tech lithium batteries and for short series of around 40 battery packs are between 1.000 and 1.800 USD per Kwh. So between 5.600 USD and 10.000 USD … not bad.

Sizing an EV. EV Theory II

2010-02-04T19:00:00.002+01:00

The main & most difficult & most critical step when developing an EV is sizing the battery pack.

Let’s start with the basics. The battery pack energy, depends on top speed, range and acceleration desired for your EV. You can start from wherever you want.
The top speed is greatly influenced by the vehicle power, rolling resistance and aerodynamics, and electrically-wise is related to voltage. The more voltage you have, the more top speed you will have, so you have to add as much batteries in series as you can to have a great amount of Voltage. That’s great and easy. No?, but you’re limited by the motor Voltage requirements.

The range depends on the amount of energy stored at the battery pack and the efficiency of this battery pack. So if you have preselected the Voltage neeed in step 1, and when defining the range, you have preselected Amp-hours, you can select the theoretical battery pack capacity. And I repeat, theoretical battery pack, because batteries as everything in life are not 100% effective, and you must take into account two different effects that would make you upgrade your battery pack.

First of all the Depth of Discharge, or minimum percentage of charge allowed by a battery without damaging it. You know, batteries, don’t like being completely discharged. As a rule of thumb, you can assume a 20% Depth of Discharge, so you will only use the 80% of the energy stored, or what is the same, you have to multiply your theoretical battery pack per 1,25. Secondly there is the Peukert effect that takes into account that the faster the use of the energy, the less you will get in the end. For lithium batteries you can consider a 1,05 factor as a rule of thumb or the factor that the batterie’s manufacturer gives to you. So after all, your theoretical battery pack capacity, must be multiplied by 1,25*1,05 = 1,31.

The acceleration of an EV is governed by the ratio of Power versus Weight, so to get the most acceleration possible you have to increase as much as possible the EV power (through a more powerful electric motor that will need more energy stored at the battery pack), and to lower as much as possible the Total Weight of the vehicle. Adding a bigger battery pack adds weight, so as you can see all the sizing method is not an easy one, and for from linear.

Before getting desperate, wait for the next EV Theory post: Formulas and assumptions.

electric Trikke

2010-01-29T18:42:00.000+01:00

It seems a fun to ride concept: three wheels, motorized front wheel, dual rear brakes.

And they declare around 25 Km/h and 19 Km range.

An interesting concept to test. http://www.trikke.com/

Electricity for Non-Electricians. EV Theory I

2010-01-26T19:00:00.000+01:00

In this post I will introduce the basic formulas in order to understand a little better how EV works, and I will do it for non-electricians or mechanical guys like me.

One of the first figures you check in an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle in order to check its fun factor is power, horsepower. Power is waht gives acceleration and what maintains a vehicle at a given velocity. In EV the electric power is measured in Watts, that can be "converted" into horsepower dividing KW by 0,736, so 10 KW are about 13,6 HP.

Electric power (Watts) is the factor of Current (Amperes) x Voltage (Volts). So we have the very first formula: Power = Current * Voltage

Then we have, energy, that gives an EV range of motion, which is measured in Wh, or watt-hour, that is the factor of voltage (V) per current (A) per time (t) . So we have the second formula: Energy = Current * Voltage * time. And that energy is stored at the batteries of the EV as chemical energy.

At the diyelectricar.com wiki they describe all these parameters with an analogy. the analogy of water:

Voltage is defined as difference of potential and is the "force" that moves electrons through the wire. In the water analogy, voltage is analogous to water presure in a pipe.

Amperage is defined as the flow of electrons in a wire. In the water analogy, amperage represents water's flow rate through the pipe.

Increasing voltage (water pressure in the pipe), increases current (electron) flow.

Power, or watts, are analogous to the energy or power like water in a watermill. If the same volume (Amp) of water falls from a higher fall (Volt), it will produce more power than the same volume water from a lower fall.

To measure the total power (m3) delivered, you specify the power level and for how long (kilowatt-hours) or total energy consumed.

Notice also that if you increase the pressure in the pipe (or voltage in the wire), the flow rate (current) will increase. Therefore, your power also increases.

The development of electric motorcycles (Business approach)

2010-01-21T19:00:00.013+01:00

Current production electric motorcycles as Quantya, Brammo, Vectrix or Zero, motorcycles that I love for being pioneers, have in my opnion two recurrent problems.

They have a poorly developed mechanical platform, I mean all of them have been developed my electric experts without insight on motorcycle development, so they are heavy, or awful or difficult to ride or even worse, not fun to ride.
On the other side, all the electric components are not developed as a whole, and although all of these companies are ran by experts on batteries, controllers and so on, I think they have lots of problems with all the components talking each other: the controller must talk to the batteries and the motor to tell them what to do and how to do it. And that’s not easy. In fact, generally the controller and the batteries don't talk to each other at all.

So, what any standard motorcycle company has to do is to treat the batteries+motor+controller the same way it treats the engine+airbox+EFI:

a) To develop it internally with lots of effort, money and problems. As big manufacturers of traditional motorcycles do, specially with new models.

b) To let the batteries+motor+controller work to be done by experts as a whole. As medium manufacturers of traditional motorcycles do, specially with smaller motorcycles.

An option b is what we took when developing the GPR EV ,that was presented at this past EICMA show, from scratch in under 3 months: we took our expertise and an existing platform to integrate the batteries+motor+controller from Vema-Vogt-Perm-Sevcon-DPS and show the world what is possible to do.

And what the hell is Vema-Vogt-Perm-Sevcon-DPS? They are a group of companies working together to integrate it’s own world class product into a world class drivetrain. DPS is in charge of the batteries, Sevcon is in charge of the controller, Perm for the motor, Vogt for the engineering and Vema for the integration and coordination. And it proved to be a winning team.

Charge documentary

2010-01-19T19:00:00.000+01:00

A documentary to follow: http://www.chargemovie.com/ a documentary about our passion. The fastest, cleanest, motorcycles on earth:

Electric vehicle basics

2010-01-15T08:33:00.001+01:00

Why starting to develop Electric Vehicles?

Because it's a necessity from a political point fo view
Because customers are more and more aware of the environment
Because of the great potential of power vs. weight ratio. Traditional parts as the frame could be completely redesigned as common problems as engine vibration dissapear.
Because of reduced greenhouse gases. It means political, legislative and competitive advantages.
Because of its mechanical reliability. Electric vehicles have far less moving pars, and it means they have far less less potential problems.
Because its mechanical simplicity. Again less parts means electric vehicles are easier to develop, easier to test, easier to manufature, ans easier to repair.

And why specifically motorcycles?

Because they are fun to ride (Our blog motto)
Because they are simpler to develop than cars
Because the reduced cost makes easier to introduce new technology
And again because mechanical reliability and mechanical simplicity

Which are today's limiting problems?

Battery capacity
Battery security (they can explode if overheated)

My electric motorcycle concept

2010-01-07T17:38:00.001+01:00

My theory about the electric vehicle concept with the biggest market potential:

I do not believe in scooters as the vehicle to start developing electric motorcycles. I believe in the great potential of top performance electric motorcycles both as a showroom for technology and as a business model.

Post originally published at http://www.carlescarrera.com/ on november 7th.

Welcome

2010-01-04T17:08:00.000+01:00

Today a new blog starts in the era of blogging, between millions of blogs. A blog called "Electric Fun Motion" or simply efmotion.com, a blog about Electric, and Fun to ride Motion Concepts.

I'm a Project Manager and Mechanical Engineer, and have been working on the motorcycle industry for a long time, and I think that Electric vehicles are the only future of the industry, even more are the near present of sustainable mobility.

At the same time I think the passion, and fun to ride aspect of high performance motorcycles, and other fun vehicles will be the determining factor for the green revolution.

You are welcome

E-N-J-O-Y