ElectricMotorcycleForum.com
Makes And Models => Zero Motorcycles Forum | 2012 and older => Topic started by: dkw12002 on December 20, 2012, 05:55:52 AM
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There is a good article showing a 2013 Zero S and talking about what it will take for widespread acceptance of electric motorcycles and cars in the Jan edition of Motorcycle Consumer News. The gist of it is that range and cost are the two big problems. Cost could be expected to come down with higher sales volume. Range? It's not likely to get to 300 miles any time soon. The solution (which has been discussed here on the forum) is a battery exchange where you trade in your dying battery for a recharged one at the gas station. Since you don't actually buy the battery with the bike, the cost for the electric motorcycle will be less. Then the article mentioned how batteries would have to be standardized and dispensed automatically due to the weight. I guess you would put the battery on your credit card to make sure you didn't abscond with it, kind of like Red Box.
The lead article also interesting but not directly related to electric motorcycles concerned Brazil and their energy independence using hydrous ethanol and special cars AND motorcycles. Honda and Yamaha both make motorcycles that run on the stuff, and they put special fuel injection that senses the amount of ethanol in the fuel since that varies for 18% to much higher. The ethanol in our cars in anhydrous which is apparently much harder and expensive to make from corn. Brazil uses sugar cane. Good article.
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There is a good article showing a 2013 Zero S and talking about what it will take for widespread acceptance of electric motorcycles and cars in the Jan edition of Motorcycle Consumer News. The gist of it is that range and cost are the two big problems. Cost could be expected to come down with higher sales volume. Range? It's not likely to get to 300 miles any time soon. The solution (which has been discussed here on the forum) is a battery exchange where you trade in your dying battery for a recharged one at the gas station. Since you don't actually buy the battery with the bike, the cost for the electric motorcycle will be less. Then the article mentioned how batteries would have to be standardized and dispensed automatically due to the weight. I guess you would put the battery on your credit card to make sure you didn't abscond with it, kind of like Red Box.
The lead article also interesting but not directly related to electric motorcycles concerned Brazil and their energy independence using hydrous ethanol and special cars AND motorcycles. Honda and Yamaha both make motorcycles that run on the stuff, and they put special fuel injection that senses the amount of ethanol in the fuel since that varies for 18% to much higher. The ethanol in our cars in anhydrous which is apparently much harder and expensive to make from corn. Brazil uses sugar cane. Good article.
Never once have I had a motorcycle that had a range over 200 miles on a tank. Not sure why the need for 300 on one. With zero now offering chademo that brings any of there bikes charge time down to 1 hour (cell limited in this case). So many cells out there can do 30 min charges with little problem already. It will come down to getting the nice balance of power, weight, costs, and cycle life that matches the target market.
Honestly both the new Brammo and most of the Zero line would take care of a HUGE part of my riding. Since I almost never just have 1 bike anyways I may keep my ICE for a little longer for my long trips. But that will become a non issue in just a couple more years.
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Right. I think the point was that as it stands with so few places to charge you actually need MORE range with an electric bike cause you are likely going to have to get through the whole day and re-charge at home whereas an ice bike can stop at any service station to refill, no worries. Once they have re-charged batteries available at service stations, you won't need to get a long range. The article was talking about electric cars as well. I think he is absolutely right about this. People have to be able to take their electric bikes on trips without range anxiety and trying to find a place to re-charge. Service stations make the most sense.
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swap battery tech is same old hydrogen power story, its fear uncertainty and doubt, it basicly lets wait for infrasturture before buying EV
when will it happen, usual answer for hydrogen is 5 to 10 years. I thinks this is just stalling talk.
Petrol / Gas / Fuel industry dont want you charging at home, and these swap battery packs will only be charged by them.
No EV car or Bikes are promoting swap batteries, they know for best weight saving and range, battery pack has to be integrated well in the vechicle at design stage, build product around battery pack. Also removable battery packs will need to be heavier and bulkier for safety and weather sealing and electical saftey.
I think the best idea for extended range will be an tow behind trailer, you hire as needed, gives you range , and when at destination can be removed and bike car used as normal.
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Well I will be more than happy with our 150+ mile, 1 hour or less (with chademo) charge time. I will be able to ride from Washington to Southern California with no problem on electric. Sure it will be a slightly longer trip but in some ways i'm looking forward to seeing what new adventure it will bring.
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In my opinion, I don't think that battery swapping is going to work. Every manufacturer has a different battery design and the cost of infrastructure would be too great to be workable. I think the most likely option would be for existing gas stations to offer fast charging stations and for the manufacturers to standardize their charging systems and devices.
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Agree wrt battery swapping.. there's no consensus among manufacturers, even with very similar design goals eg Brammo and Zero .. and unless everyone throws their weight behind One Standard Battery Format, then the entire thing is non-viable.
I wish A Better Place all the luck in the world.. battery swaps definitely solve the range issue, providing a swap station is nearby .. but the logistics seem unfavorable. Maybe it could work in an idealized top-down managed society (or company, for example), but unlikely to be a viable solution in the real world.
A flow battery with an electrolyte fluid might work better, as the flow fluid should be usable regardless of size or voltage of the battery. MIT's Cambridge Crude is supposed to have a prototype in 2013. We'll see how well this works.. but it has promise. It would also solve the sudden grid impact of fast charging stations, and the crude storage pools could even be used as grid buffer, where cheap base load power is stored overnight and then discharged during the day to avoid turning on the expensive natural gas and diesel power plants.
One thing that I think could work would be linkable energy units, either additional batteries or a generator unit: gas genset, fuel cell, etc. Some type of very efficient programmable DC/DC converter would allow you to have a common format for the energy units, if you could rent them from a store. Terry is experimenting with the linking bit with his LiFePO4 addon pack .. saddlebag batteries are often brought up as one particular solution.
esbk.co (http://esbk.co) interviewed Kenyon Kluge of Zero back in october (http://esbk.co/2012/12/13/esbk-studios-episode-12-interview-with-kenyon-kluge-of-zero-motorcycles/). The interview was quite long and insightful, one relevant bit is that Zero has designed the swappable modules on the 2013 FX / MX / XU bikes so that the battery modules will coordinate power draw based upon differing SOC points.. so there's no need to carefully match the modules. This is HUGE for facility type operations where they could have a pool of modules charging, and individuals could swing by and exchange modules with near-zero chance for configuration error. Seems ideal for law enforcement operations, or small delivery type services. Kenyon Kluge also mentioned that the module is designed independently of the interior battery chemistry.. so expect to see these modules reused at least for a couple of years.. and perhaps an upgrade option for 2013 owners. Maybe.
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I forgot about hearing that comment regarding the FX? replaceable batteries. While we were passing through the battery assembly area, I think I heard a comment made to Terry that you can stuff a couple of batteries (which look like sealed auto batteries) into your bike and the electronics compensates for their differing voltages and states of charge in some way. That has got to be a good idea for MX racing.
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esbk.co interviewed Kenyon Kluge of Zero back in october. The interview was quite long and insightful, one relevant bit is that Zero has designed the swappable modules on the 2013 FX / MX / XU bikes so that the battery modules will coordinate power draw based upon differing SOC points.. so there's no need to carefully match the modules. This is HUGE for facility type operations where they could have a pool of modules charging, and individuals could swing by and exchange modules with near-zero chance for configuration error. Seems ideal for law enforcement operations, or small delivery type services. Kenyon Kluge also mentioned that the module is designed independently of the interior battery chemistry.. so expect to see these modules reused at least for a couple of years.. and perhaps an upgrade option for 2013 owners. M
On my way to the Long Beach show I stopped by one of the rider safety course training parking lots (VA Hospital) and spoke with them. They had already contacted Zero (once) about the potential of using electric bikes in the early bike handling phases of their rider training. They said the big problem was that they usually utilize a parking lot (in numerous areas) where they have a storage unit for the bikes, during the night, but no electrical power. I told them that they should check out the XU. With the quick swap batteries they could take all of the batteries back to their headquarters each evening and then return them fully charged to their various training sites each morning. This was exciting news to them. One battery module / bike would do them for the day's training.
Hopefully they are now talking with Zero about getting some 2013 XU's to try out in their course. They use a lot of bikes, up and down this big state.
Trikester
Geez, I should be in Zero's marketing ;)
Trikester
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Anyone know what the weight of the MX is without the battery? It might be much more easily transported and run up a ramp or whatever. My 2011 S was just under 200 lbs. with the battery, so the MX has to be like 150 lbs. or so. Heck, I could get that in the back of my car.
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The batteries (according to Zero) weigh 42 pounds apiece so one can calculate the bike weight with either two, one, or none, batteries on board.
When I get my 2013 FX I intend to do the shorter dirt rides near my desert cabin with just one battery, to knock off 42 lbs of bike weight. I have a big variety of desert rides available in the area, so it's going to be great to be able to select whether to use one or two batteries, depending on the ride I'm heading out to do. 8)
Trikester
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265 lbs 2 modules => 223 lbs 1 module => 181 lbs 0 modules
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I just got around to reading Glynn Kerr's article titled "Current Limitations". Mr. Kerr is a world famous and well respected freelance motorcycle designer and I usually agree with most of his articles regarding motorcycle design. But I believe he is thinking a little too far out of the (economic) box with this one. Swapping batteries may make sense for small consumer products, but I think it would be too complicated and expensive for motor vehicles. Everyone is going in different directions regarding batteries and their associated electronics and you wouldn't be able to standardize the battery packs in this industry. Just look at the different types of 12V auto and motorcycle batteries on the market. I never understood why there had to be over a hundred different sizes and connector styles and locations to produce 12 volts from a plastic box. To me it just never made any sense. But there you are. If simple 12V lead-acid batteries can't be standardized during the past 100 years, what chance is there that could happen with the different types of propulsion batteries, especially as new designs and technologies appear in the future? ???
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Looks like the demand would have to come first, then maybe they could standardize, but probably not the other way around. Again we are back to really high gas prices or some additional breakthroughs for electric vehicles and bikes to really catch on.
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There isn't as much need to standardize lead-acid starter batteries, though. The most you have to deal with it is to buy a new one every few years, so if you have to order the right type or go to your dealer to make sure you get a compatible model then it isn't that much of a hassle.
If people were to buy into battery swaps for EVs, though, there would be much higher motivation to standardize.
My issue with battery swaps is that the conditions of the batteries would be highly variable. If you stop for a battery swap in a low-traffic area (i.e. "the sticks"), then you might get one with low range due to having been left on a charger too long (or worse, not having been kept reasonably well charged). And, that would happen to you possibly in a situation when you really needed the range... :(
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There isn't as much need to standardize lead-acid starter batteries, though. The most you have to deal with it is to buy a new one every few years, so if you have to order the right type or go to your dealer to make sure you get a compatible model then it isn't that much of a hassle.
If people were to buy into battery swaps for EVs, though, there would be much higher motivation to standardize.
My issue with battery swaps is that the conditions of the batteries would be highly variable. If you stop for a battery swap in a low-traffic area (i.e. "the sticks"), then you might get one with low range due to having been left on a charger too long (or worse, not having been kept reasonably well charged). And, that would happen to you possibly in a situation when you really needed the range... :(
Kind of sounds like going to a gas station and getting a tank full of "bad gas", leading to poor combustion in your IC motor. :o
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There isn't as much need to standardize lead-acid starter batteries, though. The most you have to deal with it is to buy a new one every few years, so if you have to order the right type or go to your dealer to make sure you get a compatible model then it isn't that much of a hassle.
If people were to buy into battery swaps for EVs, though, there would be much higher motivation to standardize.
My issue with battery swaps is that the conditions of the batteries would be highly variable. If you stop for a battery swap in a low-traffic area (i.e. "the sticks"), then you might get one with low range due to having been left on a charger too long (or worse, not having been kept reasonably well charged). And, that would happen to you possibly in a situation when you really needed the range... :(
Kind of sounds like going to a gas station and getting a tank full of "bad gas", leading to poor combustion in your IC motor. :o
There is a famous company called Better Place that tried this for the auto EV market.
http://green.autoblog.com/2012/12/02/better-place-battery-swapping-coda-taxis-california-2014/ (http://green.autoblog.com/2012/12/02/better-place-battery-swapping-coda-taxis-california-2014/)
So far the swappable battery concept has only worked for limited-range fleets ala CNG and other alt fuels. And it ain't cheap; Better Place has raised $750 million to date and lost $400 million.
The concept has the same chicken & egg problem that dogs alt fuel adoption. Service station owners aren't going to invest $200,000+ per station for Better Place when there are virtually no cars that use the swappable batteries and manufacturers aren't going to invest to use the batteries if there are not enough stations to keep a vehicle fueled. The EV problem is even worse because battery tech and battery specific power management is a key differentiator among competing EV makers, so they have no motive to adopt a single battery solution. It's not going to happen. Instead, battery technology will improve recharge times.
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I agree. Once you can recharge your vehicle in 5 minutes (which I believe will eventually happen) and every gas station (well maybe not the ones owned by the oil companies) has several quick charge "pumps", where you can plug in while you are visiting the convenience store, refueling your batteries will be just a convenient as refueling your IC car is now. Plus, I'll bet that the cost to install and operate fast charging stations won't be much more expensive than doing so for gasoline pumps - with a lot less regulatory, pollution and equipment replacement hoops to jump through every couple of years. (My local gas stations seem to always be tearing out their leaky tanks and replacing them with new double and triple-wall tanks, which still leak after a while, while installing new and expensive pollution control and safety devices. That has got to be pretty expensive.) I think EV charging will eventually make economic and business sense. It is just going to take time and more chickens and eggs.
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As someone earlier stated on this thread, the future probably lies in the fluid flow battery technology. Fluid flow battery technology has been around for quite some time but very recent advances in that field, and with lithium based tech, give a lot of promise for the future.
With a fluid flow battery, the rider would pull into a refueling station and the pump would pull out the discharged fluid from the battery and pump in fully charged fluid. It shouldn't take much longer than filling an empty gas tank. The used fluid is then sent to the charger where it is recharged for the next user. The same fluid is used over and over again since the charge is carried in the fluid instead of the hard parts of the battery. However, the battery can also be recharged in the normal manner, without removing the fluid, when the bike is parked and plugged in to a power source. Can you say "win, win"?
Most of the research in this technology, in the past, has gone into making very large fluid flow batteries for massive solar and wind power storage. However, with the recent advances in smaller and lighter fluid flow battery technologies, the uses for vehicles are looking brighter. 8)
Trikester
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Surely half the point of electric is to move away from reliance on expensive fluid (aka gas) that is pumped around and carried by tankers and sold at extortionate prices. I hope that the tech doesn't catch on but that fast charging emerges as the winner.
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Please read it again!
The fluid comes from the factory, in the battery just like the batteries we use now. After it is discharged it is removed and pre-charged fluid is pumped in. The fluid that has been discharged and removed from the battery is then recharged at the same location and can be put into the next battery.
There is no trucking around of fluid! It is just moved from one battery to another after being put on the charger and recharged. The fluid carries the charge, as I said, and is used over and over again. There would be no need for it to ever leave the fueling station. Sure, maybe to get started, a new station might need an initial supply brought in by truck, but after that it is just a matter of supplying electricity to recharge the fluid and then recycling the fluid through other rider's batteries.
I see no reason why anyone would not want this technology to "take off". It seems like a win, win, as I said. No waste, nothing consumed (after initial manufacture) except electrical power, just as now with the batteries we are presently using, but a heck of a lot faster to get back on the road again.
Trikester
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Logistics aren't that simple. People aren't going to 'refuel' in the same place every time at regular intervals, which means you need a stock of electrolyte and any stock needs to be moved around to where it is required. It will have to be trucked or piped. Battery swap is the same deal.
Also, anything that is moved regularly from one container to another no matter how careful you are will become contaminated so at some point it will have to be renewed. Roll in the trucks.
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Well, I guess you just can't please everybody.
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It's a really interesting possibility. I wonder if there would actually be a redistribution of fluid over time ie people 'moving' the fluid away from the garage of origin, or whether something like the banking system of account settling could be used. Each garage would have to have some sort of coding in the fluid itself to identify where it came from.
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It's a really interesting possibility. I wonder if there would actually be a redistribution of fluid over time ie people 'moving' the fluid away from the garage of origin, or whether something like the banking system of account settling could be used. Each garage would have to have some sort of coding in the fluid itself to identify where it came from.
It seems to me like you could use a "U-haul truck rental system" (I have no idea what that system is) to keep track of the battery fluid location and where replacement fluid might be needed.
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It probably would be metered so that you get exactly however much you pump out. Pump 25L out, pump 25L in. If there is a shift, it surely would be slow.
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One thing I didn't mention in my reply to NoiseBoy was the problem with ultra fast recharging of batteries (without the fluid flow system). Many times I will pull into a gas station where there are six or eight cars refueling. If those were electric vehicles with access to some future very fast charge method, of say a few minutes to recharge, it would put a massive surge load on the electrical supply to the service station. If the answer becomes very fast electrical recharging of batteries then some method of on-site storing of power to supply big surges and then spreading out the load, over time, on the supply network would need to be developed. Maybe a big flywheel/generator combination. That's something the fluid flow method would do by its very nature because the spent fluid would not have to be fast charged. It could be recharged at a slower pace as long as there was enough charged fluid on hand to satisfy the demand.
If it gets to where there are trucks hauling around fluid, because of unequal usage at service stations, then let's hope those trucks are electric and running on fluid flow batteries also. 8)
Trikester
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I haven't read up on fluid-flow tech yet, but one potential issue that comes to mind w.r.t. EVs is that you aren't refilling one large tank, but possibly hundreds of tiny ones. How do you make sure all those cells get emptied and filled? And what about hose routing, especially when it can be a challenge to get even the BMS wiring cleanly into an EV? Exchangeable electrolyte will likely take a significant rethinking of how batteries are done in EVs. But hey, if it works...
I also agree with an earlier comment that 5-minute charging is unlikely to be common anytime soon. To fully recharge my 10 kWh bike pack in 5 minutes, aside from needing a 12C charge rate battery, I need 120 kW of power. And that's for a small bike pack. Think of 2-8x that for a car, times 10-20 simultaneously for an average corner station, and you're looking at multi-megawatt industrial-level electrical service.
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Surely half the point of electric is to move away from reliance on expensive fluid (aka gas) that is pumped around and carried by tankers and sold at extortionate prices. I hope that the tech doesn't catch on but that fast charging emerges as the winner.
Gasoline? Sold at extortionate prices? Are you kidding?
Friends in the energy industry educated me about gasoline and diesel. There is no profit in it for retailers. All of the profit is in the stuff they sell in the convenience store that you buy while you're at the station to buy fuel.
(http://www.northernsafety.com/Media/Default/news/800775273/Justrite-AccuFlow--5-Gallon-Gas---Flammables-Type-II-Red-Safety-Can_16000681_800775273_0_0_14059631_300.jpg)
- Refined from finite resource: crude oil
- Pumped, piped, shipped, stored, etc.
- 125,000 BTU per US gallon
- US$4.50 per US gallon
- Profit to retailers: < 2%
(http://www.doobybrain.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/new-coca-cola-bottle.jpg)
- Water and corn syrup
- 1,500 calories = 6 BTU per US gallon
- US$8.50 a US gallon
- Profit to retailers: > 30%
Gasoline and diesel are ridiculously cheap at least in the U.S. When oil prices rise to $200/barrel and higher over the next decade, that will change of course.
I haven't delved into the economics of the infrastructure needed to deliver the amount of electrical energy required to recharge several 10 or 20 kWh batteries at a station in 5 minutes but I suspect it's not attractive at standard residential rates.
As for liquid Li ion batteries, the idea has legs but the latest estimate I heard from the well connected in this area is 10 years plus to iron out the bugs.
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I haven't read up on fluid-flow tech yet, but one potential issue that comes to mind w.r.t. EVs is that you aren't refilling one large tank, but possibly hundreds of tiny ones. How do you make sure all those cells get emptied and filled? And what about hose routing, especially when it can be a challenge to get even the BMS wiring cleanly into an EV? Exchangeable electrolyte will likely take a significant rethinking of how batteries are done in EVs. But hey, if it works...
I also agree with an earlier comment that 5-minute charging is unlikely to be common anytime soon. To fully recharge my 10 kWh bike pack in 5 minutes, aside from needing a 12C charge rate battery, I need 120 kW of power. And that's for a small bike pack. Think of 2-8x that for a car, times 10-20 simultaneously for an average corner station, and you're looking at multi-megawatt industrial-level electrical service.
I too am not convinced of the fluid-flow tech. There are quite a few chicken/egg problems with it.
But I do think the 5-minute charge is not far away. I think something you need to consider is the duty cycle of people charging vs. not charging.
Just like at a gas station, not all the pumps are being used 100% of the time. You'll need on site energy storage, (batteries), that are being charged while the station is not in use and then dumping energy when an EV plugs in. This isn't any different than the hydrogen filling stations which are compressing the fuel and storing it while the station is not in use, or gasoline stations, except the tankers are the transport, not electric lines.
For your example a 120kW feed would be required if the station were being used 100% of the time, but that is unlikely and almost impossible as there is time between when somebody unplugs and the next one plugs in. On the other extreme, if the station is only used once an hour, a 10kW feed is enough, twice an hour, you could nearly get away with a 240VAC 19.2kW service.
The trick will be having enough storage on site to handle the traffic, but I think that will becoming more common and more affordable as these EV battery packs are retired from vehicles but still have enough useful life for grid storage applications.
Grid storage really is an important part of optimizing our electric grid. As it is now, electric service providers need to anticipate use, throttling up and down energy production according to historical values. If they overproduce energy, they need to dump it somewhere and it is wasted, or even worse can cause a power surge that damages electronics. Too little energy production and we get a black out. Grid storage will give the electric service providers that extra fudge factor and make the grid operate more efficiently.
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Harlan has reinforced what I said previously about the need for bulk energy storage at service stations in the case of very fast charging of multiple vehicles.
As I mentioned in my previous posts, most of the fluid flow battery research has gone into huge batteries (the size of storage containers) for bulk storage from wind and solar. In addition to the flywheel/generator storage I previously mentioned, I would imagine that the same fluid flow battery technology could be used for the bulk electrical storage at service stations for peak demand.
In reply to Clic about sending fluid into many small cells; The fluid flow battery would not be anything like the Li-ion batteries we use now. From what I have read about the technology the fluid chamber is one complete cavity (can we say "fuel tank"?).
Trikester
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I wouldn't expect the same kind of demand of electric filling stations as gas stations and i have never come across a gas station with 30 pumps. The largest here has 8. The only places that will need capacity for 10 or so cars at once would be a major highway route as you wouldn't need to fill up once a week like i did with my gas bike as it charges overnight. Its only on a long journey.
Besides, 10 cars charging at 120KW isn't all that significant. The last outdoor TV production I did we used 1.5MW of generators. Google continuously pulls 300MW from the grid and they don't have problems running in the power lines for new server farms. If China can build a 700 mile long aquaduct then im sure the US can stretch to hanging a few extra HT lines on their pylons. Its just back to the chicken and egg thing but the advantage of fast charging is that electricity is always electricity. The chances of every EV manufacturer standardising on a single type of electrolyte and delivery method is slim to nil.
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The chances of every EV manufacturer standardising on a single type of electrolyte and delivery method is slim to nil.
Yeah, they used to say that about gasoline back when cars ran on alchohol or lead batteries and gasoline was dumped into rivers because there was no demand for it.
No matter what we think or say today it will be the technology that best serves the market that will become the "standard" in the future. It may even be something we know nothing about today (probably will be).
Back when I was first flying electric model planes it was a challenge to just make them fly at all and then stay up more than a couple of minutes. Now I fly electric models that outperform gas powered models. Years ago I would have thought that to be impossible. Years from now the electric bikes we are riding today will be curious collectors items. They probably won't even be rideable because nobody will have the batteries that they used "back in the old days".
That's what keeps the future exciting!
Trikester
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Don't forget that wireless charging will increase the number of opportunity charges that people will be able to do. this means that fast charging will remain a thing of the motorways.
I can remember that some company once presented a bike stand where you could ride your front forks into and which would lock the bike and deliver a charge at the same time. I would love one of these at home but they were never taken to production.
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Whatever they eventually come up with, I do hope we can still charge at home. It's the only cheap thing about owning an electric bike. If we have to pay $10 to recharge a battery at a service station, it's going to take a lot of the fun away.
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The good thing you will always bee able to charge at home, it is only a question of the charger or an converter from grid to your charger.
I don't know how it is in the US, but we have "colored heating oil" so you can't use it with your car without being punished if tested.
So it is not possible to make "colored" "expansive current" ;D for motor vehicles => this explains to me why our government is not really interested to push electromobility. ;)