> The company hasn’t shared a range figure yet
Ah, there's the rub.
But it is nice to see things advancing so quickly. Fast-charging really needs to be a thing. I am deeply pessimistic about battery-swapping. I don't think it would work.
Ah, there's the rub.
But it is nice to see things advancing so quickly. Fast-charging really needs to be a thing. I am deeply pessimistic about battery-swapping. I don't think it would work.
It'll have a range of ~90 miles. Since motorcycles all have pretty similar weight and aerodynamics (specifically: very bad), you can compare different models with the same power pretty reasonably.
The efficiency of the battery, electronics, and motor are all >>80%. If they were lower, they'd be on fire. The difference between 80% and 90% efficient is only 12.5% extra power to the wheels. The actual energy lost is all in the drag and the speed you ride- even the weight doesn't matter much because the tires don't deform nearly as much as car tires, while the air drag is actually about the same as a sedan.
For comparison a gas motorcycle will get 150-200 miles on a tank, but even that is very very dependent on how you're riding.
The battery for a 50 mile e-bike barely weighs a couple pounds, that is ultra portable and ultra swappable. Not sure how heavy a electric motorcycles battery would be, possibly 100 lbs? That's a lot harder. 50 lbs would be a one person job for a wide range of consumers.
Of course, the big problem with small EV transportation is that the batteries are largely being implemented in the same way. The batteries are being implemented for power tools. It's all the same cells underneath it, but each tool maker has their own special form. Factor/ plastic molding and plug interface.
We _really_ need standards around this.
Edit: a 150km range battery on a motorcycle is about 60kg currently. Of course if solid state and sulfur chemistries ever get commercialized, that could drop by 40-60% which is a lot different.
Gas stations would turn into massive storage facilities to store replacement batteries, but is that any less feasible than massive parking lots for charging cars simultaneously? Not to mention the massive peak current that needs to be supported, which could be spread out evenly over 24 hours if the batteries were in storage.
Imagine a "cartel" that buys low-value batteries (many charge cycles), swaps them out, and resells the new one. Or gas stations that do the same in reverse, give you a poorer battery in return for a good one, and then sells the good one.
It would require aligned interests and strong regulation to work, I think.
And then there's online reviews. Customers wouldn't want to swap at shops that swap in junk batteries.
In other words, you can't bootstrap this thing on a shoestring budget (relatively speaking). It will work if governments will it into existence.
They're also gonna have to will an electrical grid into existence that can support 3-5 times the current load if they want to ban combustion cars.
That may be doable by a wide range of consumers, but I think it certainly would rule out a significant portion of them. 50 pounds is about 23kg, and https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-6-2008-7096_...:
“Scientific studies have led the American National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) to conclude that 23 kg is the maximum weight which may be lifted manually under optimal conditions if health risks are to be avoided”
https://www.first4lawyers.com/personal-injury/resources-and-...:
“According to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), a man shouldn’t lift anything heavier than 25kg, while the safe lifting weight for a woman is no heavier than 16kg. But the HSE has explained that these are broad guidelines, rather than safe limits for lifting. It added that lifting weights under these amounts results in a low risk of injury.
These amounts are also the highest recommended weights for men and women. There are different recommended limits depending on how high you are lifting the load.”
Most people can at least pick up 80kg + without injury, we can hoist each other up by the waist for example (the elderly and fat excluded).
What you want to do is make the battery swap use optimal movement patterns. Few people are lifting 50+ kg at a weird angle or above their head for example.
A 6.4 kWh (80-100 miles) battery like the one in the OP is ~60 lbs at the lightest. A larger battery like the 17.3 kWh (160-180 miles) one in a high-end Zero weighs 160+ lbs.
Actually I keep waiting for ultracheap lithium ion batteries, period. They are simply not being migrated to the consumer segment in proportion with the cost cuts that the auto manufacturers are getting.
Like, where are my LFP and sodium ion batteries that should be dirt cheap?
This mirrors a frustration I have with consumer solar cells which are far too expensive compared to the deals utilities get.
This isn't just being cheap, there's lots of small scale stuff that consumer-level volumes can help with decarbonization. Yes, I understand that utility/industrial level price points are a special thing, but the consumer pricing is like 3x what the industrial pricing is. That means there is highway robbery.
- High volume resellers out negotiate low volume.
- New high volume consumers soak up any surplus capacity of producers, maintaining prices.
Why would eGo offer batteries for a lower price than what they can already sell at their current capacity to make them? Manufacturing, packaging and retail capacity is not elastic at a fine grained level.
Once you have any old knucklehead that can open a station, you can have a lot of issues.
Around here, the gas stations are basically run by a couple of "cartels," for lack of a better term. Their stations are often in notoriously bad shape, but the fuel delivery systems are all under state seal. It would be hard for them to substitute bad gas.
Not so, batteries. They would have a big open pile of them, ready to go. Determining the provenance of said pile, could be an interesting thought exercise.
Battery verification using a proof of work or physically unique function (PUF) could be interesting, but subject to the same problems of attestation and verification existing systems have today. If we solved it for batteries, we'd have solved it for everything, so I don't see that happening.