Electric CBX

[wyly]

z

[EMS]

A long time ago I recall driving an air cooled VW with a gas heater, a tiny gas or alcohol fueled heater warming an electric car would seem an easy solution in cold climates.

The VW supplemental heater took gasoline out of the existing fuel tank. If you have an electric vehicle with an additional gas tank, that could work.

[Syscrush]

So much for the anti-squat.

[RJ CB650]

It's only a matter of time now, electric will replace gas powered bikes and cars. Range and recharge time are the remaining obstacles.

Electric drive yes. But science in the high end puts battery stored power not really useful for anything outside of short race or quick communtes. Reasons are:

1. Mass produce batteries are heavy. Light/long range batteries, there is not enough materials on the planet for general production.
2. The lighter/longer range batteries are extremely environmentally damaging to even mine, and heavy metals not really the best for environment.
3. Where I live, battery vehicle=coal power. Or we could all switch to nuclear, or ecologically destructive hydro. As with batteries, there is not enough material known to be able to convert everybody to solar.
3. Algae based biofuels are already able to be massed produced but sheep don't understand "Carbon Cycle"

Back in the 50s, a certain type of transportation swapped to a very fuel efficient>work powertrain. Might have heard of diesel electric locomotives? Generator only revs to meet the requested power draw. As such, is always at maximum efficiency without having to rev through inefficient sections just to generate power. Done right, not much weight difference if applied to vehicles. But an exhaust is bad, mkay?

[wyly]

Z

[Syscrush]

Back in the 50s, a certain type of transportation swapped to a very fuel efficient>work powertrain. Might have heard of diesel electric locomotives? Generator only revs to meet the requested power draw. As such, is always at maximum efficiency without having to rev through inefficient sections just to generate power. Done right, not much weight difference if applied to vehicles. But an exhaust is bad, mkay?

Tough to package on a bike, but I still want one!

[RJ CB650]

And fossil fuels are infinte and emissions do no harm to the planet?

In that lies the rub. Fossil fuels are not finite, so no matter what, something renewable must come about. Electricity is no different than the ICE. Can run off fossil fuels, or has some sort of renewable source. In the end, everything is solar in some extent.

Hydro? Sun evaporates water, water falls in mountain, dam traps water. Problem is that dams really are an eco disaster.... I dislike hydro for that...
Wind? Sun heats air, air rises, cools and falls, wind. Spacially tough, but not a bad choice. No complex or expensive materials to make and theoretically, can put them in all sorts of odd places to supplement power grid.
Solar (duh)? Directly can be done in many ways. From solar->Thermal which is more readily large scale, or direct electric conversion. Inefficient and problem is not enough existing rarer materials required to make it work.
Algae? Complex through billions of years of evolution to take CO2 (bad) from atmosphere and convert it into a storable form of energy (surgars/proteins) and does so en masse all over the world on the most simple and abundant materials.

So it comes down to storage.
Electrical storage? Take the most perfect and clean system that can power every car in the world and not worry about range. Universal battery swappage some day, etc. But chemistry makes it really (relatively) easy to calculate the energy per mass from an electro-chemical reaction. Be it a thermal or a conductive cycle. Simply put, to get what we need is a conductive cycle and have enough net energy output, we can throw away all the green because the materials to store that electrical directly isn't very green... Is like killing the patient with the cure.

Hence renewable fuels for the ICE. We can make it using said green power above. But more readily integrated into todays infrastructure and much more reverse compatible. Eco friendly production and maintainablility, etc. Reason it doesn't work right now is people hear biofuel, they think corn. Well, we don't want to use food and food producing airable land, that is wasteful and silly. Algaes on the other hand can be quite nicely made in places nothing can grow and also doubles as a water treatment system. Who cares if you get say even two MPG. Is renewable, and is carbon storage since you first have to have a negative net CO2 just in making the fuel. There are people who are making their own algae based biodiesel just in the windows of their homes...

Take that and have it run peak efficiency to a compact generator coupled to an electric drive, fuel economy through the roof! Advantage is predictable range, no rare/heavy metals, easy refill/recharge.

Smog in major urban centers, that is the one drawback, alas. But by having a more consistent chemical makeup and free of sulphur and other contaminants will still dramatically reduce that.

[Syscrush]

Algae? Complex through billions of years of evolution to take CO2 (bad) from atmosphere and convert it into a storable form of energy (surgars/proteins) and does so en masse all over the world on the most simple and abundant materials.

Lipids, too. For biodiesel, it's mostly lipids, isn't it?

I share your interest in the promise of algae & an intelligently-managed carbon cycle.