Velomobiles

Calliban · 2023-06-21 08:35:38

I am starting a new thread to discuss velomobiles, which are small human powered cars.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velomobile
https://www.velomobileworld.com/product/quatrevelo/

The Quatrevelo has mass 30-35kg. If we take the mass of the rider to be 80kg and allow 35kg of luggage, total mass would be about 150kg. These vehicles are streamlined, with a fairing to reduce air resistance and keep out weather. How much power would we need to maintain 20mph (8.9m/s) over flat ground? The rolling resistance of bike wheels on asphalt is 0.004.
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/roll … _1303.html

W = F x V

W = (150kg x 9.81 x 0.004) x 8.9 = 52 watts.

The average person can sustain about 75W over an 8 hour shift.

Could hydraulic braking recovery store enough energy to push the vehicle up a hill? Let us assume a 30m hill. The energy needed to raise a 150kg vehicle up the hill would be:

Q = mgh = 150 x 9.81 x 30 = 44.145KJ.

A hydraulic accumulator has energy density 4-10KJ/kg. So the accumulator will weigh 4.4 - 11kg. Doable, if we can make accumulators out of high strength steel or carbon fibre composites.

tahanson43206 · 2023-06-21 09:28:41

For Calliban re new topic...

Best wishes for success with this interesting new topic.

It seems to me that with the addition of pressure to enclose the cabin, this concept would work on Mars.

It is highly likely SpaceNut has ventured in this direction in some of his many posts on bicycle type vehicles.

The history you showed us at the Wikipedia link is quite interesting. Thanks!

(th)

Calliban · 2023-06-21 10:30:29

An interesting cross-over with the limestone heat battery topic: Could we produce a minimum mass, single passenger vehicle, similar in shape and size to the velomobile, but propelled by a hot limestone stirling engine heat battery?

Over flat ground, we need an engine power of 52W to sustain a 20mph (8.9m/s) speed for a 150kg vehicle equipped with bicycle tires on an asphalt road. This engine produces 1.25kW and weighs 30kg.
https://www.frauscher-motors.com/stirli … r-density/

So a 10kg engine producing 100W appears to be well within the state of the art. Suppose we add a 10kg stirling engine and a 140kg limestone heat store. Total mass increases to 300kg and a power output of 100W will allow a 20mph speed on a level road. What sort of range can we expect? 1 tonne of limestone heated to 500°C, will store about 200kWh of heat. So a 140kg store will store 28kWh of heat. If we assume a 20% engine efficiency, that equates to 5.6kWh of work energy. At an energy consumption of 100J to travel 8.9m, range works out to be 1800km over flat ground. That is 1.6kWh per 100km. Even at an electricity cost of $0.2/kWh, that is just $1 every 300km. Even if a real vehicle has double this energy consumption, it is still very cheap.

Last edited by Calliban (2023-06-21 10:35:09)

tahanson43206 · 2023-06-21 10:48:06

For Calliban re topic ... since you created this topic, you can change the title as you change the direction of the topic. Just edit post 1 ... the title is accessible to the topic creator.

***
Please consider a shorter range heat powered vehicle able to take a city dweller to a store inside a 10 kilometer radius. The vehicle can be a single seater, but it needs room for purchases.

The smaller mass you've suggested seems like a favorable direction to point your readers. The one ton mass suggested as a starting point seems likely to result in a two ton vehicle.

(th)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-06-22 07:15:51

Also for a body in Space or Earth going 'Downhill' is great but uphill not so much, some on Earth gets extra power with solar-powered motors, NASA almost sent a dirty bike to the Moon, a lunar rover was almost a lunar electric motorbike concept. We have talked before about Bikes offworld or motorbikes on the Moon and Mars or bicycle car is a human-powered vehicle (HPV), some kind of contemporary velomobile space vehicle could be ideal for exploration also providing its own heat and atmosphere, the Cycle rickshaw or 'Twike' design would allow for more than one passenger. A bike design could be assisted by electric motor or CO2 expansion. Acceleration and deceleration would be slower, more gentle than on Earth, chunky spacesuit "costumes" by the time vehicles for people go off world the Spacesuits will probably have seen redesign
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=9529

Bio Suit Topic

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-06-22 07:26:25)

Calliban · 2023-06-22 11:17:53

tahanson43206 wrote:

For Calliban re topic ... since you created this topic, you can change the title as you change the direction of the topic. Just edit post 1 ... the title is accessible to the topic creator.
***
Please consider a shorter range heat powered vehicle able to take a city dweller to a store inside a 10 kilometer radius. The vehicle can be a single seater, but it needs room for purchases.
The smaller mass you've suggested seems like a favorable direction to point your readers. The one ton mass suggested as a starting point seems likely to result in a two ton vehicle.
(th)

Considering a vehicle with a fully loaded mass of 300kg. I am going to assume low speeds, for which air resistance can be neglected. I will further assume a rolling resistance of 0.004, typical of bicycle tires on tarmac. Braking energy will be efficiently recovered by hydraulic motors, which recharge the accumulators. The energy needed to move 10km on flat ground, would be:

Q = m×g×Crr×d = 300×9.81×0.004×10,000 = 118KJ.

Hydraulic accumulators have a mass energy density of 4-10KJ/kg. So to drive the vehicle 10km, we need a cylinder with mass 11.8 - 29.4kg. This is 4-10% of the mass of the vehicle, including the driver and freight. A 30km range could realistically be achieved using a hydraulic accumulator. Total energy stored would be 354KJ (0.1kWh). Small vehicles like this could provide an affordable way of maintaining mass personalised transit in an economy deprived of fossil fuels.

tahanson43206 · 2023-06-22 11:25:35

For Calliban re #6

Interesting! Are you talking about a tank of compressed air, or something else?

OK ... Bing found this:

A hydraulic accumulator is an energy storage device that stores and discharges energy in the form of a pressurized fluid. It uses the ability of a gas, such as nitrogen, to be compressed and decompressed to store and maintain hydraulic pressure12. It is a simple hydraulic device which stores energy in the form of fluid pressure3. The stored pressure may be suddenly or intermittently released as per the requirement3.

So the system you've described would contain a tank of hydraulic fluid as input, a tank to receive the fluid after it is forced through a mechanical system of some kind, and a tank to hold a gas under pressure.

Can you (would you) add some details to your vision?

Has someone already done this? Chances are good that such an attractive idea must have been explored by someone, somewhere, some time.

(th)

Terraformer · 2023-06-22 11:25:48

Especially if we manage to get freight off the roads and on to rails (and water). Far less terrifying to drive a velomobile on roads that don't have lorries on them. In the meantime they'll need dedicated routes (which again, don't neccesarily have to be new; quiet estate roads work as well).

As far as people's preferences for vehicle size go, I think America is something of an outlier in having large trucks be normalised. Okay the Chelsea Tractor is a thing. But for the most part, Europe and Asia aren't enamoured with the SUV.

kbd512 · 2023-06-22 11:37:28

Terraformer,

New passenger cars by segment in the EU

SUVs account for almost half (49%) of total EU passenger car sales. This interactive chart shows the share of the various segments – Small (A+B), Lower medium (C), Upper medium (D), Luxury (E+F), MPV and SUV – of the EU car market per year for the 2011-2022 period, as well as the number of units sold.

You don't like SUVs and trucks. At least half of the car buyers in Europe don't share your opinion. Even non-Americans like SUVs, America was simply the market where they made the most sense.

tahanson43206 · 2023-06-22 11:40:44

For Terraformer re dedicated routes .... I like that suggestion!

The city where I live has experimented with bike lanes in city streets. I can't comment on how effective they are, but the ** do ** limit automotive traffic where they are installed/implemented.

For Calliban ... in following up on your suggestion to consider hydraulic systems instead of pneumatic, I found this (or rather, Bing found this):

Limited scope for further improvement in pneumatic rockdrills has led to the development of hydraulic rockdrills, which compare favourably with their pneumatic counterparts: they are more efficient, more flexible in coping with variations in the working conditions, more economical in the consumption of drill steel, and less productive of noise and mist.
A comparison between hydraulic and pneumatic rockdrills
journals.co.za/doi/pdf/10.10520/AJA0038223X_473
What are the advantages of pneumatic drills?
How do I maintain a hydraulic drill?

A follow up (which I'm hoping a member will carry out) would be to discover what automobile grade hydraulic motors might be on the market.

A complete system for a private vehicle owner would include an air compressor at home, to recharge the air tank to apply pressure to the hydraulic fluid tank.

(th)

kbd512 · 2023-06-22 12:18:42

Bulk MkI Velomobile

Base Price: €9.750,- including 19% VAT

How Much Does a Used Car Cost in Germany?

According to the statistics, the average price of a used car in Germany in 2020 was 18,750 EUR at the dealership and 13,310 EUR when buying from private sellers.
...
In fact, right now prices for used cars in Germany are high as never before. See the average second-hand car prices in Germany from 2001 to 2020 in the table below.

Webp.net-resizeimage-copy-4-2-1.jpg

This is probably why there aren't more velomobiles in Europe.

The base model velomobile without the upgrades for better performance is like buying a real car that's only a a few years old. Someone needs to figure out how to make these velomobiles a lot cheaper.

Calliban · 2023-06-22 12:51:58

A price of over $10,000 is a lot of money for what is really an enclosed recumbant bicycle. Likely some of that cost is due to small production volumes. I think the price needs to come down a lot for this to become an attractive option for people.

tahanson43206 · 2023-06-22 13:00:32

This is a follow up to an earlier inquiry of Calliban regarding hydraulic motors ...

I asked Bing if anyone has built a vehicle using a hydraulic motor, and several home build examples showed up. One builder mentioned 500 bar as the input to the motor. If I recall the citation correctly, the hydraulic motor was being used as the transmission subsystem, and the primary power came from a motorcycle engine. 500 bar sounds like a lot to me.

I asked Bing about that, and it found this about hydrogen gas storage:

500 bar: the ‘sweet spot’ for Hydrogen storage - NPROXX
https://www.nproxx.com/500-bar-the-sweet-spot-f…
WebNov 15, 2019 · “500bar pressure vessels deliver a good combination of volume-to-cost for the market” explains NPROXX Marketing Director …

A tank to deliver 500 bar for any length of time will need to be pumped up to some value greater than 500 bar. That reminds me of the dilemma of working with pneumatic tools. The running pressure for most tools is 90 psi, so a tank to power such a tool needs to have initial capacity far higher than 90 psi. The working time is determined by how long it takes for pressure to flow out of the storage tank through the tool until pressure in the tank falls below 90 psi.

As an example, I found that a tank set to 175 psi would deliver 90 psi (through a regulator) for 12 minutes, if the tool consumption was 6 cfm.

A similar principle would (presumably) hold true for the hydraulic motor powered vehicle you are designing.

One way that Thermal Energy storage might factor into your design is in the pressure tank. If the gas in the pressure tank could be lifted in temperature, then the pressure in the tank would be increased. Thus, a vehicle owner might pump up the tank to some pressure over night, and then top off the temperature just before making a trip.

(th)

kbd512 · 2023-06-22 14:58:28

Calliban,

I agree. I don't think a sit-down bicycle with a fancy plastic molding around it should cost ten grand. That seems a bit excessive to me. You can understand why these things haven't taken off. They cost way too much money for a bicycle that goes 20mph. I could see spending up to about $2,000 for a fancy bicycle. Anything beyond that is nonsense unless it's going to be used in the Olympics. You can get 5 to 10 year old used cars here for $10,000, and a reasonably nice one at that. That's what most people do, because spending that amount of money on something you can't drive on a highway is something only rich people can afford to do, but they all drive around in cars.

SpaceNut · 2023-06-22 17:52:19

Sorry that it took so long to get to give a boost to the topic to which the Bikes on Mars does have lots of data for these vehicle types.
Even when we use gearing for a hilly climb the amount of pedal torque becomes the issue as we slow against the gravity to continue up it.

Just a bike with a space suit for use

If more than a human pedal power option is taken even a 300W single panel could provide that level of energy in a partly cloudy day, its the nighttime use that is the main issue for these vehicles. Another is the cold winter temperatures of winter which means a glycol mix is required even for a lower power system to be created.

The Quadracycles topic has the most data with in it for veelomibile types

Most E-bikes are set to 4 classes of power for the motor and its starts with 250w, 500w as well as pedal assist for more power to the wheels but as we get over this the road use requires begin to change from no license to requiring drives and even motorcycle. The battery packs are from 24 v all the way up to 72 volts in a variety of amp hr load capabilities not only for the max speed but for duration of use time.

A tank of compressed air is also in the planetary folder on mars topic as well. Running on Compressed Air?

Of course, the supply never ends with kid power.
pedal+powered+air+compressor.jpg?format=1000w

Proof already done]

kbd512 · 2023-06-22 19:40:03

I've been looking at pricing for these things, as of about 10 yeas ago, and they're all the price of used or brand new subcompact cars, and most of them never went to production at any scale.

ELF Pedal Solar Velomobile - $4,000

Hornet velomobile comes with power boost included - $5,700

Tripod velomobile nears production - $7,450

If you live outside of Europe and wish to buy the imported-from-Germany Go-One, however, expect to pay at least US$12,980 – and again, that’s without a motor. Less exotic velomobiles still tend to start at no less than $6,000, and go up from there. A battery-and-motor-equipped Hornet, on the other hand, can be had for CDN$5,650 (currently on par with the U.S. dollar). Whether or not that is still too much comes down to what the vehicle is being compared to – it’s definitely pricier than a typical commuting bicycle, but it’s a lot less than a new car, and it won’t require gas, expensive repairs, or insurance.

These are toys for virtue-less signaling yuppies out being yuppies on the weekend.

Brad's Blog - Holy cow: Walking consumes more gasoline than driving!

From the blog post:

In my growing research on transportation energy economics, I've come upon some rather astonishing research. I always enjoy debates on total cost analysis -- trying to figure out the true energy cost of things, by adding in the energy spent elsewhere to make things happen. (For example, the energy to smelt the metals in your car adds quite a bit to its energy cost.)
Humans are modestly efficient. Walking, an average person burns about 100 Calories per mile at 3mph, or 300 per hour, while sitting for the same hour burns around 80 Calories just keeping you warm. In other words, the walking 3 miles uses about 220 extra Calories. Calories are kilocalories, and one Calorie/kcal is about 4 BTUs, 4200 joules or 1.63 watt-hours.
While walking 1 mile burns an extra 74 Calories, on a bicycle we're much better. Biking one mile at 10mph takes about 38 extra calories over sitting. Again, this is the extra calories.
A gallon of gas has about 31,500 Calories in it, so you might imagine that you get 815 "mpg" biking and 400 "mpg" walking. Pretty good. (Unless you compare it to an electric scooter, which turns out to get the equivalent of 1200 mpg from pure electricity if you allow the same perfect conversion.)
But there's a problem. We eat, on average about 2700 Calories/day in the USA, almost all of it produced by agribusiness. Which runs on fossil fuels. Fossil fuels provide the fertilizer. They run the machines. The process and transport and refrigerate the food. In many cases our food -- cows -- eats even more food produced with very high energy costs.
I've been digging around estimates, and have found that U.S. agriculture uses about 400 gasoline-gallon equivalents per American. Or 1.1 gallons per day, or about 10 Calories (40 BTU) from oil/gas for every Calorie of food. For beef, it's far worse, as close to 40 Calories of oil/gas (160 BTU) are used to produce one Calorie of beefy goodness.
You can see where this is going. I'm not the first to figure it out, but it's worth repeating. Your 3 mile walk burned 220 extra Calories over sitting, but drove the use of 2,200 Calories of fossil fuel. That's 1/14th of a gallon of gasoline (9oz.) So you're getting about 42 miles per gas-gallon of fossil fuel.
If you eat a lot of beef or other livestock, and want to consider your incremental food as having come from beef, it's around 10 miles per gallon. A Hummer does better!
So yes, if you drive your Prius instead of walking it's going to burn less fossil fuel. If 2 people drive in a more ordinary car it's going to burn less fossil fuel than both of them walking.
Biking's better. The average-diet cyclist is getting 85 miles per gallon of fossil fuel. Still better for 2 to share a Prius. The beefeater is, as before only 1/4 as good. At 21mpg he's better than a Hummer, but not that much better.
This is a fuel to fuel comparison. The fuel burned in the cars is the same sort of fuel burned in the tractors. It has extra energy costs in its extraction and transport, but this applies equally to both cases. And yes, of course, the exercise has other benefits than getting from A to B. And we have not considered a number of the other external costs of the vehicle travel -- but they still don't make this revelation less remarkable. (And neither does this result suggest one should not still walk or bike, rather it suggests we should make our food more efficiently.)
And no, picking transit isn't going to help. Transit systems, on average, are only mildly greener than cars. City buses, in fact, use the same energy per passenger mile as typical cars. Light rail is sometimes 2 and rarely even 3 times better than cars, but in some cities like San Jose, it uses almost twice as much energy per actual passenger than passenger cars do. Taking existing transit vehicles that are already running is green, of course, but building inefficient lines isn't.
Many people take this idea as a condemnation of cycling or exercise. It isn't. Cycling is my favourite exercise. It is a condemnation of how much fossil fuel is used in agriculture. And, to a much lesser extent, a wakeup call to people who eat the average diet that they can't claim their human-powered travel as good for the planet -- just good for them. What would be good for the planet would be to eat a non-agribusiness diet and also walk or bike. How your food is farmed is more important though, than where it comes from. It's the farming, not the shipping, that's the big energy eater.
Obviously if you were going to need the exercise anyway, doing it while getting from A to B is not going to burn extra oil. Human powered travel well above the need to exercise is the only thing that would hurt, if fueled by U.S. agriculture. And eating a high calorie diet and not exercising would be just as bad.
Happy eating!
What's not wrong with these numbers
As I note, since most of us need to exercise anyway, this is not at all a condemnation of walking and cycling, but rather of the amount of fossil fuel that agriculture uses. However, a lot of people still find faults with this analysis that I don't think are there.
* No, it doesn't matter that making the fuel costs energy. It's (roughly) the same fuel going into the tractors as going into the gas tanks. We're comparing fuel in tank to fuel in tank. But if you really want to factor that in, about 82% of well energy makes it to the gas tank of the car or tractor.
* Yes, I do account for the fact that just eating or sitting consumes calories. This calculation is based on the extra calories that biking or walking take, compared to sitting in a car. The base "keep you alive" calories are not counted, but they do require more fossil fuel to create.
* I don't include the energy required to make a car, which ranges from 25% (Prius) to 7% (Hummer) of its lifetime energy usage. However, most cyclists and pedestrians still own cars, so this is still spent if it sits in the garage while you walk. And while a 2000lb car may take 60-100 times as much energy to make as a 30lb bike, this is not so large a difference if expressed per lifetime vehicle-mile.
* This is based on the USA averages. Of course different food means different results, but doesn't change this story, which is about the average eater.
* I don't include the energy needed to build roads for bikes, cars and food delivery trucks. The reality is, we're not going to build fewer roads because people take some trips walking for exercise. Nor are people going to not buy a car because they do that.

SpaceNut · 2023-06-23 15:25:53

I agree the prices are not in alignment with what we are getting for this type of item.

Then again quality still is an issue for even the products as even a high price does not equate to longevity of the item before it does not work any longer.

kbd512 · 2023-06-23 20:25:13

SpaceNut,

I already have a quality bicycle to use. It's quite heavy and definitely not cheap, but it does its job and is comfortable to ride, on-road or off. I still can't see spending the kind of money people are asking for a velomobile, though. My thought process on this is, either make a very lightweight battery powered car, or ride and use a normal bicycle. I think 30 miles of range is plenty for a fully enclosed 4 wheel car. I'm not spending $4K to $10K on a Fred Flintstone style car when I can buy a real car for the same money, even if it requires work to run well. I can't keep up with traffic in a velomobile, either, so there's not much point to them.

I'm basically a road hazard / accident waiting to happen in something so low to the ground that even most subcompact car drivers are going to have to pay closer attention to the road than they normally do. I feel the same way about those Lotus sports cars. They look cool, but they're still death traps. When I get up off the saddle on my bike and really start pedaling as I normally do when going down the road, which is admittedly a little larger than most bikes because of the size of the tires, I basically have my head level at or near the same as it is when sitting in my wife's Escalade. Assuming you're paying attention at all, it's pretty hard to not notice something at head level with you when you're driving around. Granted, most people are on their cell phones these days and won't notice anyway, but that hi-viz helmet and large vertical profile are all I have going for me. I've had enough close encounters with cars over the years to know that you need every visibility advantage you can get. I'm not going to stop riding because I enjoy it, but the notion of going to work on a bike is a non-starter here.

SpaceNut · 2023-06-25 09:29:50

One of the issues for having 2 drive wheels is that the motors and driver circuits are not linked but with automotive they share a common differential shaft. Which means a single motor connected to that is the way to go for a build. Which means one might want a transmission to aid in speed control to the wheels. Tubular steel is the most likely to be used for frame. I have seen kits of motor and drives that come in at about $1,000 less batteries so this self-built unit is affordable to a degree.

Calliban · 2023-06-25 11:44:53

kbd512 wrote:

SpaceNut,
I already have a quality bicycle to use. It's quite heavy and definitely not cheap, but it does its job and is comfortable to ride, on-road or off. I still can't see spending the kind of money people are asking for a velomobile, though. My thought process on this is, either make a very lightweight battery powered car, or ride and use a normal bicycle. I think 30 miles of range is plenty for a fully enclosed 4 wheel car. I'm not spending $4K to $10K on a Fred Flintstone style car when I can buy a real car for the same money, even if it requires work to run well. I can't keep up with traffic in a velomobile, either, so there's not much point to them.
I'm basically a road hazard / accident waiting to happen in something so low to the ground that even most subcompact car drivers are going to have to pay closer attention to the road than they normally do. I feel the same way about those Lotus sports cars. They look cool, but they're still death traps. When I get up off the saddle on my bike and really start pedaling as I normally do when going down the road, which is admittedly a little larger than most bikes because of the size of the tires, I basically have my head level at or near the same as it is when sitting in my wife's Escalade. Assuming you're paying attention at all, it's pretty hard to not notice something at head level with you when you're driving around. Granted, most people are on their cell phones these days and won't notice anyway, but that hi-viz helmet and large vertical profile are all I have going for me. I've had enough close encounters with cars over the years to know that you need every visibility advantage you can get. I'm not going to stop riding because I enjoy it, but the notion of going to work on a bike is a non-starter here.

All true. Velomobiles are recumbant bikes with aerodynamic weather housing. The advantages they offer over conventional bikes are lower energy consumption per mile and some protection from the elements. But there is no getting away from the fact that they are vulnerable to hazards from conventional vehicles. If an SUV runs over you in one of these things, you won't be walking away from it. I also think that the price needs to come down to no more than a few thousand dollars for these things to be attractive to people. If these things have all the capital cost of a used car, then they really don't make sense unless we find ourselves physically incapable of sourcing the energy needed to run those cars.

I tend to think of these things as being contingency options. If the world really screws up over the next fifty years and oil production plummets without any practical alternative becoming available, then velomobiles could provide an option that would allow people to commute in all weathers, with very little additional energy. But that conclusion only makes sense if people can afford the capital cost of these vehicles and can still grow enough food without fuel inputs to feed themselves. As you pointed out in a previous post, human muscle power is derived from food energy and industrial agriculture is an energy hungry activity. If people are eating more food to provide the muscle power to drive velomobiles and that food is a typical western industrial diet, then these things end up being no more energy efficient than any other car. The same conclusion would be just as true on Mars as on Earth. Food and oxygen will not be free.

Last edited by Calliban (2023-06-25 11:47:30)

kbd512 · 2023-06-25 15:05:46

Calliban,

The question I keep coming back to is why we refuse to design very light weight cars with very small combustion engines that don't burn horrendous quantities of fuel just to keep the engine spinning at idle or to move the weight of the vehicle around. A commuter car that carries 1 to 2 people, at most, doesn't need to be a behemoth that weighs as much as an elephant, until you start asking cars to do unreasonable things. That 8kg battery powered velomobile that was shaped like a real car and had 2 seats, would go 30 miles. Subtract out the weight for the Fred Flintstone nonsense and for 8kg more, it'll go 60 miles. The battery can recharge from a normal 120VAC outlet in a reasonable amount of time. I drive more than 60 miles per day in a literal handful of cases per year. 99% of my driving is inside of 10 miles. 2 or 3 times per year, I drive to Austin so my children can visit their grandparents.

I would be perfectly content with a much lighter car with 2 to 4 seats, because that describes real driving in most cases. Can I get one of those for a reasonable price (less than the cost of used cars)? Nope. Nothing of the sort is available. I will pay an absurd amount of money for something of marginal utility. I can't drive a velomobile on any highway, which is what you invariably need to drive on travel across Houston.

So, instead we have increasingly heavy cars made from increasingly energy-intensive and therefore expensive materials, none of which have lowered our total energy demand at a global level. How could they? It's physically impossible to do.

I then decided not to fight everyone else's decision making skills, and to instead roll with a very heavy hot water powered SUV / truck, albeit with limited range, which more accurately describes what most consumers are actually buying and using these days. It's using less energy-intensive materials than a gas or battery powered vehicle, since it's primarily hot-rolled steel, so despite its weight, which remains high due to poor energy density, overall it requires less energy intensity than gasoline or batteries. The only caveat is that it requires a cheap solar or nuclear heat source to show an improvement over what we're presently using. That said, it doesn't rely upon non-existent technology or woo-woo physics. It's a giant hot water tank combined with a high-capacity HVAC system on wheels.

There are people who truly believe in using human muscle power, but most of them are not the people proposing we go back to riding bicycles and walking everywhere. They also seem to not have much respect for human or environmental limitations preventing their theory from working better than they think it should. It's a great theory, and it looks like it should be better for the planet, but as always the devil is in the details. As always, the people who think this sort of stuff will be so great, if only everyone did it, are also woefully short on details. People who do more thinking, like this "Brad" character, seem to know exactly why it won't work the way other less thoughtful people think it will.

I'm a little tired of people trying random things. It's looking more and more like desperation than well-thought-out engineering trade-offs. Louis once asserted that "throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks", is the correct way to approach energy-related engineering problems. I know enough to know otherwise. Throwing stuff at the wall is not how anyone who knows enough about the nature of a problem to actually solve it, would approach solving said problem. Where I'm from, flinging stuff at walls is viewed as being too similar in nature to what monkeys do with their poop. The monkeys might enjoy doing it for a little while because it gives them something to do, but eventually the cage stinks to high heaven and someone with more sense than the monkeys have, must clean up after them.

We know that if we pursue trying to turn battery powered cars into personal cars, that we're going to run out of materials to make bateries. We know that we're not going to have very cheap hydrocarbon fuels forever. If we're intent on working with low energy density sources of energy, then we're going to need to work with dramatically lower embodied energy materials, despite the obvious sacrifices we're going to make to range and overall performance.

I get A36 plate prices of $550 to $750 per metric ton. If a human-powered vehicle that weighs 15kg to 75kg manages to cost $5,000 to $10,000, then I want to know what the heck these things are made from, how they're made, and why that process is so horrendously costly / inefficient. Those are aircraft-like prices. How can Chevrolet / South Korea make subcompact Chevy Spark cars with 5 seats, a 100+hp computer-controlled combustion engine, a full infotainment system with a built-in cell phone, heating and AC, that costs $12K and weighs 1.5t? For a vehicle with absolutely none of those features, the cost needs to be dramatically lower for them to even be a consideration.

SpaceNut · 2023-06-25 16:47:25

I know that its cost to much as I was saying the same thing about kids clothing as an adult's that only takes half as much material but yet it cost just as much if not more back then.
As you may have noted a bicycle is about 150 - 300 at most with a ev kit in the 400 to 800 to alter one with, so why is it that they are selling for 3000 and more is silly.

Here is another Which Is Best? Electric Bikes or Gasoline Motorcycles?

Topping the list of reasons why an electric motorcycle may be better than a gas-powered bike is its lack of emissions.
The environmental benefits of reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are compelling to lots of folks in their purchasing decisions, and are enough to warrant dealing with the inconvenience of charge times and range. And though the emissions associated with manufacturing and end-of-life are higher in EV production, emissions end-to-end are vastly lower than those produced by a gas-powered machine according to a report from Argonne National Laboratory. According to the EPA, the carbon footprint of EV machines remains lower even when accounting for the emissions produced in the production of electricity used during charging.
Costs associated with charging and maintenance are also typically lower with electric vehicles.
For example, most charging occurs at home, according to a report from the Transportation Energy Institute, and the average cost of a one kilowatt hour of electricity was just over $0.15 to residential consumers in January 2023. Charging at an Electrify America station, currently one of the nation’s largest networks, is $0.48 per kWh at the time of writing. As we are all aware, gasoline prices are much higher, even in the best of times. Charging stations are more ubiquitous as well, with more than 130,000 throughout the United States as of March 2023. The US government has also passed an infrastructure bill that would see 500,000 stations across the nation by 2030.

Of the remaining they are how an expectation for use.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-10-22 11:33:09

This is the only topic I could find with three-wheel discussion so I thought I would bump it with Planet Transport ideas

'America Is Missing Out on the Biggest EV Boom of All'
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arc … ge/673629/
Consider the electric rickshaw

in another thread AI has produced some interesting art of 3-wheel land vehicles.

SpaceNut · 2023-10-22 19:19:44

Of course, the US classes the 3 wheels as a motorcycle vehicle once it's over 30 mph capability whether it is just electric but if pedal power is included then it's an assist but is still limited.
Anything with 4 wheels is a car even if it cannot go any faster than the 30 mph.
I saw a recent article about what classes as a bike and that includes the electrical assist bikes.

I have been looking at the term pod car as well for similar design capability.

The cost of these are high for what they are at nearly $10,000 but it seems that you can build it for half of that amount with new materials.

tahanson43206 · 2023-10-22 19:29:50

For Mars_B4_Moon ...

Mars_B4_Moon wrote:

This is the only topic I could find with three-wheel discussion so I thought I would bump it with Planet Transport ideas
'America Is Missing Out on the Biggest EV Boom of All'
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arc … ge/673629/
Consider the electric rickshaw
in another thread AI has produced some interesting art of 3-wheel land vehicles.

I went back and re-read Post #1 of this topic, and Calliban was talking about human powered vehicles.

The topic has wandered a bit since then.

Your post triggered a memory, and ** sure enough ** America ** has ** electric rickshaws ... they are visible almost any evening in New Orleans via the Bourbon Street webcam, which is one of the more popular webcams in the EarthCam network.

https://www.earthcam.com/usa/louisiana/ … rbonstreet

(th)

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