This article was last updated on April 16, 2022
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I intended to title this article “How I Saved the World”, but then, it might sound, after reading the title, like a text made by a Jesus impersonator. And it isn’t! It’s done by yours truly and it’s about motorcycles, mostly.
A lot of hoo-ha has been made recently about electric motorcycles, their role in today’s motorcycling world, and their impact on the future of transportation. There are a lot of people advocating these contraptions, and then, there are those that are against. Who’s right? Well, no one, of course.
Talking about the good sides of electric vehicles makes no sense, because they’re so obvious that even primary school children can point out and describe them. What the real issue here is, how can we take those good things and put them to use. It seems like everyone is ignoring the problems right now and they’re all trying to work around them. What are the problems?
Electric vehicles, of course, run on electricity. To store that electricity, they use tanks called batteries. The batteries, the tanks that hold the juice, are causing majority of problems. You see, batteries today, as much as advanced as they are and as they will be in the future, are heavy …and they’re not my brother. But, the batteries are heavy in a bad way. Compared to conventional internal combustion engines and their tanks, electric ones never change their weight. An empty petrol tank weighs considerably less than a full one. That leaves a lot of room for calculating with the weight of the whole vehicle. The best example for this is racing – when setting fastest times during qualifying, racers carry amount of fuel enough only to last them a few laps. That nicely translates to the real-life situations. If your daily commute takes 50 kilometers, it makes no sense dragging around a full tank of fuel enough for covering over a thousand kilometers. Less fuel in the tank equals less weight to drag around equals less consumption and better performance. And there’s no such thing with batteries. Fully charged battery weighs just the same as a completely discharged one. That means you drag that heavy lump around no matter where you go. The other big issue is recharging. Because it takes several hours to charge a battery in a normal, usable way, it renders batteries as completely useless form of storing energy in vehicles. Charging batteries the way we do today equals filling up a petrol tank using an eyedropper. Of course no one ever tried suggesting filling a petrol tank in that way because he, or less likely she, would probably be shot at sight on account of ultimate stupidity – even in Vatican. And there’s such a nice and sleek solution to all that.
I think that all car and motorcycle designers should take on photography. They should try living of taking photographs of weddings and they should do it for at least two years. I think that should be enough for them to comprehend the problems with their current work. You see, after using up all the energy from a battery in their cameras, between the two dances, they would not come to the bride and groom and ask them to halt the wedding for a few hours until the battery recharges. No, they will swiftly take the useless battery out and replace it for a fully charged, reserve battery. No one would even notice that and the wedding would continue as if nothing had happened. Furthermore, if the vehicle engineers slash wedding photographers wanted to go perhaps a bit longer time without a battery replacement job, they would combine two or more batteries together for a longer range. Get it?
Of course we shouldn’t force car and bike makers give up on their careers to become wedding photographers – we’d end up with a whole lot of crap wedding pictures that broke all the time. What we should do is make them realize that having a battery as an almost structural part of a vehicle just isn’t a job well done. What vehicles need are batteries that are easily removable and replaceable. And that brings us to the other part of this world-saving article.
Having removable batteries means we should be able to pull the empty batteries out and chuck in the full ones. And we should do that on places specially designated for such activities. Sounds familiar? This next piece of my proposal is the world-saving one. The big oil companies should start offering recharging services, but not to our batteries. They should recharge batteries they own. This is how it works: we buy a car or a motorcycle that uses a standardized size battery with a standardized connector. We go to an energy station, the ones we now call petrol stations, get a couple of batteries and put them in our vehicle. I imagine in the USA they would probably even deliver them. Then when we start running low on juice, we pop ‘round to the same station and exchange the empties for the fresh ones – and we pay for the electricity only. Genius, right?
To conclude: if we start using exchangeable batteries in electric vehicles, we’d never again have to wait for a battery to recharge because a fresh battery would be awaiting you just around the corner, right where the petrol station used to be. We’d save ourselves the hassle and expense of disposing used-up batteries, having big, lumpy chargers at home, and getting ulcers every time the charge drops below 50%. Probably the biggest benefit of all this would be that the big oil companies would have something to do once the oil runs out. They would become electricity dealers, recharging and leasing their batteries. We’d exchange the empties for the full ones, and never think of them again. So, big oil – start investing.
That’s me in the picture above.
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Battery Swapping is not a new comment_content_IDea. Better Place has been proposing this and implementing this for years (betterplacedotcom).
The comparison of an electric vehicle to its gasoline-powered counterpart is becoming a tired old cliche. They are different. Yes.
To complain about how long it take to recharge batteries (which is getting faster all the time) compared to filling a gas-powered vehicle is exactly the same as complaining that you cannot fill up your gas-powered vehicle by plugging it into a fuel source in your garage and leaving it over night. Stupcomment_ID, yes?
Instead, why don’t we compare current electric vehicles to those of just a decade ago – or list the advantages that electric vehicles have over gas-powered vehicles, instead of just the disadvantages?
Meanwhile – if the comment_content_IDea of driving an EV bothers you – don’t.
I have rcomment_IDden over 15,000 miles on electric motorcycles. The advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. There is simply no comparison.
Batteries are indeed heavy. Dropping the rest of the ICE powertrain can make up for it – the 2012 Zero bikes are as light or lighter than their gas counterparts – S ZF6 and ZF9 are 300 lbs and 340 lbs respectively, about as fast as and lighter than gas 250s. The Zero XU is 200 lbs, about 80 lbs lighter than a CBR125.
In my gas bike and my gas car, I never fill up with just the gas needed for my next stop. Visiting the gas station is a pain in the ass (nearest E0 station is ~4 miles out of my way). Do you seriously put only a gallon of gas in your vehicles at a time? I’m not sure that would be tolerated even in the Vatican : P
Some small electric bikes and scooters (like the XU) do use removable battery packs. The Zero XU pack is about 40 lbs, and that’s probably pushing it on the weight consumers will tolerate handling.
As Davcomment_ID sacomment_ID, Better Place is working on removable battery packs and battery swap stations. They face an uphill battle because mass-market fixed-battery EVs are already somewhat entrenched .. and each manufacturer has a different comment_content_IDea of how to package its batteries to suit each car’s particular needs. Additionally, building and stocking and maintaining battery replacement centers is incredibly expensive .. and requires a fundamental shift in how cars are owned. Most people finance their vehicles, they aren’t used to leasing them.
Range anxiety is a straw man argument – in the real world, EV drivers and rcomment_IDers quickly learn how far the vehicles will go under what conditions. In the absence of a national network of battery swap stations (which are what, 5 years? 10 years out? never?) or fast DC charging stations (which are likely also a long way out), they’re practically limited for commuting or short pleasure rcomment_IDes .. and that’s fine. How many motorcyclists don’t also have access to a gas car or another gas bike for longer trips? EVs (whether bike or car) don’t have to be all things to all people to be useful and practical, and to slowly shift our transportation energy demand from foreign oil to a gradually improving domestic grcomment_ID.
2000 miles on my Zero S ZF9 in the first 2 months, never yet below 15% charge, no range anxiety. Have yet to charge outscomment_IDe my home, and I always leave the house with a full “tank” in the morning.