A new mode of transport?

[Tedzed1]

Must say, I find this clever, but cannot see it catching on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0m-cUxMcJw

[Yorkie]

Certainly a very clever contrivance, which looks far safer than a conventional scooter or other 2-wheel vehicle.

It might find a market in large towns and cities where parking is an issue, and where commuters want to arrive looking smart and to be protected from the elements. In some cities, (Nottingham for example), if you have a workplace parking space you pay a heavy tax. It's price may be a drawback - price of a small car, but that may not deter highly paid people who work in the city.

BWW brought out a semi-enclosed petrol motorbike which gives some protection from the elements, but doesn't have the gyroscopic stability that this new bike has. However, being battery powered makes it expensive, and means that the residual value will plummet to zero due to replacement battery costs after four or five years. There seem to be a lot of hose little battery powered 4-wheel vehicles in London which look little a car but officially aren't classed as cars. Free of tax, free of exemption charges, free of parking meter charges, because they don't cause pollution at the point of use. However, their 'environmental footprint' isn't so impressive, because people don't have them INSTEAD of a family car, but in ADDITION. Also, the electricity they use causes pollution at the power station, and consumes fossil fuels, the batteries have a limited life, the lead ore has to be mind, smelted, and made into batteries, with all the energy that goes into the production of the batteries and the car. Not so 'green' as they might appear at first sight, in fact quite the opposite.

To succeed a high volume of sales would be needed to cover the huge R&D and production costs.

[Retired]

Hi,

Many thanks for adding this interesting thread Paul.

Well said David; I agree with all your comments to the point that I think "going green" is a load of rubbish. Power stations don't have a little hamster running inside a cage to generate electricity; they burn fuel and lots of it. Vehicles of any type need to be manufactured and materials used in their construction. Manufacturing burns fuel one way or another as does making the materials.

I assume the "green people" don't live in caves but live in houses of some kind making them un-green and going against what they are telling others to do. Houses take energy to build.

Why are we not growing sustainable forests of fast growing timber that can be harvested for fuel and create better burning conditions of this fuel to lower emissions during combustion. The trees would enrich the atmosphere with oxygen replacing the oxygen used in combustion.

Both my chum David and I are ex bikers and both have owned high power BMW bikes. I'm pretty sure David would agree with me when I say that riding a small powered bike terrifies me. The Honda 50 comes to mind as these were sold in thousands many years ago; such bikes because of their slow speed and acceleration tend to get in the way of faster moving vehicles; I even felt unsafe on bikes such as BSA Bantams etc. At least with a big capacity bike you have a chance of remaining in one piece.

The demise of the British biking industry came about because of lack of investment and company directors arriving at the works in their big Jaguar cars; had these company directors ever thrown a leg across one of their bikes they would have realized just how rough the British bikes were. My 650cc BSA Lightning used to vibrate so badly that it shook the bulb filaments to bits and left my hands tingling long after it was parked up. My feet used to dance around on the footrests to add to the pleasure. My Norton 750cc Atlas was a heap of junk that would not only vibrate but break its piston skirts if taken up to 110mph. My old Norton 500cc ES2 would eject its headlamp unit allowing it to drop onto the front mudguard only prevented from completely falling off by the wiring. I've ridden many big bikes with engines up to 1200cc.

I assembled some of the new Japanese bikes that started to arrive on our shores many years ago and this started a revolution in biking in those days. The Honda CB 72's were way ahead of our bikes insomuch they were equipped with indicators and electric start. They used to arrive in wooden crates and needed assembling; the only thing I didn't like was the Philips type screws holding everything together as these must have been put in with air guns and were a real pain to remove. They ran smoothly and were well put together. The crankcases were split horizontally and a pure delight to look at once the upper section was removed to reveal both the crank assembly and gears. They didn't drop oil unlike British bikes which used to wet themselves. On the other hand I once installed two BSA Bantam 175cc engines after the brand new Bantams had been returned due to crankshaft problems.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPEjKKLPHyg&feature=related

Without doubt the best bikes I ever owned were my two BMW R75/5 750cc. These would run with a top speed as cruising speed; virtually vibration free even flat out and no messy chains to play around with as they were shaft driven. I was never worried about bits falling off and they were delightful to ride. I rode tens of thousands of miles on these with the speedo needle sitting against the stop.

Back to these electric bikes; I also think the idea to be excellent but at a price of 15,000 USD only for the well off; I wouldn't consider buying one at half this amount. As David says BMW made a mostly enclosed bike but it was petrol powered and more than able to keep up with modern traffic and it could be filled up at any petrol station. With electric start and shaft drive it would appeal to me more than this electric bike.

I've rambled on enough so it's time I removed more paint from the Myford lathe beds.

Kind regards, Col.

[pwdrive]

Hello Col, growing fast growing trees has been going on since the formation of the Fortestry Comission just after WW1, the problem is that none of the governments have put any serious money in providing a nation wide infrastructure to take the produce to a suitable power generating system. In my own case: I go down the woods which is mainly plantation grown Sitka Spruce and fell a few trees for firewood for ourselves, there is arguably as much potential energy in all the brash (branches etc) that come off the tree than there is in the main stem (firewood) itself. to use all the brash for potential power/heat generation would be self defeating as a certain amount needs to be left on the forest floor for decomposition to feed the soil but as a guess I would say that 75% could be taken away for potential energy use, the nations plantation woodlands are virtually self sustaining. It annoys me when people think that by not buying paper or newspaper etc they are saving the forests...they are not, in fact they are helping there demise...there is an old saying in the wood game "A wood that pays is a wood that stays" Our forestry standards are one of the best in the world, we should make more use of them, anyone who has used a cut beam of straight home grown Douglas Fir or Larch can tell what an asset we have. Remember forest are only cleared for one of two reasons, land to grow food on (or poss bio oils) and land to build on, both are short sighted in my opinion and it reflects collectively what a greedy power hungry society we have become, we are not doing our future decendants any favours.

Lawrence.

[Tedzed1]

I had two bikes in my younger days, both Honda, the first when I was sixteen, the honda SS50, (could you really call it a motorbike),
With a few tweeks, it was good for about 45MPH if the wind was blowing in the right direction, I rode around on this for about two years, then
upgraded to the CB250 superdream, these were the days when the learner limit was 250cc, not 125cc as it is now,

       

I never took my bike test, passing my car test in my early 20s, passed it in the Febuary, and was driving a taxi for a living two months later.
First car I owned myself, I would have been about 22 years old, a lovely old rover P6, it was the 2200 TC and was an auto, and once managed
to get this car through it's MOT using paper mache in some very dubious places,

   

[Retired]

Hi,

Thanks Lawrence for the information and I fully agree with your comments. Of course it makes sense these days to buy gas from Russia and oil from warmongering countries who have us at their mercy. I wonder how long it will before we are the poor country.

The pictures are excellent Paul and both bikes look like they have never been on the road; I used to spend a great deal of time cleaning my bikes and taking a pride in them. I always had a spare rear TT100 tyre in the garage for my BMW bike as they only used to last around 4000 miles. I used a vacuum gauge to tune the carbs and it never missed a beat. Happy days but no longer practical once I married.

An old school chum sent me the following a while ago regarding going green which might be of interest;


Checking-out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman that she should bring her own shopping bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.

The woman apologized and explained, "We didn't have this green thing back in my earlier days."

The cashier responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."

She was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day. Back then, we returned milk bottles, fizz bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over... so they really were recycled. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.
But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every shop and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.
But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's nappies because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.
But that young lady is right. We didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the county of Yorkshire . In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the post, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn petrol just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.
But she's right. We didn't have the green thing back then.

We drank water from a fountain or a tap when we were thirsty instead of demanding a plastic bottle flown in from another country. We accepted that a lot of food was seasonal and didn’t expect that to be bucked by flying it thousands of air miles around the world. We actually cooked food that didn’t come out of a packet, tin or plastic wrap and we could even wash our own vegetables and chop our own salad.
But we didn't have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the tram or a bus, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their mothers into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.
But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?

Kind regards, Col.

[pwdrive]

I am bit concerned with all this battery stuff, if everyone lived within a reasonable distance from their place of work I could see how these personal electric vehicles would be good for our towns and cities, however if it's a 80 or 100 mile round trip I have my doubts because of the limited range, might be good for local personal shopping though, if they make them cool and cheap enough I guess folks would buy them, if they are nerdy and expensive then I'm guessing they won't unless there is some real cost savings to be made. I guess as with a lot of things, it's perception of status.

Lawrence.

[pwdrive]

Hello Col, No problems with the woodland info. I agree with most of what you say but I have an issue with plastic shopping bags insofar as that they have had a bad press lately and tend to be a bit demonized.
A short while ago there was a twee little village in Devon I think it was that I think were the first place to ban plastic shopping bags here in the Westcountry, this was followed by loads of condecending articles on the local radio and press, well congatulations to them....We use tesco plastic bags as provide when we do the shopping at that supermarket, my wife and I can't get enough of them, they are so usefull, I keep my accounts in them, cement powder from opened cement bags, kindling wood, laundery, radio bits! plants undergoing transplant, my socks in the summer! and many other things and uses.
The point I am making is that if we did not have them then in all probability we and many others would go out and buy a pack of plastic bags, thus consuming more energy in overall terms.
I have to say I hate token greenism, for me being and living green is about being as efficient as you can with everything and trying to avoid excess as much as is pratically possible, always. Not buying plastic bags then having a shower everyday isn't being green in my opinion.
Just an observation.

Lawrence.