Electric Bikes -N- Scooters Blog

Archive for June, 2007

I am an American. Let me say that at the start of this post. I love the Amewrican way of life and especially the freedoms our forefathers have secured for us from their sacrifices and blood. I will never move to another country like a lot of celebrities have because ythis is my home and it is the land that I love.

However, as much as it pains me to say so, America is no longer the world leader it used to be. I have a relative who recently went on a tour of several European countries and a few Asian, to include China.

Anyway, I had mentioned to my relative that I had recently watched a video produced by 20/20 television show called “Is America #1?” and I told her that I had watched that program she said to me, “If you could see some of the things in these countries that I have seen, you would think that we were were not even #3!”
Now being just an ordinary guy, I don’t think that I want to act as if I know how to cure all of America’s problems, or even what happens to be causing them. However,I feel, Like a lot of Americans do, that there are some very simple common sense answers to many of our problems.

Take for example, our ever growing dependency on foreign oil. America has consistantly increased its oil consumption over the last 50 years despite the ever increasing prices placed on our infrastructure. I guess the hard part for people like me to understand is why countries like India and China, who were 3rd world countries just 20 years ago, can produce and embrace technology like electric cars, electric bicycles and electric scooters. Not only are they embracing this new technology but they are innovating and utilizing this technology daily.

End of Part I

The United Kingdom Has a New Bicycle Electric Motor for You

The United Kingdom is launching a new type of bicycle electric motor to drive electric scooters or electric bicycles. The company’s name is Ultra Motor and they have a bike electric motor called the AH300 which can run for 35 Kilometers (or if you live in John Wayne manly type countries – 21.75 miles) on a single charge and can run up to a top speed of 25 kph (again, if you live in a man’s man country -16 mph) Apparently, India has two massive electric bike plants and they plan on using Ultra Motor’s newest innovation.

The applications for the bike electric motor are quite diverse. The company plans on using them e-bikes, e-scooters and even rickshaws that are still a major form of transportation in Vietnam and India. Joseph Bowman, CEO of Ultra Motors said, “ We are trying to position our company in a position between a electric bike and an electric scooter.

The enthusiasm of the company seems to come with a solid backing. Bowman pointed out that Ultra Motors is avoiding a lot of the pitfalls of the expensive yet popular Segway and Zap Bikes.
“For one thing, the price is lower.” Bowman said with a smile. The Ultra bicycle electric motor when loaded on an e-bike will cost between $150 to $175 which is way less than the Segway, which can run you thousands of dollars.

The Vectrix – X treme Electric Scooter Hits the U.S.

The Maxi-Scooter called the Vectrix has landed in America and it is what young upstarts would call X treme (extreme for those of you that had to take spelling in school). Looking like something that came out of the Japanese animated movie, Akira, the Vectrix Maxi-Scooter has awesome performance as well as looks.

The X treme scooter, which retails for the price of about $11,000 comes with nickel metal batteries and can run 62 miles per hour. Even people that think, “if man could fly God would have given him wings” type of philosophy can ignore the fact that this X treme scooter can go from 0 to 30 mph in 3.5 seconds!

In my opinion, the only downside to this is the fact that at 25 mph it can go 68 miles. But as time rolls on, battery technology has taken fast and mighty leaps it will probably be no time before the distance of the batteries will become greater and cheaper. However, if you are like me, living in an convenient area of a sprawling city, then this X treme scooter would be perfect.

Electric Mobility Scooters for the Lazy

You know, it’s not usual for me to write a blog post that is negative towards the technology of electric scooters.

I guess this picture really needs no introduction.  All I can say is- God, what have we become?????

Japan’s senior official at the Japanese Trade Ministry declared that Japan is planning to spend $1.72 billion (in U.S. Dollar amount) over the next 5 years to develop cars and fuel that will reduce the dreaded car emmissions. Apparently, the Japanese government will subsidize development of batteries, hydrogen and other technologies in an aim to get rid of 6% to 7% of emissions. The japanese have had emission problems for a very long time with this problem due to the fact that their geography is not conducive to urban spread. Japan is an island nation with a large part of its islands too rocky to build on and this is cause for cities becoming very jammed and traffic being extremely heavy.

Gas is quickly reaching a national average of $3.50 per gallon and Americans are starting to wake up to the fact that they need to get around on something more than fossil fuel. According to AAA American’s are expecgted to drive more this 2008 summer than ever. Mzaybe there is hope for electric scooters, electric bicycles and electric cars yet.

The word that is out is that hybrids are quickly becoming the way to go. Also, the federal government is offering tax incentives for the first several thousand hybrid models sold by automakers. Federal, state and local governments are also offering tax incentives to owners of the vehiclesas well as state credits.

One of the road blocks to hybrid cars and electric scooters in the past has been in the area of batteries. Many peoplke think that if a battery goes out in an electric car or scooter, then it is very expensive to fix. That is simply not the case. At the high end of replacing the battery on a hybrid car the cost would be about $2000 U.S. Dollars. However, despite upsetting the apple cart on these types of myths, electric bikes, electric scooters and electric hybrid cars still cost about 30% more than standard models.

But one thing to consider, these types of vehicles require hardly any maintenence over the period of the lives, which is a great long term advantage.

Over the course of this year, Mayor David Miller has been testing electric vehicles in his city, Toronto. The name of the project is called The Toronto Plug-In Hybrid Vehicle Project and it is trying to prove that hybrid electric vehicles that are equipped with larger batteries can be charged right from the home on the grid. The good mayor and his team of researchers also want to see if the vehicle can operate in an urban environment while running on a single charge for more than 50 killometers.

The University of Toronto faculty and students will gather the data relevant to the study and estimate whether or not the vehicles have a drop in emissions or if there is an improvement in fuel-mileage.

A side benefit to this idea is to see if the cars could work as back up generators, able to provide vital electricity to homes during a city’s blackout.

Mayor Miller states, ” By boosting the all-electric range of hybrid vehicles, this technology has the potential to help us address one of the largest climate and air quality impacts in the city of Toronto.”

The researchers are using eight Toyota Priuses, one Honda Civic Hybrid and one Ford Escape Hybrid and these vehicles will be driven over the course of this year.

If the project works out, there are plans in place to add anothyer 200 vehicles.