Electric Bikes -N- Scooters Blog

Archive for the ‘Automotive’ Category

This week in Abu Dhabi there is an environmental summit in which corporations and governments from around the world will gather to impress upon each other the commitment to put the planet back in environmental harmony. Worldwide  businesses will gather to display the latest in green technologies.

A person like myself can only question and ponder if electric bike enthusiasts and electric scooter fans alike will be represented at this summit. It would be great if there were at least a few electric scooter or electric bike models were present at this important summit. One of the electric vehicles that were talked about at the summit is an electric car that could go about 300 miles on a single charge.  This was featured on the  CNN site and you can see the clip here: Electric Car at Dubai Summit

As I have stated before, I don’t think humans are heating up the environment I believe that the Earth is probably going through a warming cycle right now and it will probably go through a cooling cycle someday, but I don’t know when.  However, I do think that this energy summit is very important, because I don’t like being dependent on oil and I do like to live in a clean environment.  So, I guess you can say that I am somewhat of a tree- hugger.

My question is this: If you can get a car to drive almost 300 miles on a single charge, how far can you get an electric scooter or an electric bike to go?  It seems to me that over the last four years, batteries have taken a leap forward.  Here is an article from Technology Review on a battery breakthrough.

Apparently, there is a Texas company named EEStore that has created a battery that can out perform lithium – ion batteries.  The batteries can outperform acid based batteries by almost 10 times, or so the company claims. From what I can see, there is quite a bit of controversy about whether the batteries and the capacitor storage syste can do what they say they can do.

I tried to find out more by going to EEStore’s site, but the site is currently down.  Apparently their site is being renovated and will be online very soon. You can find out more about this company from Wikipedia.

Anyway, I am very enthusiastic about the possibilities behind all of this green technology and being an electric bicycle and electric scooter enthusiast, I am very excited to see fine companies pouring the energy into creating products that help us get away from our dependency on oil.

ELMO

Electric Bikes and Electric Scooters Site

Ok, now just strain your brain for a minute and think back a year or so ago.  The oil industry took every opportunity to complain about any reason that they could muster as to why they could not produce enough oil.  Remember?  If it wasn’t because of war in the Middle East it was because of bad storms or machinery breaking down.  Like Rosanne Rosanna Danna’s father used to say on Saturday Night Live, “It’s always something!” (Boy, now I’m really starting to show my age!)

Well, here we are again electric bike and electric scooter fans, right back in the middle of another oil crisis, however, this time oil is going to escalate because of a SURPLUS of oil.  Yep, you heard right.  We are going to have an escalation of oil prices because oil companies are cutting back on production and scaling down, thus, creating a gap in oil production which will lead to a shortage.

Put on your B.S. filters because it is gonna get deep.

Gene McGillian, an analyst at Tradition Energy in Stamford, Conn said that, “It’s the continuing battle between (weak oil supply/demand) fundamentals and economic optimism and there’s a lot of uncertainty over which is going to be the strongest performer”

Oh, and if that brand of Ka-Ka asn’t enough for you, then you will have to factor our old spanish buddy, El Nino. That’s right, weather reports are saying we are going to have a warm winter and that because Americans are not going to be heating their houses enough this winter, then we will have excessive amounts of oil resulting enough of a cutback to cause shortages.

My way of thinking, is that the sun has an enormous amount of energy that can power solar cells which can be then transfered into electricity which will power our cars, ebikes and electric scooters.  We will always have an amazing surplus of that energy.  Don’t believe me?  Well, here is a Youtube clip of an old retired guy that powers his car that way everyday and he did it on his own!

Here is the Volts Wagon, Check it out!

Happy New Year 2009 rom Electric Bikes -n- Scooters

We just want to say to all of you electric bike & electric scooter fans out there, Happy New Year 2009 and we hope you’ll stay connected to our site when looking for information on E-Bikes and E-Scooters this year!

God Bless!

ELMO

P.S. The image above was a Photoshop composite of many images.  I guess you could say that it is my vision of electric bikes or electric scooters of the future!

It looks like the Japanese have came out with a serious electric car that can be used in a family capacity. The MiEV has a 47 kw permanent magnet electric motor which is mounted in the rear of the vehicle. The MiEV carries a lithium – ion battery pack which sports 2 large modules.

The range is a very impressive 60 miles range with an extra 560 mile fuel range if you need to go on longer trips. This electric car can seat 4 and weighs only 2,380 pounds and it has a top speed of 80 miles per hour. This electric vehicle can be recharged in 14 hours utilizing regular household current at 100 volts. When you think f how much it costs to run this vehicle, it actually
costs 1/9^th of the cost of fueling up a regular gas driven vehicle.
While the MiEV is not currently being mass produced yet, Mitsubishi is trying to get as many as 30 of them on the road by 2008 so it can continue to test the electric vehicle to see if it can stand the test of time in a performance evaluation. By the look of things, Mitsubishi is trying to expand the marketability of its car to England.

I have to say that I really enjoy furthering the cause of electric vehicles. That’s why, whenever I find a really good site that I feel has some merit, I like to talk about it. For example I recently found an electric car site called the Electric Auto Association (http://www.eaaev.org/)

This site has an online EV newsletter that you can access with archives dating back to the year 2001. It also has an interesting store of its own where EV hats and shirts, license plates, signs and other merchandise can be forund.

The Electric Auto Association site also sponsors fund raising activities associated with the continued advancement of the electric auto industry and the new technolovgy it brings. Check out the site and tell me what you think.

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.

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.

I guess most Americans are too well off to care if the massive oil companies are taking advantage of them. According to a survey by Consumer Reports, only half of Americans say they want to sacrifice the size of their vehicles or the performance of the vehicle in order to get better fuel economy.

Here are the astonishing figures:

People willing to get a smaller vehicle to get better gas mileage = 52%

People willing to give up performance to get better gas mileage = 49%

People willing to take fewer amenities (power windows, steering etc.) fo better fuel economy = 45%
Now, the use of hydrogen and diesel is more expensive to use on their hybrid cars, but the mileage is far better and only 31% of the people surveyed would pay more to get one of these types of vehicles.

And a whopping 60% said that they were concerned about the environment.  Actually, that figure surprises me coinsidering the number of people I saw throwing garbage all over the place this past memorial day weekend. 

I guess there is even brighter news on the horizon, gas prices are expectred to rise again over the course of the summer.  If you match that along with the fact that our government wants to raise our taxes again, the future looks real bright.

I’m being sarcastic of course