Two Wheel Transport

How e-Bikes are Killing Motorcycles - Aniioki A9 Pro Max Review
FortNine

I fully expect the government to weigh in on high-power electric bikes any day now.

The Janus Halcyon 250 is Dangerous and Wonderful
FortNine

Weird combination of custom throw-back and economy import. It's like a 1930's bike made with modern manufacturing techniques.

The government is legally required to drive you over this bridge*
Chris Spargo and Evan Edinger

We've got bike lanes all over Washington County, but you'll see a zillion cars before you see a bicycle, and that's good, because I hate seeing bicycles in the bike lane next to traffic flying by at 50 MPH.

Battery Operated Trains

Why does London have a "ghost bus"?
Chris Spargo

The video is mostly about absurd English rules for trains, but he does mention battery operated commuter trains that are recharged when they stop.

Loads of ways to get from here to there

More about the battery powered train:

GWR's New Battery Powered Train
Jago Hazzard

Morning Midas

Morning Midas

Remember the car carrier that caught fire and sank a month ago? Birds have come home to roost:

"Effective Immediately": Shipping Line Suspends EV Cargo Due To Lithium Battery Fire Concerns

Slate Pickup Truck

Slate Pickup Truck

Iowa man has reserved a Slate pickup truck. I hadn't heard of it. It's electric and it's cheap, they're claiming under 20 G's with a government rebate. We'll see if that is still a thing in two years which is when this thing will actually be available. 

How cheap is it? Current price of gold is around $3,500 an ounce. In 1971, which was the last time we had actual money, gold was $35 an ounce, so the price of gold has gone up by a factor of 100, or to put it more accurately, the value of the dollar has gone down by a factor of 100. One of today's dollars is worth one cent from 1971. Apply that rule to the price of the truck, and this truck only costs $200. Shoot, even I had $200 in 1971.

Motor Trend has a happy video about it. Too happy for me.

Looking for pictures of this vehicle, I didn't like most of what I saw - dark vehicle with dark backgrounds - it's almost like they don't want you to see what it looks like. I guess that goes along with their 'customization'. Yeah, you can buy an invisible vehicle, or you can tart it up with fancy colors and useless do-dads. I suspect that's where they hope to make their money.

Electric Bike Conversions

Want the Absolute Best Electric Bike? It's probably already in your garage.
JohnnyNerdOut

IAman's electric bicycle was stolen from in front of Winco a couple of weeks (months?) ago, and now he's looking to build another one. His previous source for electric bike parts was Bafang USA Direct, but they quit importing Bafang motors on account of them operating in Communist China, so he's looking for another source for parts and finds Johnny Nerd-Out just across the river in Vancouver, Washington.

Cars and People

Tesla Automobile
Because I'm a sucker for a pretty face and I used to subscribe to Car & Driver

I suspect that my dislike of electric cars stems from the $70K price tag that comes on a moderately fancy new one. That goes along with my resentment of people who drive expensive cars in general. And it's not that I can't afford one. If I wanted one I could buy one, but you weigh my desire for a fancy car against my resistance to spending more than a dollar and half on anything, and my desire will fall way short. I suppose it would be nice to have a fancy car, but my interest would only last a few days, a month tops, and then it's just another car. Maybe if I had ten million in the bank it would not be such a big deal, but I don't, so it is.

And then there's all the problems that are showing up on electric cars. The whole thing about the batteries is kind of a bug-a-boo. I suspect they will get the issues sorted out eventually but right now it's a big issue. However, too many people have sunk too much money into the whole electric car thing for it to disappear. And who knows? Some wise guy may come up with a new battery technology that will solve a bunch of the problems.

Electric cars have another problem, a problem they share with gasoline engine powered cars, and that is the proliferation of super-reliable electronic gadgets. All kinds of cars are loaded with these things and they are great as long as they work, but every once in a while something will flake out. Sometimes it's obvious which component failed, and sometimes it takes a master technician with a zillion dollar analyzer to figure out what's wrong and then you get to pay for the part and it costs a zillion dollars as well. Over all, if you look at average cost of operating an automobile, I suspect it has gone down substantially over the years, but if you happen to get hit with the rare occasion of some gizmo flaking out, it can hit you pretty hard. Might be why people like warranties.

I dunno, but I suspect guys who work on electric cars have an easier time of it than guys who work on gasoline powered cars. With electric cars you are operating in one environment - it's all electric all the time, well, except for the brakes and suspension, but the power train and all the controls are all electric. Gasoline engine mechanics need to have a good understanding of electronics, but they also need to be familiar with the ins and outs of internal combustion engines, and that is a whole 'nother universe.

Then there's the issue of the difficulty of repairs. Things have getting more complicated, and more stuff is getting stuffed into the engine bay which in itself has gotten smaller. These days it's often a toss-up as to whether taking engine out would be easier than trying to fix whatever is broken while it sits in the car. Car manufacturers primary goal is to make assembly as quick and easy as possible. Repair-ability comes second. Besides, cars are so reliable, they shouldn't need any repairs, and the way people drive and the way insurance companies operate, there is a good chance the car will be totaled before it needs any repairs.

The big issue that divides the automotive world is between the people who are good at working with their hands and people who are good at working with people. People who have no innate mechanically ability are attracted to electric cars because of the simplicity of how they operate - an electric motor goes around and it turns the wheels. What makes the motor go around? Electricity from a battery, like a flashlight., but bigger. Easy-peasy. You start talking about how an internal combustion engine works to people-people and their eyes will glaze over in about five seconds. They have no interest in it, but they will be interested in how interested you are in it.

People who are good with their hands will do fine if society has a place for them. In order to accomplish anything big, you are going to need to work with people. People who are good at working with people are going to have an easier time of that than people who are good at working with their hands. Not all people-people are good at organizing others, many of them just spend their energy talking with friends about celebrities.

Electric Bicycle

IAman added an electric motor to his bicycle a while back (a year ago? Two?) and now he reports.

Latest finding on ebikes, my being near many ebike stores (& 60 years of riding bikes)

• Disk brakes are much smoother than rim brakes,  I will retro fit my bike with a front disk, 70% of stopping force.  The rear frame would be more difficult to retrofit.
• My midmotor aluminum ebike is more than comparable to the $3500+ midmotor bike on the market.
• I like my ebikes 48 volt, 11 amp power, not too little, not too heavy.
• My thumb paddle  throttle gives me the boost and control I need to overcome the inertia starting off.
• twist grips look clean,  but are not as tactile as levers.
• A step through frame like the Pedego Boomerang would be nice, but will have to wait for one to popup in used sales.
•  I am used to my big soft seat,  anything harder and normal is not comfortable.
• 20 mile range is more than enough,  any longer ride rewards me with a sore butt.
• 24 mph is fast enough,  the wind noise becomes unbearable and I would not want a accident at that speed.
• A cheap lightweight open top pannier is better than heavier buckled zipped expedition pannier, for <20 mile rides.
• Riding without a bell is childish, foolish, selfish and anti social.
• Biggest advantage to ebike is conquering hills.
• Cafe locks look like a good idea for quick stops.
• Lights of any sort are an improvement over possibly being missed in a shadow or darkness and ending up in the emergency room. Plus they are nice for differentiating fellow bicyclists on trails from the foliage and background distractions..
• HiViz clothing works.
• As much as Seattle and Portland are touted as "Bicycle cities"  Too bad, but I differ.  
• Inclimate weather much of the year
• Too Hilly
• Seattle streets and bikeways too lumpy
• Traffic calming needed
• Seattle seems like street department cannot keep up
• Too many cars, going too fast
• Good news: seems drivers are more aware and courteous to bicyclists than in years past.

Horseless Carriage

I Spent $1500 to Fix Ryobi's Mistake
Aging Wheels

I like this guy. He takes on projects that I would like to take on, but since he is doing them and making videos of them, I don't have to.

I thought about buying an electric lawn mower for our New House [tm] remodeling project but I ended up hiring the neighbor's lawn man to mow it. He was kind of expensive for the tiny lawn, but it saved me the hassle. I spent some time looking at electric lawn mowers (the push kind, not a riding mower) and it looked like a decent one would cost about $500 which seemed like a heck of a lot of money, but the yard man would twice cost that much for a year. 

I also have an old Makita electric drill with Ni-cad batteries. I thought about changing it over to some kind nickel-something batteries which are almost as good as lithium ion but much cheaper, but then I would have needed a new charger and I wasn't all that invested in the idea. Besides, I never figured out how I was going to seal the new batteries inside the plastic cover, being as I would need to practically destroy the old cover to get the old cells out. Maybe when I am retired I will look into it.

BYD Chinese Electric Car

World’s Best Selling Electric Car | BYD
Supercar Blondie

Never heard of BYD before Chartr mentioned them in today's newsletter:

China Market Share of Top Five Automotive Brands 

The car is full of cute little gimmicks which I imagine will appeal to some people, but the company seems to know something about batteries, so we might be seeing better batteries soon.

Ford F-150 Lightning

TEARING APART my new Ford Lightning electric truck made my mechanic WANT TO RETIRE?!?!
Hoovies Garage
Electric cars are conceptually very simple - a battery, a dial to controller the voltage and a motor to drive the wheels. In actuality they are very complicated. Now most of the complicated bits don't have any moving parts so there won't be any mechanical wear, but even the best electronic components sometimes fail for no apparent reason. Ford or some tool vendor probably has a tool to diagnose any problem, should one arise. The solution will undoubtedly be to replace the defective component, and it will very likely be a very expensive component.

Then there is the cooling system that seems to to be connected to everything. As long as it doesn't spring any leaks, and it shouldn't, you should be fine.

All this reminds me of the story about the guy who bought a used electric car for around $10K, drove it for a year or two and then the battery died. Replacing the battery was going to run $14K, if you could find one, but as far as the dealer was concerned, they were obsolete and no longer available.

If you are just driving around town, and you can plug your car in every night to charge, I can see that an electric car could make your life a little easier. But I am afraid they are going to be like all the other modern electronic gadgets - disposable. Use it until it breaks, but when it breaks it's not going to worth fixing it. Just throw it away and buy a new one.

The biggest problem with electric cars is the same problem we have with bicyclists and vegans - people who believe in them won't quit telling you how great they are.

Alia Electric VTOL Aircraft

Alia Electric VTOL Aircraft

The above image is a prototype aircraft (sans vertical lift rotors) in flight. It's being developed by Beta Technologies, a small startup company in Vermont. They have acquired nearly $800 million in funding for development. That might be enough to get them through FAA certification, which might be the most expensive part of bringing any new airplane to market.

Artist's Conception of Alia Aircraft in UPS Livery

UPS plans to buy 150 of these aircraft when they are ready, which isn't going to be for at least a couple more years. With a price tag of $4 million each, that would be $600 million, which makes it seem like that $800 million investment could possibly pay off. There are a number of hurdles to overcome before they get there though, and it wouldn't take too many stumbles to scuttle the whole thing.

The thing that bothers me about electric vehicles is the stupid lithium-ion batteries and their propensity to catch fire. Actually, that's not fair. There was a spate of Tesla automobile fires a while back, but somebody checked and concluded that the rate of Teslas catching fire was lower than the rate that conventional gasoline automobiles catch fire. The bigger problem is how difficult it is to put out an automobile battery fire. It might take 2,000 gallons to put out the fire in a burning gasoline powered car, but it will take ten times as much water to put out an electric vehicle fire. I suppose someone will develop a protocol for dealing with lithium-ion battery fires and then, eventually, fire departments around the country will adopt new practices and equipment to deal with them.

Portland Electric Scooters

Portland Electric Scooters

Driving in downtown Portland is like driving in a parking lot at a big mall. It requires a completely different mind set than driving on the freeway. Driving on the freeway is a piece of cake. Objectively, it is more dangerous, the freeway is full of large, heavy machines hurtling along at breakneck speeds, just inches away from disaster, but we manage to negotiate it with few problems.

Driving in the city is like playing anti Whack-A-Mole, where the object of the game is to avoid all of the mole people who are constantly popping up in your path.

While a fender bender on the freeway can be an annoyance and a minor financial disaster, a fender bender with a pedestrian could very well ruin your life, not to mention ruining the pedestrian's life as well.

Portland has a program to provide electric scooters for people to use to get around downtown. They might be fun to ride, and they might actually be useful, but when you are driving they are a new form of mole people you have to learn to avoid. Riders stand up straight, so at first glance they might look like pedestrians, but they can also move as fast as bicycles, so you need to give them a wider berth.

I'm pretty sure the aim of the City Council is to discourage anyone who doesn't live downtown from coming there. It seems like half of the on-street parking has been preempted by construction, outdoor drinking areas in front of bars, loading zones, bus stops and places where the sidewalk bulges out into the street because reasons. And we won't talk about all the traffic lanes reserved for trolleys and buses. It just looks like Portland doesn't want any visitors.

Anyway, I noticed a couple of these electric scooters while we were downtown yesterday and I thought that they would be a good source for a battery for your home made electric bike. An electric bike seems like a much more useful device than one of these scooters (I almost said stupid scooters, but I managed to refrain myself). Someone who is trying to build an electric bike on the cheap might look around and spying one of these scooters say 'aha!, free battery'.  While there are some people who have the technical skills and the drive to build their own electric bike, there are a minority, and those who also have larceny in their heart are an even smaller percentage, so while we might get a few battery thefts, it might be a small enough number that is just gets written off as another 'cost of doing business'.

'Mericans Sure Do Like their Electricity

This battery business is getting out of control.

Green Car Reports: 

Wallbox Quasar 2

"At the 2022 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Wallbox Industries will unveil its second-generation bidirectional home charging station for the North American market."

Like its predecessor, the Wallbox Quasar 2 can draw power from an EV's battery pack, allowing the car to serve as an emergency backup power source for homes. Bidirectional charging effectively turns electric cars into energy-storage units, giving homeowners more flexibility in energy use, Wallbox said in a press release.

Chuck Egg reports:

EcoFlow RIVER Max Portable Power Station

I own an EcoFlow River Max "Portable Power Station" and a portable foldable solar panel (which is much more expensive now than when I bought it a couple years ago.  Supply line issue, perhaps?)

PAXCESS 120W 18V Portable Solar Panel

My mom has COPD and uses two oxygen generators.  Her smaller  transportable battery powered oxygen unit can be charged and powered by 110v or a 12v (cigarette lighter) outlet..  The Oxygen unit's detachable battery can run the O2 generator for up to about 4 hours.  When we inquired about a second battery we were told the price was about $400 because it is a "medical device".   So, instead, I bought the EcoFlow Battery because it was just a few dollars more, but had a lot more potential uses since it has 110v, 12v and USB outlets.

In fact, we've used the EcoFlow to extend battery power for a few extra hours on mom's O2 machine, but more often we've used the Ecoflow battery to power our internet router, computers, TV, and LED lights when the power has gone out for short periods.

In the summer, I connect the Ecoflow to a portable solar panel to charge the Ecoflow battery, then use the USB ports to charge, for free, our phones, tablets and laptops.

No, the cost for a high watt-hour battery backup may not make sense for the average household, but a lot of people use them for temporary power during outages and a lot more people use them with solar panels when they are camping.  I've loaned my Ecoflow out to friends a few times during power outages and they've used it to brew a pot of coffee, watch TV, and charge their cell phones.

The Ecoflow I use has a high wattage button that allows the battery to power a table saw, circular saw, or other power tools which may be more convenient than running an extension cord.

The Ecoflow unit we use has a capacity of 576 watt hours.  It's simple math to calculate how long the battery will power LED lighting (at several watts per hour, per bulb) or an internet router (2-3 watts per hour), etc.  The battery displays remaining power in both watt hours and minutes at the current load.

Power tool companies are making widgets that make 110VAC from power tool batteries. They don't deliver a lot of power and they don't last long, but there seems to be a market for them, charging phones, or job sites without 110 where you don't want to run a generator. 

We seldom get hit with power outages. I wonder if being just down the street from Intel's Ronler Acres multi-billion dollar computer chip factory has anything to do with that. I kind of suspect that they went to a lot of trouble and expense to make sure their money printing machine has a reliable supply of 'lectricity.

While some people are making a lot of noise about how electric cars are more efficient, save you money and are good for the environment, that's all it is, a lot of noise. What it's really all about is convenience. I have a smartphone. I don't like it very much but I carry it with me everywhere because it is very useful. I like my gasoline powered truck, but having to go out of my way to reach a gas station and then wait in line to buy gas is annoying and inconvenient. 

Me, I'll put up with all kinds of annoying bullshit if it means I don't have to spend any money, but now I'm thinking about spending $80 for a new printer so I don't have to walk upstairs to get my one page of printout or figure out how to connect my Linux box to the printer on my wife's Windows box. I mean I already spent an hour on this and got nowhere. Yes, I still use paper and pencil for some things.

Citroen Ami: The Adorable Non-Car For Kids

Citroen Ami: The Adorable Non-Car For Kids
DW REV - Cars & Mobility
Compared to an automobile it's not very fast and it doesn't have much range, but for running errands in your immediate area it's fine. And it's enclosed, so you don't have to don rain gear whenever it rains, which is pretty much all the friggin time here in Oregon. Electric power and only 7K Euros, which really cheap compared to any kind of new car.

My problem with it is that I would need two cars - one for running down to the corner to pick up a pizza and another real car for when I have to go to town. That in itself wouldn't be bad. The problem I would have is where are my sunglasses? Are they in this car? Or that one? I suppose one could adjust, but I wouldn't like it.

Via Detroit Steve

Noise, Vibration and Harshness

EV Swapping Your Car Will Make It Louder. Here's How To Fix It.
SuperfastMatt

To start, Matt talks about the noise level in electric cars versus standard cars, stuff that I had never considered but is now obvious now that Matt has told me about it. The bulk of the video is him installing sound deadening material in his ancient Jaguar that he is converting to electric power.

SuperfastMatt has appeared here before.

3D Print Your Own Car

JellyBean3D personal transport vehicle

Okay, so it barely meets the minimum requirements for a car. Still looks like it could be useful in a village. Makezine has the story.

JellyBean3D car, sliced and diced

When I first looked at it I figured you would need a very large 3D printer to make the pieces, but no, the designer, Gonzalo P. Chomon, cut the large pieces into smaller ones that could be printed on your average home 3D printer. Then the car is assembled by "fusing together lots of small parts using dichloromethane". Wait, what? Dichloro- what? That sounds just a little ominous.

Dichloromethane is an organic solvent and it is ominous if you live in California where every chemical in the world is known to cause cancer. On the other hand, Google tells us:

The main uses of dichloromethane, a halogenated organic solvent, are as a solvent in paint removers, degreasing fluids, aerosol propellants and hair lacquers. It is also used in shoe manufacturing.

and apparently as 'glue' for sticking plastic parts together. Probably want to do that in a well ventilated area, like outside. The stuff will eat your brain.

It takes about 500 hours to print all the pieces, and since you are not always going to be Johnny-on-the-spot when it comes time to collect the finished part and start the next one, it could easily take twice that, which basically means it could easily take you six weeks to print everything. Well, you don't have anything else to do since you are confined to your cell, so get cracking.

China's Tiny Cars

Tiny Car charing - Yan Cong for Rest of World

Good story about the growing number of tiny cars in China:

The future of electric cars isn’t Tesla. It’s golf carts. By LAVENDER AU

An excerpt:

As they don’t technically require licenses, tiny cars tend to be popular with migrant workers, who struggle to pay for driving lessons and other car-related costs. The elderly, too, find tiny cars attractive since, up until October of last year, people over 70 could not apply for a driving license in China. They’re also convenient for anybody who wants a car to pick up groceries or their kids from school: No tiny car is longer than 1.5 meters, and their speed tops out at between 40 and 56 kilometers an hour. They’re for the short trips of daily life, not for traveling from one side of the city to another.

Via Detroit Steve