The Lemon Fool

Snorvey wrote:

tjh290633 wrote:

Snorvey wrote:The thing that always get me compared to an electric power plant is the sheer amount of.....well. ....stuff in a petrol engine. From the gearbox to the valve train, it's just incredible the level of engineering that's required.

Have you never looked at a 2-stroke engine? Very few moving parts.

TJH

Well of course. But before their demise they were getting more and more complex. Liquid cooling. Powervalves and Fuel injection to keep them quiet, tractable and sort of fuel efficient.

Some of the simplicity of electric vehicles is because they have not yet gone very far down that path of optimizing for the last few percent of cost or performance. I worked on electric vehicles and we figured that they should have gearboxes, if we were making 10 million. But the non-recurring engineering costs for custom motors were far lower than for custom gearboxes, so we oversized the motor and nixed the gearbox for a production of a few thousand.

Also most of the complexity of electric vehicles is not in the motor. Motor controllers have a great many parts, and a battery is way more complex than a petrol tank. The battery is where the chemical reactions that power the vehicle actually happen.

tjh290633 wrote:

Snorvey wrote:The thing that always get me compared to an electric power plant is the sheer amount of.....well. ....stuff in a petrol engine. From the gearbox to the valve train, it's just incredible the level of engineering that's required.

Have you never looked at a 2-stroke engine? Very few moving parts.

TJH

I often used to look at my 2 stroke engines. Generally due to too few moving parts

Paul

DrFfybes wrote:

tjh290633 wrote:

Snorvey wrote:The thing that always get me compared to an electric power plant is the sheer amount of.....well. ....stuff in a petrol engine. From the gearbox to the valve train, it's just incredible the level of engineering that's required.

Have you never looked at a 2-stroke engine? Very few moving parts.

TJH

I often used to look at my 2 stroke engines. Generally due to too few moving parts

Paul

I had a friend with a DKW 3 cylinder water cooled motor. Only 7 moving parts, he was fond of telling us.

TJH

So here's an on-street charger that sits flush with the pavement.
https://newatlas.com/trojan-flat-and-fl ... nts-brent/

Only several million to install.
I wonder what stealth tax will be used to pay for that.

V8

tjh290633 wrote:

Snorvey wrote:The thing that always get me compared to an electric power plant is the sheer amount of.....well. ....stuff in a petrol engine. From the gearbox to the valve train, it's just incredible the level of engineering that's required.

Have you never looked at a 2-stroke engine? Very few moving parts.

TJH

Indeed. Even less has a rotary (Wankel) engine.

However, regards the "power unit" of the future, both of those are currently scuppered by their use of a total loss lubrication system (IMHO). Unfortunately, since they are both superb pieces of engineering.

Matt

DrFfybes wrote:
I often used to look at my 2 stroke engines. Generally due to too few moving parts

Paul

Presumably when the parts were moving you couldn't look at them due to the clouds of blue smoke?

scotia wrote:

DrFfybes wrote:
I often used to look at my 2 stroke engines. Generally due to too few moving parts

Paul

Presumably when the parts were moving you couldn't look at them due to the clouds of blue smoke?

When they were moving, they didn't need looking at

Blimey, over 12 months between posts on a thread. Electric cars and public charging have come a long way since then

Paul

DrFfybes wrote:
Blimey, over 12 months between posts on a thread.

Paul

Some of us need a little time to let our thoughts mature.

88V8 wrote:
So here's an on-street charger that sits flush with the pavement.

https://newatlas.com/trojan-flat-and-fl ... nts-brent/

Only several million to install.

I wonder what stealth tax will be used to pay for that.

Like all new technology though, wouldn't we expect the price of these things to come down quite rapidly?

Some pictures have emerged of a much cheaper version that's been developed just a few short weeks after your post above -

https://i.redd.it/soda0snlhoh71.jpg

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

Itsallaguess wrote:It was interesting that during last night's Covid briefing, the Transport Secretary made specific mention of fast-tracking 'e-scooter' trials in the UK -

[i]Mr Shapps also revealed plans to bring forward electric scooter trials in a bid to change the UK’s public transport landscape. Currently, e-scooters – which can travel at up to 15.5mph – are banned on roads and pavements in the UK.

A consultation into their legalisation was launched in March. He said: “Today I'm also fast-tracking trials of e-scooters. I'm bringing this programme, already underway, from next year to next month.

By way of followup - the Coventry trial lasted less than a week : https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-c ... e-54164922

The Liverpool scheme changed to requiring that they get parked in official parking areas, but are still not popular among commenters on the Liverpool Echo website : https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/li ... s-21207551

There's an article today suggesting 1000 people have been banned for dangerous driving on them, although I can't find confirmation.

London started their trial in a handful of boroughs with three different operators with three different apps :
https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/electr ... ntal-trial

Hallucigenia wrote:

Itsallaguess wrote:
It was interesting that during last night's Covid briefing, the Transport Secretary made specific mention of fast-tracking 'e-scooter' trials in the UK -

Mr Shapps also revealed plans to bring forward electric scooter trials in a bid to change the UK’s public transport landscape. Currently, e-scooters – which can travel at up to 15.5mph – are banned on roads and pavements in the UK.

A consultation into their legalisation was launched in March. He said: “Today I'm also fast-tracking trials of e-scooters. I'm bringing this programme, already underway, from next year to next month..

By way of followup - the Coventry trial lasted less than a week : https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-54164922

The Liverpool scheme changed to requiring that they get parked in official parking areas, but are still not popular among commenters on the Liverpool Echo website :

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/major-rule-change-liverpool-scooters-21207551

There's an article today suggesting 1000 people have been banned for dangerous driving on them, although I can't find confirmation.

London started their trial in a handful of boroughs with three different operators with three different apps : https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/electric-scooter-rental-trial

It's a shame really...

We seem to have a number of difficult social hurdles to overcome if we're going to get people out of their cars and using these types of cheaper and less polluting alternatives in any sort of meaningful way, and yet other countries seem to be able to do it....

Still - at least they're willing to give these trials a go, to at least properly expose these types of issues, so let's see if they can develop things in a way that manages to overcome the major problems...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

Itsallaguess wrote:We seem to have a number of difficult social hurdles to overcome if we're going to get people out of their cars and using these types of cheaper and less polluting alternatives in any sort of meaningful way, and yet other countries seem to be able to do it....

I think it was Paris that introduced them early, only to find that they had an average lifespan of eight weeks before people dumped them in the Seine. AIUI, the city is currently mulling a complete ban after a woman was killed by an e-scooter manned by two people. "Anarchy", says mayor Hidalgo.

In Copenhagen, the rider problem seems to be drink and drugs. There, does that feel better?

BJ

It does seem the same mistakes get made first with push bikes, then e-bikes, then e-scooters, across different countries. Not talking to local councils, not geofencing etc. Madrid is another one that banned e-scooters in 2018 after a few weeks' trial, when an old lady was killed. Spain has recently introduced national guidelines - no pavements, fines for multiple users or wearing headphones etc.

Out of interest, I looked up what the stats were for Boris bikes - 6,654 were "decommissioned" in the first 10 years, through loss or writeoff. 3,993 of the original 5,000 were still on the road after their expected lifetime of 10 years, in which time the total number rose to around 14,000. Suggests that either the newer ones are more likely to be decommissioned, or that expanding the scheme to outlying areas is not good for "retention".

Hallucigenia wrote:It does seem the same mistakes get made first with push bikes, then e-bikes, then e-scooters, across different countries. Not talking to local councils, not geofencing etc. Madrid is another one that banned e-scooters in 2018 after a few weeks' trial, when an old lady was killed. Spain has recently introduced national guidelines - no pavements, fines for multiple users or wearing headphones etc.

But geofencing isn’t accurate enough to differentiate between the road where they should be and the pavement where they shouldn’t.

And that is with rented scooters, with privately owned scooters it is trivial to update the software to remove all restrictions on speed and anything else.

As for enforcement - don’t make me laugh. Police do nothing in respect of cyclists who behave in the same manner, so why are they going to do anything significant (other than the occasional limited crackdown) with scooters?

Hallucigenia wrote: Out of interest, I looked up what the stats were for Boris bikes - 6,654 were "decommissioned" in the first 10 years, through loss or writeoff.

One of those 6,654 was one I was using - crushed underneath a truck that decided to reverse without looking. At soon as I heard the reversing sound I abandoned the 50kg Boris Bike to its fate and made a leap to safety.