Hybrid Gas/Electic Motorcycles?
eCycle is developing a 180mpg motorcycle. The motorcycle features a 219cc direct injected diesel engine and a 8kW electric motor drive. The weight is 230lbs, with a top speed of 80mph and acceleration of 0-60 mph in 6 seconds.
We all know that a motorcycle is not only fun but cheap to own over other types of vechiles. With cars evolving into Hybrid (Gas/Electric), Hdrogen and fully Electric vechiles it wouldn't be long before motorcycles would follow. Those types of vechiles are getting great fuel milage and even better than a lot of motorcycles! (e.g. Honda Insight* 70mpg).
*Honda tested EPA mileage for the Insight at 61 for city and 70 for highway driving (compared to 32 city and 37 highway for the Honda Civic 3 Door).80mph).
Not to be outdone in the engine development area, the US Army has a Kawasaki KLR650 that runs on Diesel fuel rather than normal gasoline! With a range of 120 miles per gallon the bike develops 33ftlb of torque and has a top speed of 85 MPH.
So, does that mean motorcycles will be going electric? It is quite possible.
This electric motorcycle does a 1/4 mile in 9.450 seconds @152.07 mph.
So, should you be worried about loosing a gasoline engine and having an electric one instead?
That all depends, there are positives and negatives (of course) of anything new over something old. The internal combustion engine has been around for more than 100 years. We have pretty much done everything we can with the basic design. The biggest reason we haven't "evolved" to another type of engine (electric/hydrogen/ect) is money (or the loss of) from the oil companies. Oil (as if you didn't know already) companies make Billions of dollars an hour worldwide, they don't want to give that up.
Electric engines offer advantages that could never be offered by an Internal Combustion engine such as:
- There is almost no noise at all.
- No vibration at all.
- Total Linear power availability.
- Zero moving parts.
Imageing cruising down the road, all you hear if the sounds around you, the wind on your face and nothing disturbing that. Not even virbration gets in the way (at any speed) of this feeling that is like flying. With a twist of the throttle you can go from 0 to 100mph in one gear if you want to with no hesitation, stuttering or loss of power anywhere, a perfect power curve.
As with the horse and buggie, we will all be sad to see them go. The Film camera industry is going though the same drastic change with Digital camera's. I own 9 professional SLR film cameras and don't want a Digital, I enjoy film and the process of taking a photo on film. To me that is what photography is all about and I don't want to change to digital at all. Some of you will be in the same boat when it is time for the internal combustion engine to leave the motorcycle and electric engines are all the rage. For you, you should hang on to those old outdated motorcycles then and enjoy it while you can. Personally I dread the day a roll of film costs $20 and developing is scarce, and you have to drive 20 miles out of the way to find it... But that is life and on a positive note, the world didn't end when we gave up a real horse for the iron horse (car).
Unfortunately, I don't know who made this image in photoshop, but it gives a good idea what a "retro" hover bike might just look like!
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