EVLN(Electric Superbike is on the way)
[The Internet Electric Vehicle List News. For Public EV
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--- {EVangel}
http://www.gizmag.com/go/4105/
Electric Superbike is on the way
June 20, 2005 Our recent story on the inevitability of the
electric motorcycle brought a number of reader emails pointing
out projects we’d missed. One stood out head and shoulders above
the rest. The rMOTO electric superbike concept was developed by
ROBRADY design to showcase the technologies and expertise of
several of its clients but when the first design sketches were
released on the company web site in April, so great was the
interest that the project has been given the green light and a
prototype is to be constructed for unveiling in January 2006. In
terms of design pedigree, no studio could be more appropriate
than ROBRADY which has worked on an array of relevant notable
projects such as the Vectrix electric and fuel cell scooters, a
number of Segway scooters, Parker Hannifin’s Fuel Cells,
regenerative braking systems and on a number of motorcycle
designs for various companies. See inside for an exclusive
interview with ROBRADY principal, Rob Brady.
Florida-based ROBRADY design is one of the elite design studios
used by the likes of Yamaha, Polaris, Segway, Vectrix, Suzuki,
Volvo, Dell, AT&T, Evinrude et al. Here, ROBRADY principal, Rob
Brady discusses the coming rMOTO electric superbike the company
will produce.
Tell us about the origins of rMOTO?
We I’ve had that RMOTO sketch in one form or another for a couple
of years and I was really captivated by the thought of an
electric superbike when we were researching two wheeled markets
in Europe for the Vectrix project.
I thought about with all the technology we have available to us
with our technology partners at the studio and thought wouldn’t
it be a great vehicle to showcase everybody’s work on a single
product.
The concept behind it isn’t – the performance and expectations –
we have a lot of people wanting to buy it and all those things
are actually secondary to wrapping it all together - the
technological feat of putting it into a single cohesive package,
the battery the battery management system, all the electronics,
illumination, all the different components and systems of the
bike are existing items today from the different people we do
business with so what we’re trying to do at rMOTO is put it into
a single product – LED headlights, the recharging systems, fuel
cell from Parker Hannifin.
Vectrix has really been the cornerstone of Robrady for the last
few years and we’ve been developing products for Vectrix and it’s
all about electric transportation and a new way fo doing things
without excessive noise or pollution and renewable energy and …
just a better way, a much better way.
Vectrix have all the electronics and the battery management and
regenerative braking system and it has a lot of the IP to
optimise everything for a motorcycle such as this, so we feel
we’re starting with an enormous head start. “It would be very
easy to take an existing motorcycle and slip a motor and a lot of
batteries and I think a few people have done that already and
it’s kinda disappointing and it becomes a gas bike that morphs
into an electric bike and we’d like to do it as an electric bike
from the start … from day one.
It would be easy to ride something like this – you twist the
throttle, and hang on. When you want to slow down, just roll the
throttle past zero, depending on how fast you’re going of course
(laughs), and the regenerative braking starts turning the
momentum back into energy and storing it into the battery.
So how long will it take before we can see a finished prototype
in carbon and metal?
Probably five or six months at a minimum and maybe a few months
longer. The point is that it’s all do-able – we’re working with
many companies such as Yamaha and Polaris and Vectrix and we have
a full crew that’s very suitable for developing and building a
bike like this. We have the rapid prototypers, the designers, the
technology, industrial designers, the fabricators and so on.
It’s not whether it can be done, it’s how well it can be done. We
have to do some more conceptual homework to finalise the
background on the layout of the components – once we’ve done that
we’ll go to full-size clay.
We’re really focussed on the Vectrix scooter right now – maybe
next January we’ll have something in metal and carbon that works.
But the progress of the development will be well documented and
we’re going to keep posting images on the site to keep people up
to date with what we’re doing. We’ll also be involving people in
the process – we want interaction and opinions and ideas and
we’re very receptive to hearing what the motorcycle fraternity
wants.
The Vectrix regenerative braking system
the Vectrix fuel cell layout.
Fuel cells to be used in the Vectrix.
So just what sort of performance can we expect from the rMOTO?
It’s kind of a balance we need to resolve. We can get a 100 miles
an hour, 120 miles an hour bike but then the range of the bike
suffers so it’s a matter of starting and knowing that the
technologies and different battery chemistries will evolve in
time, and probably not very much time at that.
As battery technology progresses, as it inevitably will, the
rMOTO will be a kind of a test bed for the technologies for the
Vectrix scooter.
You’ll be incorporating some of the Vectrix regenerative braking
system in the rMOTO?
Yes, the Vectrix regenerative braking is awesome. You don’t need
to take your hands off the throttle to get on the brakes like you
normally do – it’s one continuous movement and you just roll the
throttle back past zero.
When you’re at a standstill, it also provides you with reverse
which is a great idea on a bigger scooter or on a motorcycle
where you want to be able to manoeuvre the bike around without
having to wrestle it – really handy when you have a pillion on
board.
the Vectrix scooter
One of the Segway models worked on by ROBRADY design.
Another Segway model touched by ROBRADY.
On a motorcycle it’s a unique feature. It’s a Vectrix patent and
they hired us to develop it with their electrical guys – it’s
super smooth – it has springs which are bi-directional and it
feels very sure and robust. I don’t want to downplay it by saying
that it feels typical but it feels like what it should feel like
in the normal mode and has that same type of feeling once you go
past the detent in the centre and begin decelerating quickly and
harvesting the energy.
What happens is that it changes the electrical fields and starts
to charge the battery. It takes the momentum of the motorcycle
and effectively harvests the energy contained, or at least some
of it, and puts it back into the battery.
It’s all about conserving energy, because the battery capacity
with current battery technologies is limited and we need to make
it as efficient as possible.
The thing about electric motorcycles is that we can make it as
fast as you like but the flip side of that is that the range of
the motorcycle is severely compromised if we unleash all the
power potential.
If you think that in touring through a populated downtown area –
this is an ideal bike. It will look fantastic, with that big
electric motor sitting right on the rear wheel, it will have
tremendous acceleration. It’s not going to be like having a big
gas motor that you need to get it into maximum torque zone before
you pop the clutch and then fight to keep it there so you can get
maximum acceleration. This baby will have maximum torque at zero
sitting right there inside the rear wheel ready to go – I can’t
emphasise how fast this bike will accelerate.
Will it be heavier than a normal superbike?
The Buell design that came out of ROBRADY
The Yamaha 1200 is another ROBRAFY design.
The Vectrix scooter was also another to have been touched by
ROBRADY
It depends on what we use and we have some calculating to do
before we finalise the first cut of this bike. We are in the
infancy of electric vehicles.
Right now, people look beyond the nearest powerpoint and they
don’t know how they will refill an electric motorcycle quickly
and efficiently. There are a few but not many hydrogen fuel
stations to recharge the fuel cell so it looks kinda barren out
there for keeping an electric or fuel cell vehicle mobile, but
that will change. I can imagine that the very same thing happened
100 years ago – you can imagine people looking at the first
gasoline-powered cars and saying, “ah, it might be alright for
downtown, but if you want to go any distance, you need a horse.”
So fuel cells are an option?
There’s every chance we could have a fuel cell on board so that
can be topped up without needing to get to an electrical outlet.
I think in the beginning when the rMOTO is first shown to the
market and we’re still in the experimental phase, we’ll see
nickel metal hydride batteries. I think at this stage they will
be the first batteries we use, but things are happening so
rapidly. Working with our partners at Vectrix we’ve seen new
technologies that are two-thirds the weight and equal power and
less price than what we were using a year ago.
As a designer and trying to imagine where I can extrapolate this
technology, is to build a vehicle like this rMOTO that we can
initially we’ll probably put Nickel metal hydrides and then we’ll
probably put lithium ion batteries and then who knows what we’ll
use in a year or two or three – each time we change the power is
going up and the cost and the weight is going down.
I’d love to see this bike have a consumer version that will get
you 100mph and an evening of running around downtown and then
there’ll be a version of this thing that’s going to be the exotic
superbike and that might have a limited production custom lithium
ion batteries and we might see the horsepower of such a
motorcycle going off the charts – you could see the Exotic rMOTO
running incredible lap times at motorcycle races showcasing the
power available from intelligent electronic design.
I could easily see a fuel cell being used in the RMOTO – it
depends on how exotic we want to be – the Vectrix scooter that
comes out in the spring of next year is an all electric vehicle
but hot on its heels is the fuel cell version. And those things
are being worked on today – right now – maybe next January we’ll
have something in metal and carbon that works. But the progress
of the development will be well documented and we’re going to
keep posting images on the site to keep people up to date with
what we’re doing. We’ll also be involving people in the process
– we want interaction and opinions and ideas and we’re very
receptive to hearing what the motorcycle fraternity wants.
In a 12 month period we’ve seen the power go up and price cut in
half, the size cut in half. There are so many people in the fuel
cell business right now. I think we’ll see fuel cell price
performance improvement similar to computer chips (editor:
Moore’s Law) for the next few years.
There’s very interesting opportunity here in showcasing what can
be done with electrical power in a two wheel vehicle. You’re not
fighting the big powerful automotive companies for attention in
this market and a motorcycle is an ideal showcase for the
performance.
The RMOTO will be special – this is not just seen as a concept
but one we can see developed and manufactured – maybe at the
beginning of its life it’s an exotic – but we can see a time when
bikes such as the rMOTO are producable and available
cost-efficiently for everyone.
-
Bruce {EVangel} Parmenter
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http://geocities.com/brucedp/
. EV List Editor, RE & AFV newswires
. (originator of the above ASCII art)
===== Undo Petroleum Everywhere
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