It is depressing as hell being stuck in a fossil fuel obsessed world when we have had other viable options for decades, but take heart when you see electric dirt bikes beginning to proliferate in war, if Electric Vehicles are winning on the cutting edge of the frontline for reasons that have nothing to do with environmentalism, the future is far closer than it seems…
Also god damn I really hate loud dirtbikes and ATVs in nature so looking forward to these undercutting fossil fuel powered dirtbikes everywhere…
Silent, instant torque, can be charged (slowly) anywhere with a portable solar panel.
Win-win pretty much
Likely a small battery, so it could charge in a few hours.
They say it charges from wall power in about 4 hours. Wall power in Ukraine is 220VAC, typical maximum current in Europe is 2.5A. So, that’s roughly 500W.
500W for 4 hours is 500W for 3600 * 4s or 14400s = 7,200,000J or 7.2MJ. That’s a pretty big battery.
With a portable solar cell you’d be lucky to get a sustained 100W, so it would take 20h, or multiple days to charge.
I am in Europe, I use home appliances (like the oven) over 3000W. I’d say our typical maximum (standard) current is 16A, then some special regulations kick in.
It depends on contracted power (maximum power the electricity provider will supply you as per your contract with them)
Were I am (Portugal) the typical contracted power for an appartment building is 3.45kW, so just slightly above those 3000W you mentioned, though you can choose a higher one such as 6.9kW (note that your circuit breaker should be sized for it).
The default and available values for retail customers probably vary from country to country, but given that even a cheap microwave oven uses 700W, an electric kettle about 1000W and an electric heater even more than that, I would say that anything below 1000W is unlikely (and judging by your oven power usage, it’s probably more than 3kW in at least most places).
I checked and my electricity supply is currently capped at 5.5 kW, but it could be upgraded up to 10 kW if needed before I’d have to move to a business tariff.
Could be that the site I had wasn’t accurate. If so, that just means the prospect of charging it using portable solar panels is even more out of reach.
Where did you get 2.5A as typical maximum current? Surely it must be somewhere between 8-16A (sustained). 500w is not enough for basic house appliances…
A toaster is 1 kW.
Unfortunately, a lot of idiots enjoy being obnoxious with the noise and exhaust fumes of ICE bikes. To me that is one of the main reasons electric motorcycles aren’t more popular.
I am starting to see more and more heavy electric bicycles and e-dirt bike type vehicles but yeah this is a big thing.
People’s fixation on loud ICE engines is so intense that the tactical advantage of small electric vehicles has been largely ignored by militaries until recently and here we are talking of matters of life and death rather than aesthetic preference…
I’ve looked at electric bikes, every one of them has slow charging and shit range. They’re not built for riding any sort of distance.
Companies aren’t selling what I want. That’s why I’m not buying them.
I much prefer my electric car over a gas car, and I’d buy an electric bike if it had the same ability to tour as my current bike.
Motorcycles, even more than cars, depend on a very energy dense power source. Putting enough batteries in a motorcycle to give it decent range, and still letting it feel responsive is going to be a real challenge. Maybe in something like a Honda GoldWing where you’re hauling around a huge amount of other weight, you could add extra batteries and not change the responsiveness too much. But, the kinds of people who ride GoldWings are not doing little commuter trips, so you’d need extreme range to satisfy them, which I don’t think is feasible with current battery tech.
If there were a way to swap out batteries at the charging station, that would change everything.
From what I read it’s more to do with the lack of space for proper batteries - the form factor of bikes means you can’t really fit that much power storage in them. Even though they’re lighter than cars and thus use less power to go the same distance, they still have to move the weight of the passenger plus more batteries increase weight.
All of that put together means they can’t have as much range as cars with similar performance.
Nope. The reason is they are heavy and have shit range.
Hope they make a public version, they look really mean
Maybe not even make a civilian version, just allow people to buy the military version. When Arnold Schwarzenegger bought a military Hummer back in the day, they weren’t selling civilian versions. I don’t know how much he had to do to make his truck road legal, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he had to do something.
Schwarzenegger bought his because he wanted a unique vehicle, one that almost nobody else had, and that was a true military vehicle. Ukraine could probably raise money from people who wanted the same thing. Sell them the same bike that is being used on the battlefields of Ukraine at a significant mark-up, and let them show that by their purchase they’re also supporting the Ukrainian efforts.
There are hundreds of electric dirt bikes already out there.
But I want one from Ukraine so they get more funds to fight Russia.
99% chance these are completely built in China.
Them being silent has already lost the demographic of engine-revving boyracers, who want their thundercock to be imposingly loud.
They don’t burn oil either, so they can’t throw black clouds in people’s faces when they peel out.
It would make a nearly ideal wildlife spotting tool so long as you kept things to a safe speed.
For highspeed stuff I imagine they will have to come up with some kind of artificial noise to warn animals like a low hum or something.
People ride mountain bikes without noise, 40mph.
Yeah and I would argue it is actually pretty unnecessarily dangerous to do so both for the riders and wildlife.
Exhibit: A) that mountain biker who ran full tilt into a bear with cubs and got killed.
I know I have been put into dangerous situations plenty of times by mountain bikers while walking on trails that are hurtling around blind corners in areas where walkers or even horses are common.
I am not saying bicycles should have an air horn on them, but like bells that jangle loudly or like anything really…
Trails are for hikers. Mountain bikes have special trails if any speed is involved. No one wins in a collision.
Usually it’s the opposite. BEVs make artificial noise only below 60 km/hr. Above that it shuts off because the vehicle is making enough noise from the tires.
Mount a Vulcan minigun on that thing, DELTA FORCE
Midway between a motorbike and an electric bycicle
How do I get one
I have an electric motorcycle (Zero FX) and a borderline ebike (Sur-ron X). Honestly military use cases are probably great for them.
They’re super quiet, they can be laid down on their sides without any fluids leaking out, you can charge them without crazy charging infrastructure. I have charged mine with a large solar blanket before! Swapping batteries is pretty quick, but honestly when I spend a day in the woods with either, I’m worn out before the battery is.
Range anxiety is real for serious highway miles, however for scouting where you have even 1 proper truck to strap it to for distance travel, I could see a very real benefit to having a couple of these available for fast, offroad, short-range mobility use.
I had range anxiety on my klr even, and that has a huge tank for an offroad(ish) bike. would have been so much nicer to have the same range (300 km) but know that if I had to I could just post up at a camp site and charge up with a panel
Anything electric lightweight enough to go off-road isn’t getting anywhere near 300km 😅
They just aren’t ready for touring yet, as much as the industry tries to tell us they are. Trailer it to the trails like a dirt bike.
Love the KLR btw, those things are venerable ✌️
I know this isn’t the place to ask but you seem quite knowledgeable about electrical bikes. What would you reccomend for a 12-20 mile/day commute. I’d love to ditch the car, I have an road legal 16mph limited ebike I like to use, but I’d love to go a bit faster without buying a moped
Hey! No problem, community is why we’re here :-)
Soo for where I am in the US, the toughest thing is there’s basically no bicycle infrastructure between my house and the lab I work in, plus I have to cross 2 e-lane highways, so having something that is road legal with license plates, turn signals, etc was a huge requirement.
I also wanted something I could load in my truck bed and take trail riding in the Appalachian mountains, so a more aggressive suspension set-up and support for knobby tires was important to me.
These 2 requirements narrowed the field significantly, and in 2021 I ended up finding a used 2015 Zero FZ that was the perfect balance for me, at the right price.
The good news for you is that 12-20 miles should be easily doable with any electric motorcycle! Your budget will probably be the biggest dictator of what you decide to get. An electric motorcycle will cost more than a moped, but of course the low maintenance and low energy costs vs a moped are things you can add into the equation.
I’ve had the Zero for 5 years now and aside from knobby tires (which would have been unnecessary if I was ONLY commuting), I think all my running costs, “fuel”, taxes, registration, insurance, EVERYTHING, is under $300 since I bought it! It has been a great value.
The main thing I would caution you about is manufacturers like to add app-attached crap to everything now. Zero famously pissed off a TON of motorcycle folks (I’m not affected but still angry about it) when they tried to make a “pay to unlock” feature with batteries already installed in bikes. Just make sure you do a little research about the models you end up liking so you know caveats like that up front.
I want one.
Not bad. You can buy similar (but smaller) on Amazon now for less than $2k. I haven’t seen one sized for an adult on there yet.
I like my ICE motorcycle. Vroom! Vroom!
