The Kneeslider

Doers Builders and Positive People

How About an Electric Gold Wing?

By

Honda Gold Wing - why not electric?

A lot of electric motorcycles are beginning to appear, especially in the last several months, and all of them are fairly light weight but at the same time fairly short range. The limiting factor isn’t the electric motor or controller, it’s the batteries. How do you get enough storage to give you decent range? The somewhat pricey but powerful lithium ion or lithium polymer batteries do a pretty decent job but these little motocross type bikes don’t give you much room to pack everything away so they all suffer from the same limitations, after 45 miles or so, you’re done. The Enertia is a nice looking little commuter but still, range is the issue.

Over in the auto world, the Tesla Roadster has been making quite a splash, 0-60 in 4 seconds and 200 miles per charge. Yes, it’s expensive, there are a whole lot of batteries in there, but that’s the whole point. You get the performance and range because you have the batteries. Why is everyone working on little bikes? What kind of motorcycle would have the room for lots of batteries? How about something like a Gold Wing? It may be heavier than a little MX bike but still a lot lighter than a car. With the full fairing, the batteries could be installed and still be visually unobtrusive and you would have the room for enough batteries to give you decent range plus snappy performance.

Would it be expensive? You bet. But would it sell? In limited numbers, I think so. Many of the same big buck celebrities ready to buy the Tesla would line up for one of these. If they’re looking for a motorcycle these days they might pick up a Confederate Hellcat or something similar but an electric motorcycle with performance and range plus all of the green factor the environmental crowd is looking for, would show up on the celebrity radar as a must have. Sell enough of those bikes to that crowd and then a few well to do non-celebrities start to buy them and pretty soon you have electric motorcycles entering the public consciousness in a bigger way. If the motorcycle is a success the lessons learned and economies of scale begin to lower prices and the snowball begins to roll.

Many critics of electric vehicles, cars or motorcycles, point out their lengthy recharge time which is a lot longer than filling up at a gas station. Over on the Tesla website they draw an analogy to charging your cell phone:

How Long Does Your Cell Phone Take to Charge? If you’re like most people, you can’t answer this question. You plug in your phone every night, and it’s fully charged in the morning. You never think about how long it took so long as the charge lasts throughout the next day. Once you get into the habit, that”s the way you’ll feel about your Tesla Roadster; every morning you’ll wake up to a fully charged car, ready for whatever is on the day’s agenda.

Well, if your motorcycle has sufficient range to get you through a normal day’s activities, you could look at it in the same way. Plug it in every night, just like your cell phone, and ride through your normal day. An electric motorcycle the size of a Gold Wing or some other similar sized touring bike, might be able to do that.

The high price of a bike like this, due to the batteries, will initially keep it out of the hands of the majority of motorcycle riders but few riders can buy a Hellcat, a Desmosedici RR or even some of the more common but costly customs yet they are manufactured and sold. Price is not the issue here. Availability is.

If a company like Tesla can build a car with high performance and decent range, it seems to me the potential exists for a larger motorcycle to get much of the same performance and range. It would be interesting to see someone try.

Comments

  1. Screw the batteries. Fuel cells should be a higher priority. A bike like the ENV, http://www.envbike.com/ , should be more practical then any battery powered machine. With some kind of industry standard type fuel tank, especially in a cartridge type of container, would be great. Rather than plugging in and waiting for a charge, you’d just swap out the cartridge and hit the road again, similar to a propane tank exchange.

  2. Battery technology exists to safely store the energy required for a daily rider but the scale of economy has not yet developed to the point where these systems can be brought to market successfully. Companies like A123 Systems and Altairnano with their “nano-safe” technology have paved the way but they just need manufacturers to begin producing enough product that usees this technology so the cost drops to a consumer level.
    Electric motors are a proven performance upgrade to internal combustion (Torque), so the question then becomes “where do you get your electricity to fill your batteries?” that is the real green transportation question.
    Bring on the AC revolution!

  3. Power has to come from someplace. Except for nuclear generation or solar (which is a nuclear furnace), it probably comes from fossil fuels. Taking energy from the electrical grid means that it has to be replaced. Hydro or wind generation is about all we have that doesn’t mean burning fuel …. somewhere.

    The hybrid vehicles still use fossil fuel to provide power … with a very expensive drive-line. The “efficiency” comes from a bit of regenerative braking and it’s ability to shut down the engine in periods of non-use. Hydrogen still takes more energy to produce it than there is energy in consuming it …. so, where is the gain?

    The quest has to be on more efficient use of the energy source. A joint BMW/Peugeot study to reuse the waste heat makes more sense to me than a lot of these “new” ideas.

  4. 200 miles isn’t quite enough for many of the Goldwing riders that like to do touring. Unless batteries could be recharged in 5-15 minutes, I see this remaining a low volume product.

  6. To Matt: Fuel cells ARE batteries, use electricity to produce hydrogen, then use the hydrogen in a fuel cell to give back the electricity. Efficient production of hydrogen and an infrastructure to distribute it are the problems still to be solved, even though they are perpetually “just around the corner.”

    To Bryce: This isn’t a replacement for a Gold Wing touring bike, this is just a “what if” to make a motorcycle with a reasonable range for most daily riding, something a lot more than 45 miles.

    The whole point of electric motorcycles (or cars) is lack of pollution at the vehicle level, moving it to the power source which can be more easily controlled and kept clean. Electric vehicles also offer an option to liquid fossil fuels, which are getting expensive, whether for geological or political reasons, either way, something we can use in their place is a good thing.

  7. IMCO the “promise” fuel cells are a 99.9% spin bordering on fraud. They have proven to be, and remain to this day, nothing more than a practical public relations excuse for the auto industry to pretend it is working on something and to pretend that the solutions that are alternatives to internal combustion are oh so complex. I will go so far as to bet fuel cells will *never* be commercially viable in the ground transportation sector. I stand to be corrected, but I am now absolutely convinced that for cars, next-gen electric hybrids, plug-in hybrids, followed by series hybrids and ultimately full electric is the path of greatest consumer utility, and even more important the least business resistance, towards hugely cleaner ground transportation industry. Bikes, because of the generally smaller form factor will have more complex pricing & packaging challenges but will eventually make the same transition.

  8. A high percentage of touring bikes never leave the owner’s county. And many do so in a trailer. They are bought for weather protection, comfort, and convenient crap conveyence. And they like the promise of escape – even if they never do.

    In the electric car conversion world, I understand that big heavy vehicles tend to make bad candidates for conversion. It is almost always the light and tiny cars that get the speed and range. Like the Tesla………

    A perfect bike for packing on the batteries is a “Feet Forwards” configured machine. There is plenty of room down low for batteries and the machine can be much more aerodynamic and comfortable – a combination that’s rare in the motorcycle world.

  10. There seems to be a bit of a difference between the best type of car for a ground-up electric design (light, low drag, like a sports car) and the best type of car for a conversion from gas to electric. Especially before lithium batteries became available, strong arguments could be made that the best car for an electric conversion was a light truck (think Ford Ranger EV) because it has the cargo capacity available to handle all the battery weight. Motorcycles don’t have cargo capacity worth mentioning, so the available mass for the battery pack is determined by what you take out to do the conversion. Find a bike with the heaviest engine + transmission + fuel tank, and you have your top candidate. That suggests either a touring bike or a big cruiser.

    Ironically, the one type of riding that an electric touring bike could not do is long-distance touring. Then again, people rarely ride for more than 200 miles without a break. You could ride 200 miles in the morning, take a long lunch while the bikes recharge, and then ride 200 miles in the afternoon. If you plan much more than 400 miles in a day, you’re either very hardcore or not enjoying yourself properly. The charging break may take three hours, or it may take twenty minutes. With today’s batteries, the charging time is mainly limited by the socket you plug into.

    The price of the fast-charging, non-flammable LiFePO4 batteries has been coming down dramatically. Just two years ago they couldn’t be had for less than $1000/kwh. Now prices are less than half that. Considering that a big bike would need 20 to 30 kwh to achieve 200 miles of highway range, the price of the bike would be high but not outrageous for those who could afford it. Perhaps $30k for a new Goldwing and all the conversion costs?

    The reason the Tesla Roadster and Brammo Enertia are so expensive is that the companies tallied up the battery costs, the costs of the other parts, and the costs of developing the designs from scratch, and realized that they might as well build the things out of carbon fiber and unobtanium while they were at it.

    Finally, fuel cells are a viable alternative if you happen to live in the Hindenburg. Where I live electricity is literally coming out of the walls, but hydrogen is mighty hard to come by. Electricity has a running start with an existing distribution infrastructure (though one in need of some upgrades). Electricity also can be made from just about any fuel or energy source you can think of, which puts today’s “flex fuel” cars to shame.

  11. “To Matt: Fuel cells ARE batteries, use electricity to produce hydrogen, then use the hydrogen in a fuel cell to give back the electricity…”

    Yes, you’re correct in the most literal definition, but for the sake of your query here about large bikes and budgets to match, the people who are likely to be early adopters of extravagant systems aren’t going to want a touring size bike that only goes 50/75 mile before needing to be plugged into an outlet for 2 or more hours. I assume, and I may be wrong, a rechargeable battery pack that would have the juice to haul that Goldwing around would probably weigh much more than a hydrogen tank with an equal amount of energy storage. I think many riders would give up some of the efficiency of direct electric charge systems for the convenience of quick change, and closer to a conventional gas fill up, type of system. There are clean ways to generate the electricity that would presumably be needed to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen in water, and that could be done on a much larger, but slower “farm” of electrolysis devices. Solar, wind, nuclear, hydro-electric, you name it, but it’s going to have to be convenient to the end user, and they’re not going to want to be limited to 100 miles a day or less, even if they regularly only drive 30 miles a day.

    Then there’s the problem with safety, at least with Li-Ion batteries, as companies are still having problems with these thing burning up, or even exploding, and those are just for laptops and cell phones. What happens when a battery big enough to power a bike or car decides to go into thermal runaway an pop? There goes you +$20k car, and likely whatever might be in the immediate vicinity.

    I feel the current hybrid tech is simply hype. It’s the batteries, as in anode/cathode dirty chemical and metal type, that need to go. Perhaps it’s just some kind of sci-fi fantasy, but I’d really love to see some sort of inductive power source built into a city’s infrastructure. The vehicles would get the electricity from a municipal system when in town, and “login” when they enter a “green” zone. The car would either be prepaid, or be billed for the electricity it used around town, and when leaving that area, say for an extended trip, it would use a non-battery hybrid power system, like a diesel locomotive does.

    Well, whatever finally works, I hope it’s still customizable, because it ain’t going to be any fun if some guy (or gal) can’t tweak it a little and say “Mine’s faster than your’s!”

    Keep up the good conversation starters Paul!

  12. Why all this talk of complex hybrid drive trains or entirely electric? Why not a diesel / electric or gas / electric motorcycle like PigIron suggested? With an on-board 10hp fuel-efficient generator and enough batteries to cover your desired power output for acceleration it could be built much more simple than a true hybrid and much lighter than a full electric.

    I was considering this move many years ago with my VW truck and my Honda Elite 125. I was going to hook up the belt drive Elite engine to a large alternator and install a small bank of lead acid batteries. I could either monitor the voltage manually and hit the electric start on the Elite or rig up some sort of low-voltage relay to start it. With fewer batteries I could just leave the motor running and it would charge as needed. Running at a continuous RPM I’d probably get well over 100mpg. I just couldn’t afford a good electric motor to achieve my goal.

    With this sort of set up in a motorcycle you would probably be fine with one or two high-discharge batteries and a small generator or scooter motor. I don’t see why it wouldn’t be just as fast as a regular motorcycle.

    -todd

  13. If it absolutely has to be an electric-power only Gold Wing lookalike motorcycle, standardized battery packs, available fully charged at – say – gas stations, could be a realistic way of getting around the short range problem. Drop off the worn down batteries, pay a fee for the replacement, be on your way in 5 minutes flat. Or get into the habit of recharging every time you stop for lunch, see a museum or go shopping or whatever you do while on the road.

    Or just use your electric Volt Wing (pun intended) for charging (pun intended here too) around town and for shorter trips, which most current (somebody stop me) GW’s are used for anyway.

  14. Matt, a quick clarification: thermal runaway is a problem with lithium-cobalt batteries, but is not for lithium-iron-phosphate batteries. The LiFe chemistry costs more, but the obvious safety advantages are worth it.

    Another benefit of the LiFe batteries is that they can easily withstand very fast charging or discharging. This is why electric dragsters like KillaCycle are using them now. There’s no reason you couldn’t charge a 200-mile pack in fifteen minutes–no reason, except that you would need a current of over 1000 amps. Currents that large can be dangerous, but then again so can hydrogen, or gasoline, or anything else capable of holding enough energy to move a vehicle.

    A filling station could accommodate fast charging by having a really big battery on site to store up the energy, just like they have really big tanks of gasoline. This is more convenient than trying to swap the vehicle’s batteries, since that would entail dropping and replacing a large portion of the vehicle weight. That would be viable for the pit crew in an electric racing series, but your average podunk mechanic is not going to be speedy at it. Not to mention the added constraint that battery pack sizes would have to be standardized.

    When comparing weights between battery systems and fuel cells, remember that they share only a few parts in common. Namely, the power controller and the motor would be similar. Where one system has batteries, the other requires a high-pressure hydrogen tank, a fuel cell stack, an air blower, and a thermal management system including a sizeable radiator. All of the parts of a working fuel cell system add up to a considerable weight. They also make for a much more complex system than a battery pack. I seriously doubt that garage mechanics would have the wherewithal to put together a functional fuel cell, but they do battery electric conversions all the time. For the current state of fuel cell technology, I suggest you look at Honda’s concept for the second-generation FCX.

    The main difficulty with designing a hybrid system is finding room for a motor with enough power for cruising while still having a useful battery pack. How large an engine would a Goldwing need to maintain highway speed with a dead battery? I suppose one could experiment by pulling spark plug wires. Assume that 10hp is enough. A scooter motor of that capability would weigh about 30kg, and a generator would weigh about 10kg. That’s 40kg or 4kwh or 40 miles’ range worth of battery that must be given up to make room for the hybrid components. That might be fine, just remember there’s no free lunch here. One would have to fuel AND charge a hybrid bike to get the most range out of it.

    Electric drivetrains can be tweaked. The power-delivery curves of the controller can be directly manipulated in all sorts of ways.

  15. One thing nobody has mentioned as a possible power source is the zinc-air battery. It has a very high energy density, but since China and India have begun industrializing the price of zinc has gone through the roof, thus the zinc economy is stillborn. Theoretically, you’d pull up to service station, dump your used zinc in a pit while you take on fresh pellets. The used zinc (actually zinc oxide, the stuff you put on your nose when you go to the beach) is taken to a local processing station where it’s reduced to zinc.

    Aluminum-air batteries have the highest energy density of all (five times that of lead-acid), but are very expensive and have a very short shelf life, so they’re pretty much only used in military applications.

    I’m excited about the future of electric racing! Why hasn’t somebody developed an electric road racing motorcycle? How many miles do motorcycles travel in a typical Moto GP race? Surely we’re nearing the point where an electric bike could be competitive…

  16. Paul, the Gen-Ryu was a prototype that was supposed to be hybrid. It was unveiled at the 2005 Tokyo motor show and on your website. Not a goldwing, the cruiser is way large to accommodate the room for batteries and engine. Electricmotorcycles.net has a pic of it when it appeared in Cycleworld and a link for a msn.com video of it.

  18. GenWaylaid,
    Good post. Thanks for your info!

    So why does a hybrid need batteries? Wouldn’t a decent set of high current capacitors work to store enough energy for the bottom end punch, and the smaller HP internal combustion engine be sufficient for cruising, and recharging the caps for the next big twist of the grip?

  19. GenWaylaid, you raise an interesting idea about a hybrid Goldwing. Your 10hp figure for highway speeds is definitely too low. My 12hp scooter can hold about 55-65mph depending on headwing, grade, etc. It’s a lot lighter and has a lot less frontal area than a Goldwing. I’m betting you would need at least 25-30hp to cruise along at highway (up to 80mph) speeds. Still, that would be a lot less than the 100+hp it’s got.

    I did a little further reading on zinc-air batteries, and they are quite impressive. This solution seems to be something that could be implemented in a reasonably short period of time and it also appears to be quite sustainable.

  20. it would seem you could also include some other technologies to extend your batteries, like a flexible solar panel on the GW trunk or even other flat surfaces.
    You could also add a HHO generator. There is a LOT of room on a GW 1500 or 1800.
    These wouldn’t necessarily be to charge the batteries, just to extend them a bit.
    Also, the solar panels would be trickling while you were taking a break somewhere that you can’t plug it into an outlet.

    Just some thoughts.