Imagine how far an EV with a similar amount of weight of batteries to vehicle weight could go. I'm not an EV hater, just pointing out here that even lithium-ion batteries are in the range of 100-265 Wh per kg while gasoline is around 12,200 Wh/kg (roughly 50x the energy density). This is a big part of why there are no commercially-viable EV aircraft, and probably won't be for some time -- namely until battery energy density improves by an order of magnitude or so.
As for this mini motorcycle, it's impressive that it still looks pretty decent and someone unfamiliar with this model might even mistake it for stock. I never quite understood why it's so hard to find even aftermarket tanks for bikes that get the range up to car range...I just want to go 500 miles on my bike without refueling. Put the gas in the frame AND into a 5+ gallon tank up top. Put gas into a portion of the seat. Put it up behind the headlight or in a big fender. Carrying jerry cans or even the bag style ones is just so bulky and inconvenient for overlanding on two wheels without a support vehicle carrying extra fuel.
Yes unfortunately EV's will not be able to be heavily modified by engineering teams for impractically long cargoless scooter trips at 40mph. Such a shame they will only be useful for virtually all practical trips.
Indeed, if you want an impressively impractical trip in an impressively impractical custom built EV, you'll have to make due with the world solar challenge. 3000+ kilometers at highway speed, carrying more than 1 person, and entirely on solar power.
Why are you on Hacker News when you clearly are not a Hacker and don't have the IQ to understand such a simple, interesting point OP is making.
Is it jealousy because OP travels and they want to hack it out even further than the normal model gives them? Why put them down otherwise?
What EV cars do is exactly what is happening here, they are highly aerodynamic and weight reduced, at the cost of practical things. They have to, to get distance.
- incorrect accusation of “putting them down” immediately following an ad hominem attack
- unspecific “insight” that EVs sacrifice practical things to get distance, when the parent and OP were both basically saying the opposite: EVs sacrifice distance for practicality
Yeah, I am really confused too, given that the grandparent comment was making a pretty sane and relevant point. Sure it was a bit snarky and tongue in cheek, but it definitely wasn't something even remotely close to intellectually deserve a low-IQ attack (not even mentioning that those attacks aren't appropriate on HN regardless of the intellectual merit of the point).
It's true that energy density of batteries is a lot lower than gasoline, but electric motors are a lot more efficient. It doesn't make up the whole difference, but it does make up some of it. Also, battery technology is improving pretty rapidly.
Electric aviation is not yet viable commercially, but it will be soon. I'm working at a company building electric aircraft, and one of our prototypes has done a flight of more than 380 miles. Note that this is a prototype, in ideal conditions, with a tailwind, last few miles were circling the airport within the glide cone, etc. The actual production vehicle range, with all of the safety margins, seats for passengers, passenger weight, etc, will be a lot less; but still, 150 miles is enough for many commercially viable trips, especially in dense areas like the BosWash corridor, or getting from suburbs to a long haul airport, or many others.
Electrification can also make viable new architectures, like VTOL, and the extra efficiency and longer maintenance intervals can drastically drive down operating costs; so there will be many trips that are economically viable in an eVTOL that wouldn't be in conventional airplanes (due to needing an airport) or helicopter (due to high fuel and maintenance costs).
Beta ALIA-250, an eVTOL, and CX300, a conventional takeoff and landing aircraft that's basically the ALIA 250 with the lift motors and supporting structure deleted to get through certification sooner, and serve a few markets that don't need VTOL.
We're a little bit quieter than some of the other players, as we're still a private company and are focusing more on engineering than marketing right now.
edit: Oh, hey, just checked your profile and I guess your firm is one of our investors, so I guess you already know about us.
I completely agree with your first paragraph. But the 2nd, with gas storages encircling the rider like that, sounds very dangerous in the event of a crash.
It's not quite as a dramatic a difference as it appears - most petrol engines are going to be in the region of 30% efficiency, vs an electric motor at ~80-90% (or perhaps more?). Still, talking 5000Wh equivalent to 250, or a 20x difference (which is about in line with most real vehicles, I think? 1 tonne battery packs vs 50L fuel tanks)
> most petrol engines are going to be in the region of 30% efficiency
It’s worse than that. A recent Yale study found that—for an average car on the road—from $5 of gas you’re really only getting $1 of that energy to propulsion.
You sound like you haven’t enjoyed the thrill of owning an old British car.
Fuel sloshing out or mangling the handling on cornering was a feature of British Leyland. I miss my cursed ‘68 Triumph 2000.
You could use a metal-air (such as Al-air) battery for this. You'd get _much_ better range than any lithium battery will give you, except it's not rechargeable.
We are really not far off commercially viable short-haul EV flights. Harbour Air in Vancouver is converting their fleet of Beavers to EV and a company in Scotland is working on converted Cessnas. And purpose built aircraft will likely do better than these.
They won't replace the 737 any time soon of course, but progress is progress.
The same way this is a prototype heavily optimized for this record, if the point was to reproduce it with an EV we'd probably heavily optimize for regenerative energy, possibly lower speeds and solar panels.
I was wondering how Guinness Record would deal with such a category, and the answer seems to be that they just don't. Most of their electric vehicle records have either a time limit, or no refueling/single charge limitation
Yeah range frustrates me too. The reason they don't generally do this is that having unsprung weight dramatically affects the cornering performance of the bike. So while it would be great to crank out miles in a straight line on a long journey it would suck going around corners on a shorter trip. Like everything else in biking it's a tradeoff.
I was going to recommend my former ride, the Suzuki V-Strom 650, which easily covers >200 miles, and can push close to 250 miles, on a tank of gas. Then I googled it and found the V-Strom isn't even in the top 10. The best are hitting 300 - 400 miles on a tank, some by being thrifty, some by having big tanks.
Given that the farthest I've ever ridden in a day was about 800 miles, being able to go all day on two, maybe even just one fill-up(s) seems reasonable.
Something like 350 mile range (lot of variables) once that's added on. Enough to get from Coldfoot to Prudhoe Bay (one of the harder routes to clear on a bike, historically).
Because as far as I can see, it is integrated with the default gas tank, so you don't need to stop to refill the built-in tank manually or worry about managing the two tanks separately.
So this extension functionally works as if your single tank just got larger. Might not be something that everyone cares about, but the value proposition over a jerrycan is clear.
Sure, I got that aspect. For me the argument going the other way is:
1. Generally you don't need the excess range, and this thing seems like a relatively permanent modification, so you're dealing with the excess weight/bulk all the time, and getting the added benefit only when you actually need to do the long haul.
2. This Ducati thing is only 8 liters, and adds 40% to your range.
So a jerrycan would (more) easily be added/removed as needed, and holds 20 liters, doubling your range. You could even add two, to triple your range.
Also, there's the fact that a jerrycan costs about $40, while the Ducati tank costs... $1900!? Yikes -- yeah, I'm sticking with the jerrycan :-)
Well the weight is distributed lower and it would survive being dropped offroad and so on...
But I get it -- I've ridden with Gatorade bottles full of spare gasoline too (yes it'll eventually eat through the plastic, but not fast enough to matter in my experience.)
> I've ridden with Gatorade bottles full of gasoline
Samesies! I once ran out of gas on a GS-550, walked to a Circle-K, bought and drank a quart of milk (I'm not much for gatorade) then bought enough gas to lightly rinse out the paper carton and then fill it to take back to my bike. This was a long time ago, please don't judge me :-)
It's a bit more complicated than that, as an EV motorcycle drivetrain tends to be lighter than a petrol one (excluding battery/fuel tank), but that isn't going to make a big difference for aircraft
Major problems are arising because of politicians silly proclamations and attempts to buy votes that are not backed by engineering reality.
Reducing certain emissions is commendable... But not when you realize that the environmental damage from strip mining rare earth metals in developing countries is far worse.
On a single "largest motorcycle tank ever used, designed and built in-house with a whopping capacity of 108 liters (28.5 gallons)" kind of tank that is, but still an amazing achievement
> After a grueling 304-lap test, Acerbis found they needed to use sponges to combat the sloshing inside the tank at the expense of losing some volume. The final tank weighed 15.2 kg (33.5 lbs) and could hold 108 liters.
I fitted an off road style fuel tank on a truck I had, but I opted for the version without sponges/baffles. It would try to stall when stopping on a low tank.
I'm guessing they've probably implemented baffles within the tank, but even if there wasn't it shouldn't be too much of an issue. Once they are able to get going and are not stopping quickly for emergencies, they should be as stable, if not more stable, compared to a regular bike.
Guessed wrong, they definitely found it to be an issue: "After a grueling 304-lap test, Acerbis found they needed to use sponges to combat the sloshing inside the tank at the expense of losing some volume. The final tank weighed 15.2 kg (33.5 lbs) and could hold 108 liters."
counterpoint, my yaris has a 42L tank. The light comes on around 36L to 37L in. I know if pretty well so I've pushed it to 38.5L (another ~30km past the light) but never risked going any further.
The best ICE still isn't cool because it's fundamentally Earth's chain-smoker with terminal lung cancer failing to light a cigarette while almost blowing up their oxygen tank.
weird metaphor. Given that ICE isn't going anywhere for some time I wish that people would realize that the choices are never a binary "perfectly clean EV" vs. "Coal-powered tree crusher" -- advancement in ICEs still represent an environmental benefit to the world. The Honda Monkey is one of the most efficient ICE vehicles that a consumer could hope to find, but i'll bite : where might I pick up a Tokai Challenger?
The way towards EV isn't by demonizing the things that have made the world tick throughout every industrialized society, it's by incentivizing the use of alternatives.
The biggest achievement in ICE is turning them off. The technology that's being put in cars now to turn off the engine while idling, electronic acceleration assist, and idling some cylinders when possible just trash the minor improvements we're eking out of wasting 65% or more of the energy in hydrocarbons.
Wrong on so many levels. Moral relativism of past acts cannot justify the unjustifiable. ICEs are banned in 2040 in dozens of countries. There will be no world and no air to breathe if climate change isn't solved by removing carbon from the air with haste. It is also difficult for people to admit that their lifestyles are unsustainable when they feel entitled to continue their reckless behaviors when they feel they deserve it. People cannot be allowed the choice of killing us all, so leadership requires banning certain things without a vote that are necessary for the survival of the species and of the planet. But this won't happen and the human race will go extinct because of pearl clutching and an inability to make tough choices. And so people keep doing burn-outs in their Ford Mustangs and sucking down triple cheeseburgers.
Where will u pick up that Honda Monkey with 100L tank? …see how that is a non argument?
Anyway, in the next 20 years, virtually all ICE vehicles need to go away. There’s basically no option for them except perhaps e-fuels, but given the 5x energy use compared to EVs, they will have extremely limited scope.
> Where will u pick up that Honda Monkey with 100L tank? …see how that is a non argument?
Yes, the lack of monkeys with 100L tank is not an argument; base model will get better fuel efficiency.
> Anyway, in the next 20 years, virtually all ICE vehicles need to go away.
Pretty sure monkey + the fuel for entirety of its lifetime would still produce less CO2 than EV over lifetime + whatever amount of solar panels and power storage needed to keep it powered.
> Pretty sure monkey + the fuel for entirety of its lifetime would still produce less CO2 than EV over lifetime + whatever amount of solar panels and power storage needed to keep it powered.
Don't be too sure. Solar panels can power more than just batteries of a vehicle. Regardless, public transit or a bicycle would be better than all of them
> Anyway, in the next 20 years, virtually all ICE vehicles need to go away.
Is this actually possible? i.e. are there actually enough resources and production capacity to replace all ICE vehicles on the road in two decades. I remember hearing Elon Musk suggest it'd take about double that.
Don't forget walking, bicycles, e-bikes, electric motorcycles, working from home, buses, etc.
Yes, we are behind schedule, and we can't get there just by replacing ICE cars one for one with electric cars, but there is plenty more we can do.
Living in walkable neighborhoods. Demanding better infrastructure for more than just cars. Working from home if you have a desk job.
And of course personal transport is only part of it. Electricity generation. Industrial precesses like steelmaking, and concrete will need to go carbon neutral as well.
Electric cars will be part of it, though. Those infrastructure changes won't happen overnight, we need all possible options at our disposal, it's not either/or, it's "yes, and."
From my narrow viewpoint in the US mountain west I think the future will look like increase in all those green technologies you mention alongside a legacy of ICE vehicles still in use. There are numerous reasons, some more valid than others, that will stop people transitioning away from ICE. So we'll need tech to counteract that effect. A complete transition to EV is naively optimistic in my opinion.
But the article isn't about an internal combustion engine, it's about a company that makes aftermarket fuel tanks, which chose to celebrate an anniversary by setting a record.
Why did you feel the need to wrap your environmentalist polemic in such a complicated metaphor?
An advantage of the Honda Monkey 125 over science projects is that it is a workable product that is economically viable even in relatively resource constrained parts of the world.
The Monkey 125 has peak power of 7.5 kW and an area of 1.7 m x 0.75 m or 1.3 m^2 [0,1]. The sun delivers a theoretical maximum of 1.3 kW per m^2. In the same area as a Monkey 125 the max solar energy would be 1.7 kW, or 23% of the Monkey 125's peak power (which was probably all used as the team travelled over mountains). Fraunhofer claims a photovoltaic cell with 47% efficiency so a solar Monkey would have about a tenth of the petrol Monkey's ability to move.
I think the bigger problem is that the rider covers more of the era; if you were able to get even 1.5kW off a small vehicle like that just leaving them outside would likely be enough to recharge enough battery for the journey back (if living close enough).
...but having electric bike/scooter just connected to charger is far more practical way to do it
Yes, integrating an energy capture device is not optimal for many/most use cases. A vehicle operating within civilization is better served by having means to receive and store energy. Of energy storage mechanisms, chemical seems more advantageous than kinetic or pressure. From there the question becomes one of ionic or covalent. Covalent has a higher energy density, which is why tanks of hydrocarbons are so ubiquitous.
You could have a clean ICE using synthetic fuel, and a dirty electric using electric generated from natural gas or coal (like the large majority of electricity around me). I don't think ICE automatically means dirty. It's still an incredible energy density and simple distribution mechanism for energy that could potentially be harvested cleanly.
We should focus on cleaning up production of fuels too.
Actually, as the costs of fossil fuels rise, and costs of energy production drop, synthetics are becoming more and more viable. Could be very soon...
Synthetic fuel still generates CO2. That's always worse than green electricity, although as you point out maybe comparable to dirty electricity sources.
Growing crops for biofuel is more land intensive, and thus involves cutting down more forest and removing carbon sinks, than the equivalent solar power.
Yes, bioruels are better than fossil fuels, but worse than clean electricity.
Anyhow, it's not an either/or. ICE vehicles will be with us for a while, so it's better to use more efficient ones, but we also need to be replacing as many as possible with electric.
Biofuels are better than fossil fuels, but most ICE engines run on gasoline, and can't run on 100% biofuels efficiently and cleanly.
I wasn't referring to biofuels. I was referring to pure synthetics like in the HN link I provided. Those require no crop land. Essentially conversion of solar energy into chemical batteries. ICE is treated as equivalent to fossil fuel because that's our main current method of producing the fuel, but it's just a really reliable, high energy density, chemical "battery". What matters is finding clean ways to replace that. Or other options. Aluminium/Air say...
Also, if it turns out biofuels is the answer (and IMO synthetic fuel production seems way more efficient in the long run), there are ways to reduce the externalities. Using land that wouldn't be used for crops, growing the plants or algae without use of fossil fuels. And of course if you're going for externalities, most forms of green energy have them too...
Ah, sorry, I'd missed that you were discussing completely synthetic fuels. Yeah, those are a possibility, but a lot further out; those are not going to be showing up in production quantities in the next 5-10 years. And an ICE engine is already way less energy efficient than an electric motor, it's hard to imagine that the entire cycle of synthetic fuel production to useful energy at the vehicle could ever compete on efficiency with current green energy production and battery electric vehicles.
These kinds of solutions are useful to do research and development on for cases where we're not sure if battery electric vehicles will ever have a path to replace, like long haul aviation.
But for surface transport, it's really hard to see much being competitive with battery electric vehicles; they are already commercially viable, and can be powered with 100% green energy, and green energy prices are already lower than fossil fuel. My EV is charged with 100% carbon neutral power when I charge at home or work. Sure, the mix of sources varies across the grid, but given how cost effective renewable energy is, and incentives, the share of renewables is growing fast.
The infrastructure and production capacity are rapidly developing. And while energy density and specific energy of batteries are a bit limiting now, there are a lot of developments that are nearly ready for mass production that will get rid of many of the remaining limitations of battery electric vehicles for all but the most demanding of applications (like long haul air transport).
I think you might be surprised by how fast ICE vehicles become obsolete for all but niche use cases. As infrastructure develops, production ramps up, and battery technology improves, it won't be long before EVs start to outsell ICE vehicles. EVs already outsell ICE vehicles in Norway, in China they're at about 25% of new car sales, and worldwide they're at about 12% of new car sales; and these numbers are growing rapidly, they may already be out of date by now. Once they are outselling ICE vehicles, it will only be about a decade before EVs are the majority on the road.
I would find it hard to imagine a way in which synthetic fuel would ramp up to production readiness and be cost-effective in the same kind of time scale.
You could be right. Right now we're having still a hard time with the densities. Which is why I brought up aluminium/air. You did bring up air as a situation where ICE would still be needed.
In any case none of what you brought up above contradicts my general point that ICE does not automatically mean evil.
> EVs are worse than ICEs in every way except emissions.
Let’s see. EVs generally have worse range and are substantially slower to charge while on a trip.
But they are quieter, simpler, more reliable, have generally superior performance (at least in categories where weight doesn’t matter), need substantially less maintenance, don’t stink (tires still stink, but the rest of the EV doesn’t), can recharge at home, and can do V2L/V2H/V2G [0].
[0] To be fair, V2L is a surprisingly rare feature. V2G seems likely to get stuck behind an embarrassing unwillingness on the part of anyone involved to use genuinely open standards or do decouple the implementation from various middlemen involved whose sole purpose is to intermediate between the vehicle and the utility. And V2H will share all of V2G’s problems plus the utilities’ general desire to discourage anything that reduces customer’s reliance on them and also the fact that there seems to be nothing remotely resembling a standard for microgrid interconnection devices / disconnects to enable islanding. As far as I can tell, most microgrid solutions are single-vendor, and most of them except the serious hardcore off grid gear are annoying tied to the cloud. We need a standard where a building can have a microgrid interconnection device, with multiple available suppliers, and where customers can install downstream equipment that interoperates with the device, sources from other brands. And this whole thing needs to work without explicit approval from the utility. (Requiring certification of each device makes sense. Requiring paperwork to be filed and permission obtained from the utility to install a V2H-capable EVSE or a solar inverter or a generator or whatever is broken. (Requiring utility permission to export is a different story, and utilities should be able to communicate, in real time, permissible export limits and the current and upcoming rate schedule. This should work without an internet connection.)
But this rant about V2H/V2G shouldn’t distract from the overall point: ICE cars aren’t doing V2G/V2G at all anytime soon.
Sail powered cargo ships were used until mid-20th century. So, for about 100 years there were both steam and sail powered ships in operation - roughly the amount of time we've had ICE cars.
I'm a big proponent of EVs, I drive an EV car and work on EV aircraft, but they aren't yet ready to replace every segment of the market.
Electric motorcycles are only just becoming viable, and are a lot more limiting compared to electric cars.
And an ICE motorcycle can be a lot more fuel efficient, and is also lower carbon impact to manufacture, and takes up less space on the street and to park. For a single occupancy vehicle, an ICE motorcycle is a lot cooler than an ICE car; and depending on the use, could even be better than an EV car.
I am hopeful that within about 5-10 years, battery technology and prices will improve to the point that electric motorcycles actually become viable. But for now, buying a gas sipping Honda Monkey and commuting to work on it could be a big step up over a car.
A 169mpg motorbike (and note that that's a real-world stock model that you can buy and go shopping on) likely has significantly lower lifetime CO2 emissions than any mainstream electric cars. ICE is a big problem but giant heavy vehicles are a bigger one.
The monkey gets 160+mpg, it would be difficult to improve much on that. Certainly not going to get a 2x multiple of it for cheaper than you can increase the fuel tank by an order of magnitude.
Good for a consumer vehicle. For a random stunt it would be pretty easy to improve on that. Start with things like "aerodynamic fairings" and "low rolling resistance tires".
Someone above linked a solar car, which went roughly the same distance, significantly faster. Given that it apparently had 1.8kw nameplate capacity solar panels... and it covered 3000 km in 30 hours, we know it's (substantially better than) 1.8kwh/100km (at 100kph!).
0.03 gallons of gasoline release 1kwh of energy when burned, combined with the above the solar car was getting the equivalent of 1150 mpg. This trip would have taken 2.26 gallons (falsely assuming perfect efficiency, but then we get to ditch all the weight and aerodynamic losses from having solar panels on board... and I assumed the solar panels operated continuously at their nameplate capacity).
That's still slightly larger than the Honda Monkey's 1.5 gallon tank, but it's not unreasonable to think that someone could have done this. It would have been a lot cooler than "strapping on more fuel tanks" IMO.
According to the article it was a three driver team that was swapping out regularly. Also, the bike was made full size by wrapping the thing in a huge fuel tank. Still, that's a long ride even on a full size bike.
Wrapping it won't lengthen the wheelbase or suspension so it will still turn in like a little bike. Still will be twitchy at speed like a little bike, and defo going to take pothole just like any other bike with little wheels, terribly.
Then you don't know the meaning of the word "comfort."
The B body, culminating in the Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale Brougham LS (8th gen, "Body by Fisher") was a rolling couch you could sink into, with that ridiculously static-generating and uncleanable velour. Some Cadillacs and Lincolns were also okay, but Fisher put all other automotive brands, foreign and domestic, to shame in the comfort category.
A bit tangential, but this guy drove from Alaska to Argentina on a c90. It was a few years of sleeping in a tent, some random person's spare bedroom, or the cheapest hotel possible.
>An impressive 4,183.8 kilometers (2,599.7 miles) without refueling.
this distance reminds me of the Cannonball Run from Red Ball Garage in Manhattan to Portofino Inn in Redondo Beach, which is about 2,900 miles. I don't think anyone's done a Honda Monkey Cannonball Run yet
You really need to watch the documentary on Cannonball Run - its fascinatingly full of historic tidbits that you didn't know that you knew, and those you didnt.
I suspect that the problem could have been solved with baffles (which are the typical solution to sloshing), but that it was impossible to add them to the tank post-manufacture.
Or maybe just too many of them would need to be addded. At that point tank weighted more than base motorcycle, baffles are used and "good enough" in bigger vehicles that have more wheels for stability.
Sponges are also commonly used in race bikes so I'd guess there are some advantages vs just building a tank with baffles
Was reading about "The Quiet Achiever" the other day, the first transcontinental crossing in a solar powered vehicle (interestingly also 4000km). Kinda crazy looking back 40 years how far we've come!
I initially thought that no modification that will impact the amount of fuel was performed on the machine. That in itself will be an amazing feat.
This can be considered great if they made advancements in engine / combustion design that increased the distance traveled on a per liter (or gallon) of fuel.
A properly designed gas tank will prevent the formation of fumes, whether by having a “bladder” within (most modern cars do this) or perhaps some type of venting.
I’d consider it far more dangerous to be going 40mph under the prevailing speed limit on a highway you can’t go around, such as over a bridge. The tank is a minor consideration.
I also believe you could find a way to use bladders and fairings in your tank design such that it bulges out into a 50gal tank when starting off and gradually stretches and shrinks back into the existing profile and shape as the gas gets used up. A further mileage hit at first, but all bonus miles.
As for this mini motorcycle, it's impressive that it still looks pretty decent and someone unfamiliar with this model might even mistake it for stock. I never quite understood why it's so hard to find even aftermarket tanks for bikes that get the range up to car range...I just want to go 500 miles on my bike without refueling. Put the gas in the frame AND into a 5+ gallon tank up top. Put gas into a portion of the seat. Put it up behind the headlight or in a big fender. Carrying jerry cans or even the bag style ones is just so bulky and inconvenient for overlanding on two wheels without a support vehicle carrying extra fuel.