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Solar-Powered, Off-Grid Bike Can Bust Poachers Anywhere
- swader999 6y agoI imagine the $30,340 cost for each bike could be used more effectively to help these rhinos. I'm no expert though.
- dubcanada 6y agoIgnoring the green part you could probably send them 15-30 gas motorbikes for that.
- driverdan 6y agoMaybe 10 low end Chinese bikes.
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- dubcanada 6y agoYou can easily get a decent off-road Honda or Yamaha for 3k. If you shopped around you could easily get 15 at wholesale for $30k. And if you were donating them to a good cause, could probably find a reseller looking for some good PR and get 20.
- driverdan 6y agoA Honda CRF125F is MSRP $3200 which means invoice is below $3000. I doubt you could get them for $2000 each. I don't think they have 30% margins.
- 0-_-0 6y agoNot if the greatest danger to the rhinos are poachers.
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- samizdis 6y agoAs far as I can tell, it's not actually 30k for each bike. You pay the money and get a bike for yourself, plus another bike to be sent to the anti-poachers, and also solar-charging units to be sent to them as well. See: https://ridecake.com/en/shop/bikes/kalk/kalk-ap/ https://ridecake.com/en/shop/bikes/kalk/kalk-ap/
- SloopJon 6y agoThe first thing I notice is the chain. Ars Technica had a story earlier this week about the Sondors Metacycle: similar power, similar weight, but no chain. Also, $25,000 cheaper. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/01/this-electric-bicycle-company-is-building-a-5000-electric-motorbike/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/01/this-electric-bicycle-c... Granted, that the Metacycle isn't an off-road bike, but I wonder which is better for reliability in an area so remote that you need solar charging: a chain, or a hub-mounted motor?
- ajuc 6y agoI don't know about bikes, but in electric bicycles engine in the back wheel is much worse for offroad because of weight distribution. The huge, heavy battery these bikes have might change this.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoAnd unsprung weight is a much bigger deal when your vehicle actually has to use its suspension, weighs practically nothing, has 2" of sidewall, no contact patch to speak of, rims made out of toothpick, etc, etc. Hub motors just suck for bikes and motorcycles. You can kind of get away with them for driving on really nice surfaces but that all goes out the window for anything even mildly off road.
- bluejekyll 6y agoWhile there are definitely challenges to in-wheel motors, I do wonder if we’ll see more innovation over time on in-wheel suspension systems to compensate for the unsprung weight. Here’s a neat example for one in a bike wheel [video]: https://youtu.be/DSKDH2NNmcA https://youtu.be/DSKDH2NNmcA Here’s a write-up: https://www.karmanhealthcare.com/acrobat-soft-wheels-shock-absorbing/ https://www.karmanhealthcare.com/acrobat-soft-wheels-shock-a... I’m sure putting a motor in there will be problematic due to stresses on the shock absorbers, but it does seem like sock absorbing spokes in wheels could help gain space in vehicles by moving the motors to the wheel. Edit: just to be clear I know little about the company and tech behind that wheel i linked to, I just find it to be an interesting area, and recently came across that.
- jack_riminton 6y agoPR nonsense, there's nothing about the bike that makes it optimised for solar powering compared to its competitors
- jack_riminton 6y agoAlso, the Rhino stuff sounds like something a big corporate like LandRover would do as for a glossy National Geographic advert, its just weird coming from a startup
- nkingsy 6y agoSolar powered meaning it has a battery? I don’t see panels on it
- jpcooper 6y agoIf anyone wants to find out more about solar-powered, off-grid bicycles, the BEHEMOTH (big electronic human energized machine) solar-powered (recumbent) bicycle really inspired me as a kid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dItCJUuFY4U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dItCJUuFY4U
- black6 6y ago> ...it's a €1,000 ($1,210) deposit to get in on the scheme. A scheme is right. This is nothing but a PR puff piece.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoA bike doesn't help you if the poachers shoot back or if they're buddy buddy with your boss's boss. That said, I greatly look forward to electric OHVs because the Karens won't be able to get stuff shut down by complaining about noise. (What I don't look forward to is trails becoming "EV only" to keep the poors out of the sport.)
- jessaustin 6y agoThe obvious solution is to close all trails to vehicles which tend to destroy trails and vegetation.
- thaumasiotes 6y agoThat's... all vehicles, including feet.
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- soperj 6y agoThey'd have to poach all the animals to accomplish that.
- thaumasiotes 6y agoWho would? To accomplish... what?
- amelius 6y agoGeofencing on vehicles could do that, but we're not there yet.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoIf you go full Sierra Club and shut down all but the "purest" forms of recreating in nature then basically nobody will recreate outdoors and there will be no opposition to destroying nature because so few people will have stake in the issue.
- aphextron 6y agoNot sure why this is so expensive. EV dirt bikes with better performance than this are definitely a thing for 10% of the price [0]. [0] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Other-Motorcycle-China-Adult-79V-12000W_1600154896487.html?spm=a2700.pc_countrysearch.main07.22.11c56e085niuUt https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Other-Motorcycle-Chin...
- u678u 6y agoI'd love to see noisy two stroke dirt bikes a thing of the past. Maybe the future isn't so bad after all. :)
- otikik 6y agoWow they are super expensive. They will be poaching the bikes themselves if ever one gets there.
- reillyse 6y agoThis
- dougmany 6y agoIt looks like a buy two get one price. I think the standard version is $13,000.
- chrisweekly 6y agoFor reference, a Specialized e-MTB (a mountain bike -- as in bicycle -- with pedal assist) is about $13k. And a very nice off-road -capable motorcycle (like a Triumph Scrambler, which can top 100mph on pavement, but has about 120? mile range) costs about the same.
- cogman10 6y agoOverly expensive. No way parts cost anywhere near that. The most expensive part on that thing is the battery. At an overly generous $200 per kwh (most are now closer to $150 with world leaders at $100) that battery would cost ~$500. So where is the rest of that $30000 budget going to? The panels? The motors? Shipping? R&D (lol) I wonder if someone got a contract to produce these things.
- andrewflnr 6y agoI clicked through to the article about the company. Apparently they found it necessary to custom-make all their parts, and aren't yet doing high volume production. They expect the price to come down eventually.
- Saris 6y agoNot for small volume though, Li-ion is still $400-600/kWh unless you're Tesla or another huge company buying millions of them.
- gnarbarian 6y agoFunny I was specifically looking for an electric fat bike this morning to assist in hunting next fall.
- samizdis 6y agoContact the makers. Perhaps they will do you a one-off scheme to offset your wildlife footprint.
- exabrial 6y ago$500 of gas shipped overseas in a $1200 Yamaha that gets 70mpg would be a far better investment and far more reliable.
- maxerickson 6y agoThe site here talks more about the overall project (it's slow already, so try to take it easy): https://wildlifecollege.org.za/cake-launches-the-kalk-ap-an-anti-poaching-electric-bush-bike/ https://wildlifecollege.org.za/cake-launches-the-kalk-ap-an-... That they have a local partner is at least better than not having a local partner. Don't know anything about the whole thing either way though.
- sparrish 6y agoYou won't find me riding around on a bike in an area with large predators (referring to the animals and the poachers). I'll insist on 4 wheels and a hard-shell cab... and a gun... a big gun.
- WhompingWindows 6y agoThe bike can not bust poachers anywhere, the bike is simply a vehicle. Poachers are busted by other humans. So the challenge is getting the good guys to where the bad guys are, in time and in force. Does an extremely expensive bike achieve this cost-effectively? Why not use a fleet of drones to target your search and then use much cheaper gas-powered vehicles to head straight to the target? Why not spend the tens of thousands on lobbying governments to bust up marketplaces where the wares are sold: killing demand should kill the supply too.
- soperj 6y agoFrom the article, they already use drones. They're not even making them pay for the bikes, they're sending them for free.
- at-fates-hands 6y agoSo its a marketing stunt then?
- soperj 6y agoNo, it's a buy one give one. There's only 50 of them.
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- driverdan 6y ago$30k for a bike worth $10k. And yet people will buy it.
- nfriedly 6y agoThis is good, but I feel like it's solving the problem from the wrong angle. The best way to reduce poaching is to reduce the demand. I know there are ongoing efforts to do exactly that, but it's a hard problem and obviously hasn't had 100% success so far. I think the next best way to reduce poaching, though, is to meet the demand with a legal supply. License and regulate farms for the black rhino and any other animal that is a frequent victim of poaching. Obviously this is also hard, but it better aligns incentives. The farmers are, of course, going to care more about their animals than the wild ones, but they would also have a profit motive to reduce poaching of wild ones (because it will reduce their competition).
- bdamm 6y agoFarming rhinos sounds great but this is one of those ideas with a maybe an unobtanium answer. I'd like to see a "farm" strong enough to contain a single rhino let alone an entire herd, and one that is profitable. The answer is to go after poaching at all angles possible; supply, demand, funding, trade, advertising, etc. Also illegal is elephant poaching, and we're not about to start farming elephants.
- true_religion 6y agoDig a pit and place the Rhino inside. Rhinos are strong, but they are terrible climbers.
- nfriedly 6y agoThat's a fair point, but it brings a few thoughts to mind: 1. What about putting a GPS tracker or similar on each animal and just let it roam. I'm not sure, but maybe it could work. 2. Zoo's can profitably contain Rhino's and Elephants. My local zoo lets people pay the zoo to feed some of the animals! So maybe a tourism angle could help move the needle on profitability. 3. What if it was a government-run operation with out the need to be profitable? Current anti-poaching operations don't bring in any profit, so maybe this angle of attack doesn't need to either.
- adrianmonk 6y ago> "farm" strong enough to contain a single rhino let alone an entire herd One thought is to use a cattle grid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_grid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_grid These are very common for regular livestock when there needs to be a gap in the fence for a road. But if a fence can't contain rhinos, it might be possible to use cattle grid for the entire perimeter. Do cattle grids work for rhinos? According to "The Cattle Grid Guru" (which bills itself as "The most extensive cattle grid guide on the web"), the answer is yes: https://www.cattlegridguru.co.uk/can-cattle-grids-be-used-with-animals-other-than-cattle/ https://www.cattlegridguru.co.uk/can-cattle-grids-be-used-wi...
- samfisher83 6y agoYou might be better off giving the 30k to the poachers so they don't have to poach. I mean a lot of them are pretty poor.
- azinman2 6y agoHow would one even go about that?
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoPoaching is one of those things where if there's continued high demand from SE Asia -- and in particular China -- there's going to be poaching issues. It's just the drug war. You must reduce the demand.
- nabilhat 6y agoThe $30k price is interesting, given that it's multiples of what established manufacturers are charging for electric dirtbikes with multiples of power, kWh, performance, and design maturity. The time in the electric motorcycle market where this would succeed is passing. Established motorcycle manufacturers appear to have been watching all of the upstarts establish distribution and supply chain paths before they commit to the e-motorcycle market. A few are beginning to move in, mostly offroad, but some onroad as well. Harley comes to mind, plus a scattering of moped-level bikes. It'll be interesting to see how Sondors, Cake, Zero, and others play out when an 800 pound gorilla like Honda hits their market with serious intent.
- olivermarks 6y agoPoachers will just steal the bikes or ransom them. https://www.thedrive.com/accelerator/38650/that-time-ari-vatanen-lost-the-dakar-rally-because-his-peugeot-got-stolen-for-ransom https://www.thedrive.com/accelerator/38650/that-time-ari-vat...