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There's a long distance motorcycle travel series with Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman called "Long Way Up" where they go from the bottom of South America to L
by rcarr 4y ago
There's a long distance motorcycle travel series with Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman called "Long Way Up" where they go from the bottom of South America to LA on electric motorcycles. They had a lot issues with both range and charging the motorbikes in the first few episodes when they were dealing with the cold winter climate in Tierra del Fuego. Once they got far enough north into warmer climates the bikes were charging a lot quicker and getting a lot more range.
Either someone is going to have to come up with an ingenious solution or electric vehicles are going to be of limited use in cold weather locations where space is not abundant enough for garages (quite a lot of European cities). Infrared heating seems quite efficient, maybe the solution lies there.
Based on the article, that Tesla is looking pretty impressive though!
- thrashh 4y agoHopefully we discover a new battery chemistry We seem to stumble on new chemistries that get to production every few decades so cross your fingers
- api 4y agoOr just more range. If you have 350 miles of range and it drops to 300 in the winter that’s not noticeable for 99% of drivers. We have a 220 mile Nissan Leaf that drops to 180-200 in the winter. We also live in Cincinnati which is a metro area about 75 miles in diameter at the widest span. Most drives are 10-30 miles. The range drop doesn’t matter unless you are doing a road trip. Recharge time does matter more but any drop there due to slower chemistry is somewhat offset by less thermal down-ramping since everything is cold. What we need most of all is more fast chargers between cities. There are enough in California and several other coastal states but nowhere near enough between cities in the US interior. For some reason they put a bunch of DC chargers in the city and none between which is the inverse of what you really need. Is there a grid capacity problem in small midwestern towns or did they just get the priority wrong?
- bsder 4y ago> For some reason they put a bunch of DC chargers in the city and none between which is the inverse of what you really need. Is there a grid capacity problem in small midwestern towns or did they just get the priority wrong? Likely ROI--Return on Investment. You can predict quite well the usage of chargers in cities from other charger installations. In between, not so much. On my latest trip between San Diego and Austin, the fast-charging stops were almost completely empty. This is in constrast to the summer, for example, where most of the fast charging was completely full and not a small amount were broken. People have forgotten that gas stations at every convenience store is a relatively new thing in the US (starting about the mid 80s). Prior to that, part of the advantage of the Turnpikes and major interstates were regular gasoline station placements. And that happened because the governments subsidized them. The ironic part is that "gas stations everywhere" has been absolutely terrible for groundwater--contamination is now ubiquitous. Paying gas stations to dig up old tanks and replace them with electric chargers would be a big environmental win.
- api 4y agoI’ve had a business idea forever: have a chain of truck stops install chargers and things to do while charging like a classic arcade.
- orangepurple 4y agoWarpedPerception solved this problem by installing a 400cc generator in his Tesla that ran continuously on his 1800 mile road trip
- gambiting 4y agoThe entire series of Long Way Up felt like it was filmed maybe ~5 years too early. So many of the issues were caused by the bikes just being prototypes. Also the solution is easy - when the car is plugged in, just heat the battery so it charges at optimal rate and is ready for your journey. Some cars already do this(the new BMW i4 and I guess the iX too)
- rcarr 4y ago> The entire series of Long Way Up felt like it was filmed maybe ~5 years too early. So many of the issues were caused by the bikes just being prototypes. That was kind of the point though: they wanted to push the boundaries of what was possible. There's a good quote attributed to Leonard Bernstein: > To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time. I feel like the project pushed Harley Davidson and Rivian to achieve something a lot quicker than they would have done otherwise. I hope they do another one in a few years though to see how far the technology has come along, although they've covered quite a lot of the world now so I'm not sure what route they'd choose exactly. NZ -> Aus -> SE Asia -> India -> Stans -> Turkey -> Europe would be my guess.
- Animatronio 4y agoI remember they said a team from Rivian went ahead and installed chargers in several places along the route. And still they had a huge case of range anxiety. Instead of focusing on places and people they were harping about batteries, recharging, messing the schedule bc of that and so on. Frankly, it was a huge fail, especially compared to their previous trip through Siberia.
- gambiting 4y agoI 100% agree. Compared to the long way down and long way round it focused way way too much on technical issues and range anxiety, instead of the locations and people like the other two series.
- jl6 4y agoLong Way In, showcasing the latest in electric tunnel boring machinery to reach geothermal-power-generating depths. Who’s got the high ground now?