7 ms·

Yadea unveils 99 MPH electric motorcycle that charges in 10 minutes

34 points by ashitlerferad 3y ago

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
> The company hasn’t shared a range figure yet Ah, there's the rub. But it is nice to see things advancing so quickly. Fast-charging really needs to be a thing. I am deeply pessimistic about battery-swapping. I don't think it would work.
- LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago
  It already does. In some places at least.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
    So how do they deal with rogue swap-station owners that substitute defective/fake batteries?
    - b112 3y ago
      Jail?⁰
    - ceejayoz 3y ago
      Credit card chargebacks?
    - nvy 3y ago
      I think we all know it's going to be on-battery DRM.
    - jstanley 3y ago
      How do you deal with rogue petrol station owners that sell bad fuel?
      - mschuster91 3y ago
        Serious audits, both by government regulatory authorities and the oil wholesale industry - no big oil brand wants to appear in the news headlines for selling bad fuel.
      - ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
        Around here, the entire fuel delivery system is under heavily-audited state seal. You can see the seals, every time you drive into the station.
    - motohagiography 3y ago
      I think what might actually work would be have part of the price of selling the charged battery price-in an insurance policy for its operation. Fuel stations would take on battery failure risk and have a replacement delivery service, with a rating of how often it gets used. Battery verification using a proof of work or physically unique function (PUF) could be interesting, but subject to the same problems of attestation and verification existing systems have today. If we solved it for batteries, we'd have solved it for everything, so I don't see that happening.
      - ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
        That makes sense.
- AtlasBarfed 3y ago
  Actually I think battery swapping works really well on two-wheel form factors like motorcycles. The battery for a 50 mile e-bike barely weighs a couple pounds, that is ultra portable and ultra swappable. Not sure how heavy a electric motorcycles battery would be, possibly 100 lbs? That's a lot harder. 50 lbs would be a one person job for a wide range of consumers. Of course, the big problem with small EV transportation is that the batteries are largely being implemented in the same way. The batteries are being implemented for power tools. It's all the same cells underneath it, but each tool maker has their own special form. Factor/ plastic molding and plug interface. We _really_ need standards around this. Edit: a 150km range battery on a motorcycle is about 60kg currently. Of course if solid state and sulfur chemistries ever get commercialized, that could drop by 40-60% which is a lot different.
  - mike_hock 3y ago
    Would also work on cars. It's the only way to retain the convenience of gasoline-powered cars of driving to a gas station, filling up real quick and then continuing your trip vs. having to wait for the car to "fast" charge for half an hour. Gas stations would turn into massive storage facilities to store replacement batteries, but is that any less feasible than massive parking lots for charging cars simultaneously? Not to mention the massive peak current that needs to be supported, which could be spread out evenly over 24 hours if the batteries were in storage.
    - victorbjorklund 3y ago
      They used to have that in Israel. You drove your car to a swap station and it just swapped your battery for a charged one. They went belly up though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place_(company)
      - SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
        That was a full decade ago they went out of business. Perhaps the tech is more viable now for a multitude of reasons.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Battery swapping already works. Hundreds of thousands of delivery vehicles the world over user it daily, as well as countless ride sharing services.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
    Yeah, but they have dedicated swap stations. Once you have any old knucklehead that can open a station, you can have a lot of issues. Around here, the gas stations are basically run by a couple of "cartels," for lack of a better term. Their stations are often in notoriously bad shape, but the fuel delivery systems are all under state seal. It would be hard for them to substitute bad gas. Not so, batteries. They would have a big open pile of them, ready to go. Determining the provenance of said pile, could be an interesting thought exercise.
    - gaganyaan 3y ago
      I don't really find that convincing. Sneaking in a bad battery is an issue, but why couldn't the government get involved there just like for gas?
      - toomuchtodo 3y ago
        Because there is no will to. If the solution is "we can do this if we coordinate" but coordination isn't going to happen, it isn't a solution.
- hwillis 3y ago
  > Ah, there's the rub. It'll have a range of ~90 miles. Since motorcycles all have pretty similar weight and aerodynamics (specifically: very bad), you can compare different models with the same power pretty reasonably. The efficiency of the battery, electronics, and motor are all >>80%. If they were lower, they'd be on fire. The difference between 80% and 90% efficient is only 12.5% extra power to the wheels. The actual energy lost is all in the drag and the speed you ride- even the weight doesn't matter much because the tires don't deform nearly as much as car tires, while the air drag is actually about the same as a sedan. For comparison a gas motorcycle will get 150-200 miles on a tank, but even that is very very dependent on how you're riding.
thelastgallon 3y ago
Battery swapping is much faster, 6 second swap: https://www.gogoro.com/gogoro-network/ https://www.gogoro.com/gogoro-network/ With more than 450 million battery swaps globally, Gogoro’s 6-second Swap & Go battery swapping have set the standard for urban two-wheel refuelling by eliminating the traditional EV charging challenges of finding places to charge and then waiting to charge. Now doing a pilot in India: https://www.gogoro.com/news/india-pilot/ https://www.gogoro.com/news/india-pilot/
- waihtis 3y ago
  Nice, but you're totally on the mercy of a maintained battery swap network.
  - swagempire 3y ago
    With standardization -- how is a battery swapping network any different from a gas station network? Our entire society is based on these kinds of things. "Electricity?!" -- what if they stop producing that...then what? No, I'll stay with my steam powered...
    - Euphorbium 3y ago
      You are just dependant on coal network.
    - ruined 3y ago
      the supply chain. nobody puts gas into the gas station but the delivery tanker. nobody puts electricity into your mains but the grid operator. when you get electricity from the grid or gas from a gas station, you have a pretty solid expectation that the service knows where it came from, and nobody else has had access to it. at a battery swap station, you are receiving a high energy object of essentially unknowable provenance, to which many people have had private unsupervised access. a lot can be done to mitigate this but you can't make it not true, and by nature of the service it is a very lucrative vulnerability to exploit.
iancmceachern 3y ago
I dont want either of those features. They're both super dangerous. What I do want is a quality bike that can go up to the speed limit, and charge safely and reliability for 10 years. Charging lithium batteries at their limit is simply not safe and not worth the risk IMO.
- Tempest1981 3y ago
  Meanwhile, I'm holding out for the 100 mph model. But seriously, how do you know this one isn't high quality? And perhaps you can slow-charge it 95% of the time.
  - iancmceachern 3y ago
    In my experience companies that advertise their stuff at the edge of its capabilities aren't the ones that make long term reliable products. It's like with audio amplifiers, you can buy cheap amps that advertise insane power levels but at really weird conditions, or there is the quality stuff thats very conservatively rated in terms of its specs because they know their customers are buying it for other reasons, like quality or reputation, not just numbers in an advertisement. Ultimately I don't think charging bikes fast is an issue, the batteries are relatively small compared to cars so they already charge relatively faster, and if you really need quick swaps like in a race or something swapping out the battery pack is a far better approach. Ultimately I know nothing about this bike, I'm just poking at their advertising really.
- thebruce87m 3y ago
  They specifically say it’s an LFP battery which I understand will be safer.
mdip 3y ago
This excites me but I have a few thoughts about some of the unique constraints that come into play when riding a motorcycle vs driving a car. One big one: transmission. As an American, I'd had the occasion of driving a manual transmission car a handful of times in my teens. Outside of that, everything has been automatic. The vast majority of motorcycles are manual[0]. A few things become apparent when you start using a motorcycle for a long commute. The first is that you're going to have a few incidents that you can only conclude "you could easily have died if you'd done something differently". You have to be paying attention to escape paths, especially during rush hour, and you're subconsciously focused deeply on what gear you're in and how the bike will respond to the throttle given those conditions. I've found most of the time, choosing acceleration over braking is the safest approach. For the most part, while a bike's stopping power can be less than a car, a bike can out accelerate almost any car on the road and has the advantage of size. One commute home a driver completely blew a red light at a point where braking to avoid him would have been impossible; I hadn't thought to brake, though, because I knew I could accelerate across the road before he could hit me and given the gear I was in, I could tweak my speed in both directions very easily with my right (throttle) hand (ready to brake if needed, but it wasn't). Engine braking to control a turn is kind of how you manage the turn[1]. It becomes muscle memory, including adjusting given the gear/speed. Electric vehicles don't (usually?) have "gears" and I'm guessing those that do wouldn't behave the way that ICE transmissions do owing to the different motor characteristics. Bikers really care about this stuff. I can't think of anything more controversial in the motorcycle world than "ABS" and "Combined Braking" -- both safety features, but both of which take some control away from the driver and alter "how the bike behaves." I found it a little funny that they point out the top speed ... it's far more important to know how well it accelerates (and it seems to handle that just fine). [0] I remember there was one automatic model available (in 2011) "that wasn't a scooter" except it was a scooter. I think it was a BMW bike and I have no idea if it's still made. [1] If you're not a rider and equating it to riding a bike ... you'll get a surprise your first time. Turning, for new riders, is a challenge (with the general rule being "look at the place you want to go, not the ground, dummy!")
- tictorium 3y ago
  I think there are companies working to make regen feel exactly like engine braking (because that's really what it is). Overall I agree with your points tho. I think the more interesting application for electric motorcycles is getting people out of their cars, at which point refining the product to fit existing motorcyclists' expectations is moot.
dieselgate 3y ago
And Yadea Yadea Yadea it charges in 10 minutes

34 points by ashitlerferad 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

> The company hasn’t shared a range figure yet Ah, there's the rub. But it is nice to see things advancing so quickly. Fast-charging really needs to be a thing. I am deeply pessimistic about battery-swapping. I don't think it would work.

LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago
It already does. In some places at least.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  So how do they deal with rogue swap-station owners that substitute defective/fake batteries?
  - b112 3y ago
    Jail?⁰
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    Credit card chargebacks?
  - nvy 3y ago
    I think we all know it's going to be on-battery DRM.
  - jstanley 3y ago
    How do you deal with rogue petrol station owners that sell bad fuel?
    - mschuster91 3y ago
      Serious audits, both by government regulatory authorities and the oil wholesale industry - no big oil brand wants to appear in the news headlines for selling bad fuel.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
      Around here, the entire fuel delivery system is under heavily-audited state seal. You can see the seals, every time you drive into the station.
  - motohagiography 3y ago
    I think what might actually work would be have part of the price of selling the charged battery price-in an insurance policy for its operation. Fuel stations would take on battery failure risk and have a replacement delivery service, with a rating of how often it gets used. Battery verification using a proof of work or physically unique function (PUF) could be interesting, but subject to the same problems of attestation and verification existing systems have today. If we solved it for batteries, we'd have solved it for everything, so I don't see that happening.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
      That makes sense.
AtlasBarfed 3y ago
Actually I think battery swapping works really well on two-wheel form factors like motorcycles. The battery for a 50 mile e-bike barely weighs a couple pounds, that is ultra portable and ultra swappable. Not sure how heavy a electric motorcycles battery would be, possibly 100 lbs? That's a lot harder. 50 lbs would be a one person job for a wide range of consumers. Of course, the big problem with small EV transportation is that the batteries are largely being implemented in the same way. The batteries are being implemented for power tools. It's all the same cells underneath it, but each tool maker has their own special form. Factor/ plastic molding and plug interface. We _really_ need standards around this. Edit: a 150km range battery on a motorcycle is about 60kg currently. Of course if solid state and sulfur chemistries ever get commercialized, that could drop by 40-60% which is a lot different.
- mike_hock 3y ago
  Would also work on cars. It's the only way to retain the convenience of gasoline-powered cars of driving to a gas station, filling up real quick and then continuing your trip vs. having to wait for the car to "fast" charge for half an hour. Gas stations would turn into massive storage facilities to store replacement batteries, but is that any less feasible than massive parking lots for charging cars simultaneously? Not to mention the massive peak current that needs to be supported, which could be spread out evenly over 24 hours if the batteries were in storage.
  - victorbjorklund 3y ago
    They used to have that in Israel. You drove your car to a swap station and it just swapped your battery for a charged one. They went belly up though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place_(company)
    - SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
      That was a full decade ago they went out of business. Perhaps the tech is more viable now for a multitude of reasons.
jacquesm 3y ago
Battery swapping already works. Hundreds of thousands of delivery vehicles the world over user it daily, as well as countless ride sharing services.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  Yeah, but they have dedicated swap stations. Once you have any old knucklehead that can open a station, you can have a lot of issues. Around here, the gas stations are basically run by a couple of "cartels," for lack of a better term. Their stations are often in notoriously bad shape, but the fuel delivery systems are all under state seal. It would be hard for them to substitute bad gas. Not so, batteries. They would have a big open pile of them, ready to go. Determining the provenance of said pile, could be an interesting thought exercise.
  - gaganyaan 3y ago
    I don't really find that convincing. Sneaking in a bad battery is an issue, but why couldn't the government get involved there just like for gas?
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      Because there is no will to. If the solution is "we can do this if we coordinate" but coordination isn't going to happen, it isn't a solution.
hwillis 3y ago
> Ah, there's the rub. It'll have a range of ~90 miles. Since motorcycles all have pretty similar weight and aerodynamics (specifically: very bad), you can compare different models with the same power pretty reasonably. The efficiency of the battery, electronics, and motor are all >>80%. If they were lower, they'd be on fire. The difference between 80% and 90% efficient is only 12.5% extra power to the wheels. The actual energy lost is all in the drag and the speed you ride- even the weight doesn't matter much because the tires don't deform nearly as much as car tires, while the air drag is actually about the same as a sedan. For comparison a gas motorcycle will get 150-200 miles on a tank, but even that is very very dependent on how you're riding.

thelastgallon 3y ago

Battery swapping is much faster, 6 second swap: https://www.gogoro.com/gogoro-network/ https://www.gogoro.com/gogoro-network/ With more than 450 million battery swaps globally, Gogoro’s 6-second Swap & Go battery swapping have set the standard for urban two-wheel refuelling by eliminating the traditional EV charging challenges of finding places to charge and then waiting to charge. Now doing a pilot in India: https://www.gogoro.com/news/india-pilot/ https://www.gogoro.com/news/india-pilot/

waihtis 3y ago
Nice, but you're totally on the mercy of a maintained battery swap network.
- swagempire 3y ago
  With standardization -- how is a battery swapping network any different from a gas station network? Our entire society is based on these kinds of things. "Electricity?!" -- what if they stop producing that...then what? No, I'll stay with my steam powered...
  - Euphorbium 3y ago
    You are just dependant on coal network.
  - ruined 3y ago
    the supply chain. nobody puts gas into the gas station but the delivery tanker. nobody puts electricity into your mains but the grid operator. when you get electricity from the grid or gas from a gas station, you have a pretty solid expectation that the service knows where it came from, and nobody else has had access to it. at a battery swap station, you are receiving a high energy object of essentially unknowable provenance, to which many people have had private unsupervised access. a lot can be done to mitigate this but you can't make it not true, and by nature of the service it is a very lucrative vulnerability to exploit.

iancmceachern 3y ago

I dont want either of those features. They're both super dangerous. What I do want is a quality bike that can go up to the speed limit, and charge safely and reliability for 10 years. Charging lithium batteries at their limit is simply not safe and not worth the risk IMO.

Tempest1981 3y ago
Meanwhile, I'm holding out for the 100 mph model. But seriously, how do you know this one isn't high quality? And perhaps you can slow-charge it 95% of the time.
- iancmceachern 3y ago
  In my experience companies that advertise their stuff at the edge of its capabilities aren't the ones that make long term reliable products. It's like with audio amplifiers, you can buy cheap amps that advertise insane power levels but at really weird conditions, or there is the quality stuff thats very conservatively rated in terms of its specs because they know their customers are buying it for other reasons, like quality or reputation, not just numbers in an advertisement. Ultimately I don't think charging bikes fast is an issue, the batteries are relatively small compared to cars so they already charge relatively faster, and if you really need quick swaps like in a race or something swapping out the battery pack is a far better approach. Ultimately I know nothing about this bike, I'm just poking at their advertising really.
thebruce87m 3y ago
They specifically say it’s an LFP battery which I understand will be safer.

mdip 3y ago

This excites me but I have a few thoughts about some of the unique constraints that come into play when riding a motorcycle vs driving a car. One big one: transmission. As an American, I'd had the occasion of driving a manual transmission car a handful of times in my teens. Outside of that, everything has been automatic. The vast majority of motorcycles are manual[0]. A few things become apparent when you start using a motorcycle for a long commute. The first is that you're going to have a few incidents that you can only conclude "you could easily have died if you'd done something differently". You have to be paying attention to escape paths, especially during rush hour, and you're subconsciously focused deeply on what gear you're in and how the bike will respond to the throttle given those conditions. I've found most of the time, choosing acceleration over braking is the safest approach. For the most part, while a bike's stopping power can be less than a car, a bike can out accelerate almost any car on the road and has the advantage of size. One commute home a driver completely blew a red light at a point where braking to avoid him would have been impossible; I hadn't thought to brake, though, because I knew I could accelerate across the road before he could hit me and given the gear I was in, I could tweak my speed in both directions very easily with my right (throttle) hand (ready to brake if needed, but it wasn't). Engine braking to control a turn is kind of how you manage the turn[1]. It becomes muscle memory, including adjusting given the gear/speed. Electric vehicles don't (usually?) have "gears" and I'm guessing those that do wouldn't behave the way that ICE transmissions do owing to the different motor characteristics. Bikers really care about this stuff. I can't think of anything more controversial in the motorcycle world than "ABS" and "Combined Braking" -- both safety features, but both of which take some control away from the driver and alter "how the bike behaves." I found it a little funny that they point out the top speed ... it's far more important to know how well it accelerates (and it seems to handle that just fine). [0] I remember there was one automatic model available (in 2011) "that wasn't a scooter" except it was a scooter. I think it was a BMW bike and I have no idea if it's still made. [1] If you're not a rider and equating it to riding a bike ... you'll get a surprise your first time. Turning, for new riders, is a challenge (with the general rule being "look at the place you want to go, not the ground, dummy!")

tictorium 3y ago
I think there are companies working to make regen feel exactly like engine braking (because that's really what it is). Overall I agree with your points tho. I think the more interesting application for electric motorcycles is getting people out of their cars, at which point refining the product to fit existing motorcyclists' expectations is moot.

dieselgate 3y ago

And Yadea Yadea Yadea it charges in 10 minutes