Sound Part 4: “I Don't Like the Sound or Lack There of”

The sound of something new is a mental association not yet built into the brain and not yet linked to our feelings of adrenaline and excitement. Most anyone not involved in motor sports truly hates the sounds loud engines make, and this is by far a huge majority of people in this world. The only reason some of us think a race motorcycle or cruising Harley sounds good is because we have positive associations with those sounds. When we hear the gargling almost backfire of a motorcycle, we associate it with the feeling of down shifting and braking into a corner or the hum of the Harley is associated with the cruising over green rolling foothills.

No one who actually rode my electric bike has complained about the sound. When they ride it they've said something like it sounds so different, its so quite, its a fascination of how it sounds when riding it and not a complaint, something radical and unknown.

Sound is one of the key complaints that I hear/read every time there is a discussion about electric vehicles by those who have not yet had a first hand experience.

I want to start with the sound of the A123 drag race bike. Last time I checked I think it had a 168 mph quarter mile speed, in the 7 second range. When I saw this drag bike on YouTube it was the first step in creating an association with the sound of electric motors.

Listen to the sound of this bike:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHtAkM3CYLA

When I heard that bike I said to myself that is not in the slightest way a “quite” bike. That is a ridiculous amount of energy burning through rubber tires and I can only pretend what it would feel like to race to 168 mph in a quarter mile with that sound.

After hearing that A123 bike tear off, I thought: nobody had ever said lightening sounds boring, or people being burned to death on an electric chair sounds boring. The sound of energy is the sound of energy regardless of its form, people have yet to link the association with sound of electric motors to the feeling of speed.

Even the much quieter sound of my electric bike still makes sounds at all speeds , and now that I'm tuned to it after 800 miles my brain has the association of the hum this bike makes under my favorite part of the gearing power ratio around 45 mph at full throttle and I know the adrenalin association of flying into a corner with no engine braking and the different sounds the engine makes still spinning into a decelerating corner.

Sound Part 3: Electric Bikes at Laguna Seca Raceway

With my growing associations with the sound of electric power this brought me to one of my favorite races of my life watching the electric bikes do an unofficial race at the world famous Laguna Seca Raceway. With my associations built, hearing the sound of the top two bikes racing down the track hitting 120 mph! I was more than 100 yards away and could still recognize the motor under different levels of power flying into the corner, rolling on the throttle and full throttle electrified energy.

The Electric bikes don't sound like the top of the world gasoline engines, but nothing does and most everyone in the world hates that sound. In fact most raceways are only allowed a handful of non noise restricted races a year. In regards the electric race last weekend someone posted a comment that the Electric bikes don't sound like Moto GP bikes (the top of the world motorcycle race series that was the headline at the track). But after the Moto GP bikes, The American bikes came out with restricted noise and it was hard to tell they were even racing (noise wise) compared to the Moto GP bikes. If the bikes aren't good enough because they don't sound like Moto GP then that is the end of racing as most racing/track time has restrict noise levels. I will still listen to Moto GP come to California once a year, but otherwise I am also thrilled to hear this electric racing on the track.

Sound Part 2: “Loud Pipes Save Live”

Back in the 60's cars were not insulated for sound and people did not walk around with cell phones and MP3 players. When driving in a 50 year old car and driving in a new car I can see how loud pipes may to some extent helped motorcyclist be noticed on the road back in 1960. However, today, there is no evidence that people on loud motorcycles are less likely to be killed by another driver. If you truly disagree with this and support motorcycle safety then I challenge you to put you money where you mouth is, as I have done, and donate to the American Motorcyclist Associations safety study to determine exact causes and solutions for motorcycle safety, or show me a modern study showing loud pipes save lives. (and just for the record: with my 60 miles on the street on a motorcycle I have decided visibility is best factor to improve motorcyclist safety, in the form of the modulating headlight, bright solid colored helmets and neon vest.  I take no credit for any of these ideas, just learned from years of reading and watching others)

http://www.ama-cycle.org/study/

Sound Part 1: Lawmakers Require Noise?

Quite vehicles and pedestrian safety: Right now Plug in America (http://www.pluginamerica.org/index.shtml) is working with lawmakers addressing a lack of noise and associated safety concerns for electric vehicles on urban roads. Lawmakers are trying to force electric vehicles to make noise, Plug in America is trying to prevent noise pollution and ensure the policies are effective and rational Once again, in today's time I do not think this is an issue. A new gasoline car with a stock exhaust traveling at 10 mph on an urban street does not make a noticeable amount of additional noise compared to an electric vehicle. People who are being injured and killed by vehicles are not correlation to the sound the vehicle is making. A teacher friend of mine just had a former student die from a train not because he couldn't hear the train, but because he had headphones on and wrongly placed what direction the monotonous, but surely loud train horn was coming from. At this moment, while writing the previous paragraph while sitting on a San Francisco street corner, a pedestrian was just almost crushed and caused cars to skid to a stop as he jay-walked through a red light with his MP3 player plugged into both ears. If your listening and paying attention you can hear and electric vehicle, if you not, nothing is going to save you except maybe other peoples evasive maneuvers.

Drafting the Logging Truck

To keep on the same topic of the last couple post I wanted to share my fastest commute to work on the electric bike the other day. I made it within 3 minutes of the normal time on my RC51 gas motorcycle. I'm not counting it, so its in red text on the chart, due to technically braking laws by riding with a 1-2 second following distance behind a semi truck instead of the 3 seconds that I think is supposed to be the safe following distance. On my way to work, I pull up to the main 55 mph speed limit road that I travel for 10 or so miles and I see a big logging truck on its way. Since I had just finished the 65 mph wind resistance test the weekend before, I decided to try drafting the truck to see how it would go. Now by drafting I don't mean Lance Armstrong style, practically kissing the bumper of the truck. By drafting I mean I was at the closest one car length following distance and would go back and forth down to two car distances, or 20-40 foot, 1-2 car, or 1-2 seconds was my best estimates of my drafting distance. It was pretty amazing feeling the difference of throttle required, it was more like I use to go 40 mph. We were cruising at 60 mph the whole way. After I turned off to arterial roads I had so much more power I road as aggressive as I could, taking off at each light and pushing the speed limits on all the roads, throttled through a yellow light and I still made it to work having more energy than I could get used on the bike (2 bars left). From this I imagined maybe some day in the future when there is an electric car lane where all the electric cars use the computer technology that exist today to have all the computers driver the cars with a 1 foot following distance and they could drive using less energy and at faster speeds than ever before... Or I will just see how long I can follow semi truck with 1-2 second following distance until I get a CHP ticket... maybe one day I'll draft trucks on I-5 and see how many miles I can get the bike to go that way.

First Ride: 5 new folks

This past week 5 people I know tried the bike out, most of them not motorcyclist, all of them first electric vehicle. The most common phrase was "that was easy". A friend's 55 (or so) yr old mother even road it around the block. At first the bike looks intimidating for those not used to a dirt bike or sport bike due to the seat hight which seems high for them but is actually normal for those types of bikes (and lots of people get their bike lowered which this could do the same if needed). Once they get on the bike they are more than impressed with my promise that it feels so light it feels about as confident as a bicycle in terms of moving its weight around. No matter how intimidated, once they road it around they said that was easier than they ever expect (there are a few who are yet to get on, where my promises didn't quite overpower their intimidation. In addition they mainly made the general comments about the sound and how "it just goes" and things like that.

71 MPH Top Speed!

A main reason I'm doing this blog is to help put the new electric vehicle claims to the test and to find out if what they say is true. I have not had the time to do a trial yet to see how fast you have to go to get to 50 miles per charge or what is the furthest I can get the bike to go.  The manufacture claims this bike has a top speed of 67 mph, after getting to know the bike for 700 miles and maybe the bike go warmed up after these miles.  The bike now goes up to 71 mph if I lean forward a little, maybe even if I don't.  At the end of every ride, when I full up to my destination I always end with a blast of full throttle to see what the top speed is with the remaining power level.  Here is a list of top speeds I've found with varying levels of power.

Bars of power on gauge (total 11, still drive on 0 too, but not counting that as a bar)

8-11 bars = 71 mph top speed

3-8 bars = 67 mph

2 bars = 62 mph

1-2 bars = 55-60 mph (bike limits acceleration to save power)

0 = 45 mph

65 mph wind test

Note: In this study, the bike still went a good 9 miles at urban speeds after it lost the power to go 65 mph. 

I remember when I was a kid my dad told me the freeway speed limit was increased from 55 to 65mph because the state politicians wanted more money to make the budget look better and knew how much that 10mph would increase gas consumption due to wind resistance inefficiencies of most automobiles (note I've never taken the time to verify how much fuel tax revenue did increase after raising the speed limit).  As anyone who has tried cycling or taking a motorcycle say 100mph knows how strong wind resistance is and how much wind resistance hinders your speed exponentially (or something like that) the faster you go. With all that, I still was not sure how much wind resistance was affecting my Zero Millage.  Motorcycles are so much more aerodynamic than a car I have never noticed much of a difference when changing speed from 55 to 65 mph on my sport bikes (but there is a huge difference between 90 and 65 mph). On my sport bikes, over long freeway drives at around 70mph I have definitely noticed better gas millage when tucked under the windscreen compared to siting up straight, however it is a small enough percentage, 10% at best, I had never exactly quantified it.  

65mph wind resistance test:  I completed the same ride in two riding positions to compare the wind resistance influence on this vehicle.  I wanted to know if wind resistance was a factor when determining how long I could travel at the faster speeds.  I wanted to ensure I was making accurate data comparison by knowing the affect of my riding position.   Both rides consisted of trying to keep the bike as close to 65mph as possible, but had speed ranges from 60-67 in addition to at least two stopping points for the shorter distance. 

Tucked: I managed to ride this dirt bike style machine like a wanna-be road racer, trying to get my body as tucked as possible reducing the wind resistance my body would have on the bike. I made it 23.3 miles before the slightest loss of power took the bike down to top speed of 62 mph.  

Dirt bike style: On the second ride I wore my full gear and stat up as straight as possible, to make as much wind drag as my body could make. I maintained approximately the same speeds.  The millage was 50% less!. Down to 11.8 miles until the first reduced power.  Once again keep in mind the bike still effortlessly completed another 9 miles at speeds ranging from 40-55 mph. 

Moral of the story the model of the Zero being used to race the TTXGP this year (pictured above) may have much better millage (think 2 times better) at freeway speeds compared to the dirt bike inspired model.

370 Miles - Commute Update

Catch-Up Post: July 14th, 2010

370 miles: 37 mile commute time on my Zero within 10 minutes! of time it takes to commute on my 1000cc 80 ft/lb torque RC51.

I completed my third successful day commuting my 37.5 mile commute and within the first 200 miles of owning this electric vehicle I became very comfortable with managing the power and getting a much better feel for the throttle and motor power in terms of keeping it a max power available for the full commute.  In this section I'm going to dwell a lot on the range of the charge and the time it took to get to work.  Please keep in mind that I am sharing this to share the experience of pushing the bike, if my commute was 30 miles or less (or under 20 miles if 65mph freeway entirely) there would be nothing to talk about because I could use all the power I wanted on the Zero and with time to get to work just as fast as any other vehicle following the laws of the road.  I am pushing this electric bike to go close to full speed for 37.5 miles and I'm sharing that to give a good idea of really how capable this bike is for just about ANY kind of city riding as at least 80% of commutes are less than my current commute (This site references Department of Transportation saying "The average United States driver travels 29 miles per day", note my total commute is over 75 miles right now.  http://www.ridetowork.org/transportation-fact-sheet)

37.5 miles commute description
First 9 miles: two lane rural road, 55 mph speed limit the whole stretched. Only a hand full of cars are passed during these 9 miles

9 - 19 miles: two lane highway with continuous cars going 55mph. 10 foot wide shoulder nicely paved. 

19 - 31 miles: Arterial 6 lane road 45-50 mph speed limits, suburban stop light frequency. 

31 37.5 miles: 2-4 lane streets 35-40 mph speed limits. 

The only compromise in the riding to get this to go 37.5 miles is to take it easy on about 10 miles worth of the 55 mph rural roads.  If I keep about 10 miles worth at 40 mph that saves plenty of energy to travel at the speeds of traffic during the entire rest of the ride and make it at full power when I get back. 

between maybe the battery getting conditioned in the first 200 miles and my getting used to the power delivery I have taken each trip at a faster average speed. I'm within 17% of the RC51 time and hope to get it under 10% within the RC51 time.  Follow details of all ride data on the Google chart once I get it up soon. (*)

TTXGP North America Races

Catch-Up Post: July 11th, 2010

last weekend the electric motorcycles raced. Here is a piece of the article:  

"Michael Barnes on the Lightning lit the track up with a best lap time of 1:35.278, only 13 seconds off the CBR600RR pace."  http://www.egrandprix.com/news.php?id=109

The first race at Infineon was some of the funnest racing I have seen this year next to a few hot Motogp laps, you can check it out all the race videos at: http://www.egrandprix.tv/