Will volatile gas prices and global-warming concerns cause trickle-down adoption of hybrid tech?
Posted 09.30.2008 at 2:43 pm
3 Comments
Honda Motorcycles Logo
Honda Motor Company
Earlier this month, Japanese media reported Honda and Yamaha were each planning a line of electric motorcycles by 2010. The new bikes, which reports say can travel up to 60 miles on a charge, will use lithium-ion batteries for power. Now, word from Japan's Mainichi news service is Honda is also planning new gas-electric hybrid motorcycles.
According to a report, the planned hybrid motos would employ a similar hybrid-drive system as the one used in Honda's hybrid cars like the Civic and upcoming Insight sedan. The two-wheeled hybrids will reportedly come in engine displacements of between 200 cc and 1,000 cc and see fuel-efficiency gains of 50 percent over traditional motorcycles. Production cost savings would come from using common hybrid components in both cars and motorcycles.
[via Mainichi Daily News]
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Hybrid motorcycles from Honda and Yamaha? This is ONLY good news if they are serial hybrids, rather than the immensely complicated parallel hybrids like all of the cars they are trying to sell us today. A serial hybrid is basically an electric vehicle that only uses a small engine to charge up the battery if the battery becomes too depleted. A parallel hybrid, such as the Prius, has two complete drive trains, one electric and one fuel-driven, that both connect to the wheels and so are extremely complex and therefore intimidate car owners from working on their own vehicles.
Fast-charge commercial charging stations will be appearing soon that will be able to recharge an EV in just a few minutes rather than the hours it takes today to recharge even a small cell phone or iPod. Hybrid cars today use onboard gasoline engines that supply all the power indirectly that keep the cars running; when they finally have plugs to be able to recharge them without burning gasoline, drivers will see a dramatic decrease in how much it costs to drive an EV.
As soon as there are enough charging stations, drivers will want to remove the onboard gasoline chargers, and will replace them with batteries to increase their range between charges... they will no longer need gasoline at all, and so will be able to drive much more efficiently. Because serial hybrids are far simpler than parallel hybrids, they would be much easier and quicker to remove the engines to make them pure battery-powered electrics.
As soon as consumers become savvy to the concept of serial hybrids, the market for parallel hybrids such as the Prius will disappear.
Electric Motorsport Inc., of Oakland California produced the first freeway capable production Electric Motorcycle called the "Electric GPR" back in 2002. At that time the vehicle used Lead Acid batteries and range was limited. The 2008 and 2009 Electric Motorsport GPR-S models are now available with Lithium batteries which significantly extend range and performance.
It is interesting that Honda and Yamaha are talking about releasing Electric Motorcycles in 2010. I guess that means Electric Motorsport will have had 8 years of track practice and tuning before Honda and Yamaha ever show up. Although they are late to the party we look forward to seeing what their cubic dollars can do.
Sincerely,
Todd Kollin
CEO
Electric Motorsport Inc.
electricmotorsport.com
I noticed that adding a hybrid engine and battery on a motion of the traditional internal combustion engine was designed to present too many technical issues, not least that size. However, Honda believes it can shrink a hybrid engine enough attached to the frame of the bike. hybrid motorcycles are available in displacements of 200 cc and 1000, and Honda has a 50 per cent less fuel. Production costs are reduced by using common components in both hybrid vehicles and motorcycles.
www.toplinemotorcycles.net