Pedalcycling into war - might (e)Bikes be back?

[Firn]

A year on and with a considerable amount of miles helped in part by an electric engine I it is time to look at the bigger economic picture.

1) In the EU, the key driver of high-end market, e-bikes are now outselling petrol bikes!

With regard to e-bikes the Federation states that sales in this category grew with 25.6% to 1,139,000 units. This total is a low estimate. In its June/July edition, which contained a 2014 Market Report for EU e-bike imports and sales, this trade journal concluded that the 2014 volume of the e-bike, e-MTB and speed e-bike market in Europe stood at 1,325,000 units.

v.s

According to the latest data available, in 2014 a total of 1,099,000 PTWs were registered in the EU and 57,550 PTWs were registered in EFTA countries. The year 2014 was the first year since 2007 in which the number of PTW registrations remained stable on a year-on-year basis.

In short after an amazing growth in the last couple of years the demand is strong.

2) The demand increases in years past has greatly driven industrial investment into the high-end electric bike market from the smallish Mittelstand to big players like Panasonic, Yamaha, Bosch, Shimano, Continental with engines and batteries or just the latter like Samsung.

This competition will continue to drive innovation, especially in conjunction with rather wild development race in (mountain) biking. Prices per performance will come down.

3) This investment and interest has led to an ever growing amount of electric bikes of all sorts for almost every niche. In the new ones the prices are of course still very high but there will be cheaper alternatives in the next years.

From DH bikes,



to full-suspension fatbikes



to all-wheel ones you have the broadest choice yet for your low-level transport vehicle.

4) For military applications it is of course important to keep Dahuyan's point in mind:

It's also true that while a skilled rider on a mt bike can move fast over quite difficult terrain, this requires skill and a great deal of practice. If less skilled people try to do it, especially under large loads, accidents and injuries will result. Adding mt biking to a training rotation would probably be fun, but I'm not sure how practical it would be!

In general I would now put less weight on rather difficult terrain and trails and more one the general ability to get rather quickly and silently on a short trip from A to B in which most military vehicles have a harder time to traverse or are not needed. I think in some cases those electric bikes would fit Sven's neat idea of parasitic vehicles. Serious trail training should not be worth it's opportunity costs in practically every case.

As before I would pick at least a high-end speed pedelec if not a 'race' spec one, with wide tyres and top-end suspensions or a light e-motorcycle like the KTM Freeride E. Such decisions need obviously proper reviews and testing and not just speculations.

[Firn]

It is now 2016 and from my limited perspective I see several trends:

1) The arguably trend-setting and most high-end European market is still growing a great pace, roughly 25%.

2) Speed pedelecs with their generally more powerful engines and electric support up to 45 km/h seem to take off in more mature and leading markets like the Dutch one.

3) The growing market does also rapidly diversify, pushing the trend of the last two years. Now you can get pretty much every type of bike properly designed around the driver and the engine...

4) More and more competition comes into the electronic part of the market, from the engines to batteries and information technology.

5) Prices seem to have come indeed down in many segments, as was to be expected with a more mature technology, a bigger market and more competition...

Overall you get at a fast clip more and more for your money. In the next post I will take a look at light electric vehicles in a more general and futuristic perspective...

[Firn]

The big big drawback of every battery-powered electric vehicle is well, the fact that it is battery-powered. A battery has a dismal energy density compared to gasoline, which makes it in general terrible for long ranges and ties it to an operational grid. Far flung operations in a war zone with them are just not possible today. The ebike and other light electric vehicles are in my opinion only feasible in specific, limited, short-range support roles. Will that change in, let us say 50 years?

1) On the vehicle side it largely depends on battery technology. Even a factor four in energy density (coupled with a similar drop in price) will keep energy density magnitudes below gasoline. It will enlarge their role and make hybrids more attractive but will not substitute the combustion engine. Short tactical moves with silent and less heat-intensive electric motors should make surprise easier.

2) The grid or energy supply side is arguably more interesting. Why? If more and more renewables, especially solar and local storage comes online distributed and electric cars become common the military will profit at least in party from local and (very) fast charging.

This means that plug-in hybrids with fairly large batteries can tap into an additional source of energy reducing to some extent in developed countries the logistical tail. The dimension of this impact depends obviously on many factors, put it should increase with time.

Anyway a highly realistic LEV urban application.

[Ulenspiegel]

The big big drawback of every battery-powered electric vehicle is well, the fact that it is battery-powered. A battery has a dismal energy density compared to gasoline, which makes it in general terrible for long ranges and ties it to an operational grid. Far flung operations in a war zone with them are just not possible today. The ebike and other light electric vehicles are in my opinion only feasible in specific, limited, short-range support roles. Will that change in, let us say 50 years?

1) On the vehicle side it largely depends on battery technology. Even a factor four in energy density (coupled with a similar drop in price) will keep energy density magnitudes below gasoline. It will enlarge their role and make hybrids more attractive but will not substitute the combustion engine. Short tactical moves with silent and less heat-intensive electric motors should make surprise easier.

2) The grid or energy supply side is arguably more interesting. Why? If more and more renewables, especially solar and local storage comes online distributed and electric cars become common the military will profit at least in party from local and (very) fast charging.

This means that plug-in hybrids with fairly large batteries can tap into an additional source of energy reducing to some extent in developed countries the logistical tail. The dimension of this impact depends obviously on many factors, put it should increase with time.

Anyway a highly realistic LEV urban application.

Sorry, the energy density argument is to a certain extend bogus: 80% of the energy in diesel is lost as heat - Carnot cycle is a bitch. :-)

Therefore, with 1/5 of the energy density you would have a battery with the same amount of usable energy, and batteries allow recuperation of kinetic energy, the ICE not, these two aspects give you one order of magnitude.

Hence, for me the affair is not so clear. :-)

But I concur that batteries will play in other fields important role in future, they can replace power plants for auxillary services and flatten the production profile of PV.

The obvious solution is to use millions of civilian EVs as storage, as they have a huge battery which is underused for most of the time. Stationary battery systems at home are IMHO a waste in Europe.

[Firn]

Sorry, the energy density argument is to a certain extend bogus: 80% of the energy in diesel is lost as heat - Carnot cycle is a bitch. :-)

Therefore, with 1/5 of the energy density you would have a battery with the same amount of usable energy, and batteries allow recuperation of kinetic energy, the ICE not, these two aspects give you one order of magnitude.

Hence, for me the affair is not so clear. :-)

Bogus is rather a strong word.

I generally try to keep it short for time reasons and out of want to avoid tedious repetition. Sometime that makes it less clear than it could be.

The superior efficiency of the process from battery to wheel is quite well known and does indeed narrow the gap. A good way to picture the advantages of electronic drive compared to combustion one is to compare the three big component weights.

m = a + b + c

Overall mass is composed of engine + drive-train + energy storage. Per a given x of performance the electric approach is generally (far) lighter when it comes to engine and drive-train however much heavier in energy storage.

This is actually one of the big reasons why electric power and bikes or short ranged LEV fit so well. If the battery doesn't have to be that large the overall package will be lighter then the combustion option.

Long range ( and energy-intensive) vehicles suffer that they need a large and thus very heavy energy storage and in generally faster charging. Many military vehicles fall into that category.





My key point was that rechargeable batteries in vehicles (pure electric, hybrid) and off them will become much more attractive if 1) and 2) work out. An increasing share of military vehicles should profit from the ability to plug in, using distributed energy and more available faster charging from private and public sources.

This is a bit of a change from the generator theme seen in recent years largely due to conflicts in underdeveloped countries. Both views are obviously not mutually exclusive...

[Firn]

Just as short (tech) update:

1) Mighty Shimano enters the e-mtb engine market. A bit more info, arguably the best is in German. Seems to be step forward in terms of weight (almost 1kg less], size and chain stay length.

2) Other big brands like Fox and especially SRAM introduce specific e-mtb components, clearly a sign of how important a market electric MTB have become.

3) Electric bikes have pushed average sale prices thus turnover plus in some cases margins and supported the bottom line of bike companies which made some companies a more interesting investment opportunity.

It will be interesting to see if and how electric(motor)bikes might be used by the military and security forces (carabinieri, police etc) . There might be some attractive niches out there, most in conjunction with classic material and approaches.

P.S: I have been quite vague on the applications as it always depends. Bicycle patrols: an underutilized resource might be of interest. The effectivness of bike patrols varies with the security and geographical context. Electric assist might widen the geographical scope as well as allow more police personal to deploy in such a role.

Tactical advantages

Also observed was a willingness by individuals or groups to stop or approach the bicycle officer to report an event or to indicate when the officer should come back to observe the illicit activity. Being in a position to know what was going on is a clear advantage. The stealth of police bicycle patrols is often cited as a superior tactical capacity. This was observed in the following example of a coordinated convergence in a housing complex.

The motor patrol officer assigned to an area suspected illegal activities were occurring at a specific apartment. The location of the apartment allowed a lookout to see a patrol car entering the apartment complex from a distance and to simply close the door to the apartment. Three bicycle patrol officers were able to come in from the opposite direction on a footpath and confront a man with drugs in his hand standing in the front door of the apartment.

An electric bike with a big battery obviously has the additional advantage to be potentially able to power or recharge a lot of the energy-consuming equipment of the officers. As stated before it is no magic bullet, just another tool which might be a 'force multiplier' in some contexts if you believe some of the published stats.

[Firn]

As much of this thread is about technological aspects I think it is important to point out the key implication of the paper on bicycle patrols: It's mostly not about biketech but about thinking strategy, creating an organization and setting up training fit for the specific context. In short instead of money the key elements are intelligent questions, smart strategy and good execution.

Tech opens new opportunities, widens them, makes them more accessible. In this case an electric bike control with proper bikes is able to cover more types of (urban) environments, is able to move in them quicker with less fatigue, can support more (electronic) equipment and facilitates the training employment of not-so-fit officers. The recent developments in the electric bike market better performance and depress prices lowering the entry costs into bike patrols but in the end it's up to the people to make it work.