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

[Firn]

Last year I was mostly switching between a 29er fully with rather wide 2.4 tubeless tyres and my older 29er hardtail with a bit narrower ones with one or two rides with an older 26er ht thrown in. The difference between a full suspension bike with larger, wider tubeless tyres with considerable less pressure compared to the old-style one is surprisingly large indeed. It is quite amazing how different they behave in the more technical stuff on our trails, especially over those big knotty roots. I became quickly a coward with my older bike in some of the rougher patches and was glad to switch back.

The amount of experimentation going on right now in the bike industry is crazy, especially when it comes to tyres. Not long ago, even if it seems now ages, everybody just biked on his mountain bike. I did experiment a bit with air pressure but only switched tyres once the profile was gone - never thought I about tyre size or something like that. Now there are three diameters with a third width, the plus, coming up after the normal one and the 'fat' 26er. Big industry player Schwalbe sells now it's Procore system which was praised by bicilive. I will likely try it out this year. New lighter tubeless tyres plus procore could allow for even lower pressures with a lot of safety margin and not too much additional weight.

It rode only a couple of times on an pedelec this year as I trained a bit for mountaineering for my little African trip in various mountains but things move certainly swiftly there. That model comes actually pretty close to what I had in mind for an easy-to-ride electric bike with full suspension, low ground pressure and not too much weight. Obviously for military use it would need be heavier for the additional weight, storage and other stuff.



Actually this one attracts me as a 'hunting' bike as one can legally ride on a lot of roads closed for car and motorcycle traffic. I know of quite a few professional mountain guides which now use electric bikes as their second stage 'approach' transport. Instead of hiking or biking up long and tedious gravel roads they reach thus quickly the interesting areas to meet for example their clients.

[Firn]

I did some additional research before the second run in Vail. Personally I still think that those guys have the best way to descend on snow but there are some interesting fatbike tests from Norway. On the trail biking seems to be faster then cross-country skiing..

An electric approach from California. All-wheel drive with two hub engines reported to have lots of watts.

[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...