reikiman's blog

One of the ideas I've been pondering is: Open Green .. It would be a place to facilitate open source green vehicle related projects. I've been scribbling ideas in a notebook for a couple months and while I'm not convinced about this it seems to be a good idea with some merit.

Goal: increase the availability of 'green' technology .. engage the people themselves in solving the issues of sustainable technology, because it seems if we leave it to the big companies they'll twist it to not be green nor sustainable ..

The Instructibles site is pretty close to what I'm thinking of. BUT their focus is on HOWTO and not DESIGN TEAM ... that is, someone who's already figgered out how to do something, they can show off what they've designed. But if a group wants to work together on a project, Instructibles is not the place to do it.

One requirement is some writings giving guidance on the open source model, the kinds of licenses which are known, governance, etc. I've looked at several projects which profess to be open source vehicle projects, and often the license has conditions which don't meet the norms of open source, or the project development isn't done in the open, etc. On the other hand as we discussed in Open Source Ponderings an open source license on a physical widget can make for business difficulties.

It seems such a site needs to be organized as 'projects' each of which has a cluster of pages for documentation, some kind of forum for project discussion, an issue tracker for reporting and tracking "bugs", and a source code management system for storing and versioning the assets of the project. Most of that can be built using Drupal and can even reside within the VisForVoltage site (if we wanted). The issue tracker is difficult in Drupal but either it's not as necessary as I'm thinking, or else a bugzilla instance could be installed and used instead.

What prompted me to write is an exchange on the ThunderSky group .. http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ThunderSky/message/1741 ...

And, I've been collecting a number of links on open source hardware licensing and projects ..

I've been pondering the next major phase of my Lectra motorcycle. I'm sure the battery pack will croak "soon" because SLA batteries supposedly have a life of 300 charge cycles (or so) and every time I ride the Lectra to work it is two deep charge cycles and while I haven't been keeping count it's likely the pack I have has 70-100 charge cycles in it right now.

The Lectra has a funny battery compartment geometry. It was originally designed as an electric motorcycle so the area that would normally be a rounded off motor cage is actually a squared off battery compartment. It has two trays each 15x15 inches with approx 7 inches vertical space in the lower tray. Additionally there is a space within the frame behind the battery compartment where I have stashed a pair of batteries. This space is 10 inches wide, 6 inches deep, and 15 inches tall.

Alternatively there are options like the GPR-S or Xtreme 3500li .. where I could get a lithium ION based motorcycle much more easily through an outright purchase rather than locating a suitable pack for my Lectra. Despite what I said the other day about Xtreme's shipping policies, it does appear they're delivering solid bikes that people are enjoying even with some of them arriving damaged.

One result I'd like with the Lectra is a higher voltage. 60v gives me a 47 miles/hr max and I'd like "more" and 72v ought to deliver "more" and I can do that with very little change in the bike. My current pack is 60v in 5 paired batteries meaning that the current pack could be reconfigured as a 120v pack but would mean a new controller.

LifeBATT:-

Their 12v20ah battery is exactly the same footprint as the batteries I'm using. 10 of them at $470 == $4700 (minus this current special discount offer) and it's not clear what to do about chargers. It's also not clear from their site whether these batteries can be connected in parallel. My lectra currently has 10 batteries where they are arranged as 5 pairs of batteries. In any case this would be 60v40ah or slightly less rated capacity than I have right now. This could also be arranged as a 120v20ah total pack.

Their 36v20ah battery is enticing. I could fit four of them in the main trays for a 72v40ah pack. $3500 for batteries. It's again not clear whether their batteries can be parallelized or what precisely to do about chargers. Similarly the 72v10ah pack is the same size and considerations.

Their 48v20ah battery might be possible to fit in the Lectra. Same discussion. Their 96v10ah pack has the same shape and could be interesting except it absolutely would require a new controller. These might also require some frame modifications such as removing the central tray to make one battery compartment. 96v40ah total sounds enticing but I think the total cost would be over $8000...!!!

I don't quite understand the pricing .. 48v20ah appears to be the same battery as 96v10ah (same number of cells, just a different cell arrangement, but at a $120 higher price.

Headway:-

Doesn't have several bits of important information posted on their site such as size, weight or cost.

They have 12v 30ah and 48v 20ah battery packs available. It's not known whether these will fit in my Lectra. The discharge ratings are a bit less than what I'd need in the Lectra. However they're really set up to sell to dealers rather than sell to individuals. There is a group purchase operation happening http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/lifepo4-purchase/ and I think Joshua has said the posted prices will change in the future.

Elite Power Solutions:-

Is selling packs made from thundersky batteries.

They sell a 60 ah 24 cell pack that looks interesting. Nearly $3000 cost. Each cell is 8.78X4.69X2.49 in and I haven't mapped it out completely but I could probably wedge these into the Lectra. The cost doesn't include a BMS and they do carry a BMS which appears to cost $1700 and then some more for a charger.

I'll have to double check on this but IIRC someone on "V" set up a bike with thundersky batteries and a different BMS.

Tradwin:-

Is also a thundersky distributor .. they don't have many specifics on the site but offer complete packs, BMS, charger, etc.

Electric Motorsport GPR-S or XM 3500li or waiting for the next model Vectrix or purchasing a current model Vectrix ... Any of these would get me on a higher speed longer range motorcycle with less trouble and maybe less cost than rejiggering my Lectra.

My day job is involved with open source software advocacy. While many think the company I work for (Sun Microsystems) doesn't "get" open source software there are many of us working here who do, and many of us work on open source software full time (as I do). Sooo....

This morning I had this inspired thought of a gizmo for an EV .. it looks like a really cool idea and I want to do a bit more thinking about this before I reveal anything. Anyway my first thinking was "hmm... what kind of patent or intellectual property protections do I need ..etc" to make a company to sell this gizmo. And then I remembered "oh, wait, open source" ...

So here's a conundrum of a couple ways to develop this idea.

The traditional method is what we call "closed source". You get all secretive, don't tell anybody, have a secret hideout where you develop the product, you post tantalizing snippets on youtube that don't reveal anything important but builds buzz, etc.. that kinda thing. You file for patents, trademarks, etc. You make suppliers sign NDA agreements, etc. Maybe in the end someone will reverse engineer your gizmo and undercut you (because they didn't have to pay out all the R&D cost because you did it for them).

Whatever it's flaws the traditional closed source method is a tried and true way of running a business. In business school they tell the MBA's to look for proprietary advantages etc that lock in customers etc.

In the open source way the design is revealed and published and everybody is free to duplicate the design. Not only that, they're free to modify the design and redistribute modified versions. It's kind of a puzzle how to make money when your customers can build their very own instance of the gizmo.

However one result in open source software is the nature of it leads to a community project. In my case I could publish the outline of the gizmo I have in mind and then work with some of y'all to improve and refine this gizmo. We would together develop it.

At the end there is a question of who gets to build a business selling the gizmo once we get it designed.

An advantage of open source for electric vehicles is that the customer base becomes more empowered to maintain their machines. Why, look at Mik's saga of his Vectrix that he now is calling Vectux. If the Vectrix corporation were more open about their implementation then perhaps Mik would not have had so much trouble. On the other hand the Vectrix corporation clearly wants their customers to see the price as payment for a high level of service. And not everybody who wants to buy an EV is willing or able to do the mechanical or electrical work to do their own maintenance.

Finally, I've been thinking for awhile that open source development of electric vehicle gizmos might speed up development and adoption of electric vehicles.

(BTW, there are some Drupal features which could be installed on VisForVoltage which could enable open source projects to be hosted on this site)

Among my too-many-projects is a three wheel electric motorcycle that I bought around the same time as I got the Lectra (Aug 2006). Link is below to an earlier blog posting on this.

It's a 1978 Suzuki motorcycle which a guy had converted to electric by welding on the rear end (axle etc) of a golf cart. The motor is running at 48v and with regular car tires. I'd taken it around my neighborhood last year and got up to 40 miles/hr with it (maybe a bit more?) He said the rear end & motor were the most powerful he could find.

I started to get it registered last year and then had some kind of mistake happen while working on the wiring and it stopped running. Sooo... I focused on the Lectra to get it running and the three wheeler has been sitting there. And the last couple weeks I've fiddled around with it and got it running again.

I had to replace the controller and most of the power cables. And I had to figure out how the forward-reverse switch works, and along the way I finally worked out why a series motor is called a series motor. There was also an issue with the throttle where even with the throttle at 0 the controller saw a bit over 0 ohms and the controller would never go to 0 speed, so I pulled out the pot box, looked at it, put it back, and now it works right.

Currently it's configured with a 48v 400A Logisystems controller .. the forward-reverse switch works .. 48v 80ah battery pack .. the 12v system doesn't work so there's no lights, no horn, no turn signals .. and there are no mirrors .. so there are a few things left to do before I'll go back to the DMV and restart the registration process.

Where it'd been left last year I was to take it to the CHP office for an inspection. But, since it wasn't working, I didn't do the inspection. Last year the CHP officer thought I couldn't register it because it's a golf cart. I've since talked with this fellow who lives down the street ..and.. owns a three wheel electric motorcycle himself. He said that's silly and that my mistake obviously was to say "golf cart". He said all the CHP really needs to do is since the "engine" doesn't have the normal engine number, they need to generate a faked up engine number, which will be a sticker I'm supposed to attach to the motor. Not a big deal.

So it sounds as if rather soon I'll be having yet another EV running.

Probably I need to sell off a few of these vehicles..

I was just in Prague for the last 1 1/2 weeks. Most of the time I was spending 12+ hrs/day in a pair of conferences (open source software).. but I did manage to see quite a bit of the city.

Prague is an old city having been settled over 1000 years ago. That sure gives an interesting perspective on "history" considering that "historical" buildings in California tend to be about 100 yrs old, having 1000+ years of history behind a city puts a very different spin on it.

Today it's a thriving city, they had a revolution to throw out the communists and they've been going gangbusters ever since and there's a lot of westernization going on. Well, if the number of signs pointing to McDonalds restaurants is any indication. But for me what I appreciated the most is the extensive mass transit system.

Everywhere I wanted to go (except for the Prague Castle area) there were street cars or subway lines.. these were entirely electrically driven. Meaning that the whole visit I was riding in EV's.

The city has a bit over 1 mil people.. and pretty much the whole of the city is 4-5 story tall buildings. I think this kind of population density is key to having decent mass transit. All my life I've lived in suburbia in the U.S. and never had access to decent mass transit. In Prague, though, it was just go to the station, hop on, ride a little ways, hop off, real easy and quick. Most of the time the trains ran frequently enough I could walk into the station and within a minute or so the next train would arrive. I think that to support a decent mass transit system the population density has to be high enough there is enough ridership etc.

In terms of the dream of having more EV usage this was nirvana, of sorts.

Of course this is a different kind of EV than we're usually talking about. These are trains, with medium size cars that can hold perhaps 100 people at a time. The train cars are hooked directly to the electrical mains full time so there's no worry about battery technology etc. These kind of trains are proof that an EV, if given sufficient power, can perform any transportation task.

Not only did the trains run very frequently, I never saw them running empty, and during rush hour they were pretty darned full. It's not like the trains made it so there were no cars on the road, because they were there. But without the train systems their roads would have been horrible especially in the old town with it's maze of twisty narrow streets. (The old town of Prague is amazing)

On Sunday afternoon I was in a little park pondering the traffic and a history lesson struck me. After WWII the U.S. had 'won' the war and not had any damage to speak of on our soil. Sure some soldiers etc died but it's not like we had our cities bombed out like in Europe. As a rich country having a huge economic boom after the war and not needing to rebuild our cities, etc, we had enough wealth to adopt a very wasteful sort of transport - the car, frequently driven solo. In Europe on the other hand, especially the Eastern Bloc, they were poor, hugely affected by the war, etc, and couldn't afford to switch transportation methods. In the U.S. the cities tore up their street car lines in favor of building roads and highways for cars, while in Europe they preserved the street car lines. Well, okay, I've only witnessed Brussels and Prague but both have decent mass transit systems, both are built to the same population density, and both are very walkable.

Recently I noticed some motorcycles w/ approx 100 lb battery packs are having the same range as I'm getting with the 220 lb pack on my Lectra. Namely 45 miles/hr and up to 10 miles range. Last weekend I showed the Lectra to a knowledgeable e-motorcycle builder and he thought I should be getting better range. So I'm wondering what's up with the range.

If I'm careful and don't hit the throttle real hard .. I can get 11-12 miles range. Hit the throttle hard, and the range is much less.

What I'm seeing on the ammeter is that cruising at 40 miles/hr consumes 100A current. This guy I talked with last week thought that was excessive, that the current should be much lower like 50A. And, I think y'all with the XM-2000 and other scooters are reporting approx 50A current for 40 miles/hr.

An interesting datum is the coast-down time as I reported earlier...

I also see this when I'm pushing the motorcycle around like when I'm backing out from being parked. It's a lot harder to push the Lectra around than the Rebel. So what this means is the Lectra has more rolling resistance. High rolling resistance should make the current draw higher to get the same speed.

Over the weekend I brought the bike into the garage and put it on the lift. This let me roll the wheels by hand. The rear wheel rolled pretty freely but the front wheel took a fair bit of effort. Hmm...

Just now I took it out for a spin to see if any part of the front wheel/axle/brake would get warm. The first time I stopped the front disc was pretty warm, but I'd been using it to stop quite a bit. I took it around the block a couple times, just using the rear brake for stopping. After that the disc was cool(er). Not sure what that proves.

I noticed the brake pad seems to be resting on the disc. But don't brake pads do that normally?

Another issue is the battery pack. I finally have the paktrakr running correctly. Until now I could only measure battery voltages after stopping and getting off and getting the meter out and measuring each battery individually. By the time I did that the batteries had time to recover their voltage, and I only ever saw the batteries having fairly even voltage. However I see now with the packtrakr the behavior while riding.

Battery #3 is much weaker than the others. Its voltage is dipping considerably during the ride and it runs out much earlier than the others.

This too is going to be affecting the range. Because the weak battery causes the other batteries to work harder.

I rode my Lectra to work today and had the most bizarre ride home.

It started before I took off -- two of my coworkers were in the parking lot having seen the bike and they told me they'd spent the prior 1/2 hour going over all the details of the bike, and saying that Dave (me) would love to see the bike. So when I came towards them wearing a motorcycle jacket they broke into cheers and waving and saying what an awesome bike. Ohmygosh.

I spent about 10 minutes going over it with them, and discussing various ins and outs of this vehicle. They were still very impressed .. so I musta said the right things.

Even though it's not highly polished or cleanly finished etc.. they just loved the various bits and bobs of the bike. Like the dashboard that's made of diamond plate and held on with those stainless steel straps with holes in them. I had to paint the dashboard black because the reflections were bothering me, and they just loved it.

Then... During the drive home I passed this accident scene. There was a 5x9 enclosed trailer by the side of the road with a fountain of water gushing from underneath it. What had to have happened is it got out of control and somehow hit a fire hydrant. An amazing amount of water..

Then... At one intersection I looked over and saw a BugE!!!!! It looked awesome. I'm gonna have to try and contact whoever has that and see if I can do a test ride.

Then... I stopped at an intersection and heard this voice yelling something.. I eventually realized it was this lady in the car next to me asking Where did you buy that bike? Replying that I built it, she wanted to know if I had a card, if I would build her one, etc. Then the light changed the guy behind her started honking and she had to drive away.

So, here's something that's interesting... I know several people who want to own an electric vehicle and they see my Lectra and they start asking about where they could buy an Electric Motorcycle.

The desire is there .. well, among people I know anyway. The desire is there for EV's, but the public is being stymied in owning EV's because other people made choices that prevent EV's from being sold to the public. Well, it's also battery technology.

Today I got the fairing out and tried fitting it to the Lectra. Last week I measured things and drew pictures on paper, but this week it was made a little more real.

First.. this is what the fairing looks like, the picture was taken the day I picked it up. We loaded it on my motorcycle trailer and strapped it down sitting in the rail.

Next.. this is what the Lectra looks like. The batteries are being held in place with nylon straps, they're sold as "battery straps", rated at 400 pounds, the upper batteries have two straps, and the straps are long enough to wrap around twice. It seems to be doing a good job holding the batteries in place.

I have been keeping the fairing beside the garage under a blue tarp. First thing I had to do was drag it into the back yard, unscrew it from the wood 2x4's it had been bolted to, then hose it off.

Then I used a jigsaw and cut off the flash from both halves of the fairing.

Then finally I brought the bike out front in the driveway and brought both halves of the fairing out and tried fitting it in place.

Right now it looks like I should cut the fairing in half, just behind the peak. The front half needs to be located such that the peak is at the same position as the handlebars. However that makes the nose quite a ways out in front. And there's a question how to have the headlight work through the fairing or whether to mount some kind of headlight on the fairing.

But I'm thinking to first do the back half because it looks like it will be easier to do the rear half. There are fewer problems with mounting the rear half of the fairing..

I also bought some PVC tubing for mounting the fairing following the general idea outlined on these pages:

http://www.biketcba.org/TRICORR/projects/fairing4/fairing4.html

http://www.recumbents.com/wisil/pauljones/

With the rear half of the fairing I'm planning to use two struts on each side, take off the seat and plastic that's there right now. I'll attach the t-joints to the frame using hose clamps but it's not entirely clear how to connect the PVC pipe to the fairing piece. I've also bought a trunk and am planning to mount that to the frame in place of the rear part of the seat area.

Today I studied the Fairing and the Lectra and am looking at ways to attach the Fairing to the bike. To remind y'all -- Along with my Lectra came a "full" fairing whose design was derived from a motorcycle which achieved 470 miles/gallon efficiency in a contest in the mid 1980's. The fairing is sold by Craig Vetter.. the idea is one way to achieve long(er) range is to increase the aerodynamic efficiency, and that link takes you to a page that shows approximately what I have and what I'm trying to do.

What I have in my back yard is a bubble made of ABS plastic. It is approx 80" from end-end, 45" at the highest point, it's black, etc. There's no obvious way to mount it on the bike, but it is in a very aerodynamic shape and I really want this to work.

The first question is.. how to mount a fairing on a motorcycle. Craig sent me a nice drawing and I also found some other resources about bicycle and motorcycle fairings. It seems the velomobile crowd have tried a lot of ways to achieve this same sort of goal. Here's a few links

http://www.wesleychurch.info/bike/bikepro/PROJECT.HTM

http://www.recumbents.com/wisil/pauljones/

http://www.wisil.recumbents.com/wisil/bubblemounting/bubblemounting.htm

http://www.biketcba.org/TRICORR/projects/fairing4/fairing4.html

The idea for mounting the fairing to the frame is .. you use pipe components, modifying them for the purpose. A T-joint provides a nice base. You cut in half the main part of the T and strap that to the frame using hose clams. Then into the remaining part of the T you insert a pipe and cut that pipe to the length necessary to connect with the fairing. You attach the fairing to this pipe via a mount of some kind. And make sure to have enough of these to hold the fairing in place. The above links show some recumbent bicycles with cloroplast fairings ...

At Orchard Supply I found the following kinds of pipes: a) Galvanized Steel, b) ABS Plastic, and c) another kind of plastic. The ABS plastic seemed the strongest but the narrowest pipe is 2" diameter and is larger than needed for this project. The Galvanized steel is stronger than the ABS plastic, but it's also pretty heavy. There was some narrower plastic and copper pipes but these seemed to be real flexible, and it seems to me the fairing should be held by rigid tubes.

The diagram below is an attempt to show the rear portion of the fairing. I am planning to split the fairing in two halves, and I'll sit in the middle. For the rear I plan to buy a motorcycle trunk and mount that on the back half of the seat, then mount the fairing such that it covers the wheel and meets with the trunk to form a smooth seam. The grey rectangle represents the fairing and it's see-through only so you can see the underlying parts. The actual shape is not rectangular but I couldn't figure out how to get Illustrator to deform the rectangle right. The wheel is also not bright red but it gives you an idea of the size. The motor is mounted on the swingarm just in front of the wheel. The components are drawn to scale FWIW.

I'm thinking to do the rear half of the fairing first. The front half of the fairing needs to surround the front fork and front wheel and looks to be a more complicated job to get mounted.

Phase 2 of my Lectra project is coming. Phase 2? Read back in my blog in previous Lectra Conversion Diary entries for more details. In Phase 2 I have a full fairing which is meant to make a shell around the entire motorcycle and make it extremely aerodynamic. The idea is to explore vehicle efficiency as a way to increase range.

I've been doing some research .. Cabin scooter and faring design resources from around the Internet .. Go-one Velomobile .. Velomobiles .. 5th generation civic hatchback - improving aerodynamics .. Basjoos Tells All About His "95 MPG" Aerocivic .. and it seems that there can really be a lot of gain from aerodynamics. I came across a couple forum websites where people are discussing ideas on improving aerodynamics of gas cars and other ways to increase gas car efficiency, and they're getting good results. Yeah, they're still 100% addicted to oil but at least they're doing something about the underlying problem and they are getting good results.

Yesterday I did a bit of measurement so I could have a baseline to compare future performance. I found a simple way to ... Measure the drag coefficient of your car ... If you click through to the instructables site you'll find formulas and a spreadsheet. I haven't run the calculations yet, but I've got some numbers. The process is very simple. You take your car or motorcycle or whatever, accelerate up to approx 70 km/hr (45 miles/hr) speed, and then start coasting (in neutral) and measure how long it takes to coast to a stop and speed at various intervals during the coast-down. The formulas in the spreadsheet are able to tell you the actual drag coefficient number. But there is an interesting pattern even without having yet done the number crunching.

I went out with three vehicles (below) and made several runs with each. I have an ipod with a Belkin voice recorder attachment, and during the coast down I called out the speed at 40/35/30/25/20/etc miles/hr intervals. This afternoon I listened to the audio and wrote down the time points for each of the speeds. Making several runs lets me get an average and to account for differing wind conditions (there was little wind) or terrain (it's very flat around here) etc.

1999 Chevy Tracker: 40->10 miles/hr takes approx 60 seconds

2004 Honda Rebel 250: 40->10 miles/hr takes approx 40 seconds

Lectra: 40->10 miles/hr takes approx 25-30 seconds

The idea is that the more quickly the vehicle coasts to a stop, the greater the wind resistance, or put another way the worst the drag coefficient. But this also measures rolling resistance.

I'm a little surprised the Tracker came out the best here. It's shaped a bit like a box, with very little in the way of aerodynamic niceness to it. But on the other hand motorcycles do have these bits hanging out all over the place ..sooo...

The Rebel has a windshield.

The Lectra, since it doesn't have a transmission, that may have introduced some electrical or mechanical drag. With both the Tracker and the Rebel I could put them into neutral (both have manual transmissions) and coast properly, but the Lectra doesn't have a neutral because it doesn't have a transmission.

I think the weight of the Rebel and the Lectra is comparable. The Lectra is a lot shorter than the Rebel, but it has 220 lbs of lead acid batteries on board.

Oh yeah, doing more with less...

That is a phrase Craig Vetter said during his DVD discussing the motorcycle efficiency contest and the fairing I have .. he says he got the phrase from Buckminster Fuller, who he 'followed around' for a couple years. When I heard that phrase come out of Craig's mouth it crystallized for me an idea I've carried for years.

What makes compact fluorescent light bulbs interesting is they emit the same number of lumens by using less electricity. That is doing more with less.

A vehicle that's more aerodynamic can move and use less energy to achieve the same end. I think the Honda Insight, for instance, gets most of its fuel efficiency gain from being small, light, and aerodynamic. The Geo Metro after all got 60 miles per gallon without having a hybrid drive train. Mini-experiment: the wrath of roof racks is a meditation on the negative effect of roof racks on fuel efficiency.