Hi all,
I am a long time member of this forum, and the previous (hacked) one. Ever since I have been on this forum I found it fascinating to see everyone enthusiastically exchange a plethora of opinions and technical data of the various electric rides discussed here, but I felt there is a lack of a shared place on the web where we can systematically keep and accumulate all this information for us and newbie voltage geeks to reference. This again became apparent in jdh2550_1's comparative review post a couple days ago where lots of great data was gathered but then there seemed to be no really good place to put it.
So to a great part inspired by you guys' dedication, I've been working over the past two years in my spare time on a web site that does exactly that (and more). The humble beginnings can be found here:
WikiPik is a in essence a review site but stands out by allowing users to define custom rating criteria, and these can be subjective opinions (such as ease of use or durability), or measured physical quantities (such as top speed or range). Data entered by multiple users can then be combined, ranked and displayed in a grid view, sorted or filtered by any column, columns can be shown or hidden as desired and units can be converted between US and SI. I began entering an Electric Motorcycles, Mopeds & Scooters category which currently looks like this:
At the moment there are only a few contributions, but I hope you guys contribute more data to make this page a comprehensive overview of the electric motorbike market with data from actual owners! I know a lot of you guys have in essence reviewed most of these bikes in the past so it would be awesome if you would enter your findings into WikiPik. Just create an account as you would on any web site, click on the bike you want to review then click on the "Review this product" link. As I mentioned, you can totally customize the database, add new bikes, new criteria or new choices to existing criteria such as new, not yet existing battery types.
You can also create new categories (e.g. hub motors or anything else that makes sense), specify criteria and add your data right away! You can also specify specs for products and upload images. And, WikiPik is open licensed (Creative Commons), multilingual (with some glitches still) and ad free!
WikiPik has an expert editor that allows browsing the entire database and making more sophisticated edits which is hidden from newbie users. If you are interested, send me a private mail on Visforvoltage with your WikiPik user name, and I'll bump up your privilege so you can use the editor.
If the site is confusing to use, let me know, and I'll help (and in the long run improve usability of course).
To learn more about WikiPik, read WikiPik's about page!
It's an early Alpha release and still has some glitches, so please be patient with me as things get improved over time! If you find a bug just use the "Report a Problem" link to let me know.
So please check it out and let me know what you think!!!
Best,
Markus Breyer
Voloci, XM-2000, custom power assisted bicycle
Founder of WikiPik
Thanks! I've been toying with ideas for a similar sort of system for a while. Except I never got around to do anything about it - I did register a domain name though (www.2wheelev.net) - can I either (a) give the domain name to you or (b) simply host either a redirect or some form of intro and click through to the WikPik page?
Many thanks for doing this - and for seeding it with a lot of info.
John H. Founder of Current Motor Company - opinions on this site belong to me; not to my employer
Remember: " 'lectric for local. diesel for distance" - JTH, Amp Bros || "No Gas.
Sure, yes a splash page with a link would be awesome! I can use all the traffic I can get. Thanks!
XM-2000, Voloci, custom electric bicycle
[url=http://www.wikipik.org/vc16]WikiPik[/url]
How does one correct information? Price of XM-3500Li is listed as $5000. MSRP is $4499 and many (including me) retail for $3999.
Also, could we add "pack capacity" in kWh? Your battery capacity in Ah is useful, but total power stored is a key indicator as well.
I know, I know I probably should have (a) RTFM'd or (b) quit complaining it is an Alpha (you know I'm not complaining - I think it's great!)
John H. Founder of Current Motor Company - opinions on this site belong to me; not to my employer
Remember: " 'lectric for local. diesel for distance" - JTH, Amp Bros || "No Gas.
Cool.. and, on the about page it says the data is creative commons. What I'd like to do is display on V one or more pages of summary exported from the wikipik site, with appropriate links back to wikipik. I'll contact you offline to set that up.
- David Herron, The Long Tail Pipe, davidherron.com, 7gen.com, What is Reiki
Thanks for the input, John.
The prices are currently calculated this way: The price shown is the lowest merchant offer known (currently I use Amazon and Shopzilla data feeds), or, if not known, a default price is displayed in grey non-bold font that can be arbitrarily edited. This is somewhat primitive but that's how it currently works. Eventually I plan on setting up my own merchant offer database from which I can then can figure the lowest price. Current plan is that listings and referrals would be free for merchants and maybe charge some CPC for bolder entries because I want there to be no obstacle for merchants to sign up. But that's just in the planning at this point, for now I use Amazon's and Shopzilla's database so you'd need to sign up with either Amazon or Shopzilla to have your offer appear in WikiPik (not ideal I know...).
Totally what I thought too actually when I created the table. amp-hours is a dumb quantity to measure battery capacity in because it is only meaningful if the voltage is known and hard to compare across items.
No worry, I totally appreciate the criticism. Keep it coming!
XM-2000, Voloci, custom electric bicycle
[url=http://www.wikipik.org/vc16]WikiPik[/url]
Absolutely!
XM-2000, Voloci, custom electric bicycle
[url=http://www.wikipik.org/vc16]WikiPik[/url]
Btw, I forgot to mention that there are two types of technical data in the table:
1) "rating" = entered as part of a review by each reviewer. The value displayed in the table is then the weighted average of all the rating values entered by the reviewers. This makes sense for measurements that vary with product specimen and user experience, such as top speed, range, battery life etc.
2) "spec" = a single value associated with each product/item entered along with the description of that item. This makes sense for indisputable attributes of a product/item, such as battery type, wheel diameter etc., or for manufacturer specs.
Both ratings and specs can be edited after the fact - a rating can be changed by revising the respective review, a spec can be changed or added (currently only) through the expert editor. I plan to simplify that, for example by allowing users to click on any spec and add/modify it right there and then.
Markus
XM-2000, Voloci, custom electric bicycle
[url=http://www.wikipik.org/vc16]WikiPik[/url]
I added a kWh "pack capacity" spec and entered data for all the currently existing bikes. Here is the upgraded table.
And keep those great reviews coming!! :-)
If there's anything that bugs you or needs improvement, please let me know.
Markus
XM-2000, Voloci, custom electric bicycle
[url=http://www.wikipik.org/vc16]WikiPik[/url]