Links

Electric Cars

 

Electric Conversions

 http://leftcoastelectric.com/index.php ($20k+ Service to convert Mita, but not much info)
http://www.canev.com/KitsComp/GeoKit/Geo-Kit.html (Kit, $8k, not Miata)
http://www.electroauto.com/catalog/catalog.shtml
http://www.e-volks.com/

(From http://laweekly.blogs.com/judith_lewis/2006/04/who_resurrected.html)

Electric Bikes

I looked at electric bikes online here:
  http://www.electricvehiclesnw.com/
They have lots of information, but all their bikes seem to cost a lot more – closer to $2k for something strong enough to push me up a hill.   I was initially put off by reading that these bike motors were more for assist, and you’d really need to pedal along to help – which defeats the purpose a bit to me cause I might get sweaty then anyway.   But it sounds like your experience was very nice, so  I may want to test one myself too.

Electric Motorcycles

Electric Motorcycle
 

Electric Scooters


One other thing I came across was this:
  http://www.neoscooters.com/proddetail.asp?prod=expresso_electric_scooter    
I’m not sure why one would want an electric scooter vs. an electric bike, but this thing has pretty good stats -  For only a little more money, it has a range of 30 miles and top speed of 17mph.  It’s probably much heavier than the electric bike, but it might have a more comfortable ride, plus it has storage containers built in.   Or, for lots less, theres this:
  http://www.neoscooters.com/proddetail.asp?prod=X%2DTreme%5FX%2D560    

Gas Scooters


   http://www.staton-inc.com/Details.asp?ProductID=3014  
It supposedly gets over 200 miles per gallon – with it’s 1/5 gallon tank will go 40 miles on 60 cents of fuel.  It goes upto 30mph, which is scary fast.  It is a four stroke engine, so it is reasonably quiet, but not enough to ride with others like you mention for the electric.  I’m going to continue to try to sell it because I think I might prefer a small motorcycle – which get upto 100 mph, and can drive fast enough to keep up with traffic, which I’d argue is safer than riding on the shoulder.   (ideally I’d like the electic motorcycle you pointed out, but I hope to spend 1/10 as much money for a solution).

Real World Electricity Usages

In the information for the sale of a Chevy Geo that was converted to electric by Solectria (using an AC motor) they quoted this:

The vehicle has 13,080 miles on it, with 8,619 kWh’s on the charger.

This means that this vehicle consumed about 660 Wh per mile total. Since this includes the inefficiencies with the charging process, it coresponds well to the oft-quoted figure of 400 Wh per mile.

http://www.snew.org/Surplus_Vehicle_Sale.htm
 

Revised on September 8, 2007 22:11:07 by Max Dunn (69.226.255.125)