And you thought the original segway was lame…
April 7th, 2009
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The Segway is one of those things that never really lived up to what it was supposed to be. It was sold as a revolutionary means of urban transportation that would change the way we live and commute. As it turns out, it’s really only a standup electric scooter that is neither faster nor more useful than the alternative: walking. Thus the Segway has really only been used as a gimmick, a toy for rich people and occasionally a rental for tourists to get around on. The only place it’s found much utility has been occasional use for police or guards who are provided some greater endurance by using it versus walking, assuming they can get to the battery stations frequently. Since you have to stand on the Segway, it’s not exactly cut out for those with mobility problems, but for those who can walk but just don’t want to, the Segway might be the way to go.
That’s not to say the Segway is not pretty good for what it is. It’s an electric scooter and as far as electric scooters go, it’s a good one. It’s just not going to change transportation or society. Supposedly the Segway is a revolutionary way of moving people because it uses an advanced system of gyroscopes to keep it stable on two wheels. It is pretty cool that it can do that, however there are also similar products which acomplish the same thing by using three wheels instead of two.
On the other hand, the new product that has been the combined efforts of GM and Segway is… To put it bluntly: Plenty of people have pointed out that General Motors needs to change in order to continue on as a viable company with viable products. That may be true, but if this is their idea of “Change” then they’re already doomed
Yes, it’s the P.U.M.A. or “Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility.” It uses the innovative gyroscopic system of the Segway to allow it to run on only two wheels (well, mostly, it still needs casters for when it stops or rolls forward a bit.) Like the Segway, it has a fairly limited range (it’s stated as being 35 miles, but if the Segway is any indicator, that’s only when driven very gently and the range at higher speeds is much less). It seats two and has a small airbag, assuring that should it get in an accident, it’ll look even more goofey than before hand.
By 2030, 60 percent of the world’s population will live in densely populated urban centers. They will not be driving and parking cars as we know them today, but GM and Segway have teamed up to imagine something they might be able to drive and park. It’s called the P.U.M.A., for Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility, and it basically takes the concept of the gyro-stabilized two-wheel stand-up Segway PT, widens and reconfigures it to accommodate two seated passengers, and adds rudimentary protection from the elements. Like the PT, it features all-electric, lithium-ion powered by-wire drive and braking, controlled by an airplane-like steering yoke that you push forward or pull back for go or whoa. Braking is entirely regenerative, with no friction elements, and suspension compliance is shared by the tires, the wheel-to-chassis connection, and the chassis-to-passenger cell mounting. We’re skeptical of P.U.M.A.’s ability to cope with the worst potholes offered up by the mean streets of NYC or Kolkata, India.
he P.U.M.A.’s footprint is about 1/6th the size of a normal car’s allowing 380 to parallel park around a typical New York City block, as opposed to about 81 normal cars. It weighs a fraction as much as a conventional car and is expected to incur 1/4 to 1/3 the operating costs of a conventional commuter car. With lights, license, seatbelts, a range of 35 miles and a top speed of 35 mph, the only thing needed to conform to FMVSS500 Neighborhood Electric Vehicle standards is a 25-mph speed governor and a waiver to allow two-wheeled NEVs (might the two front parking casters or the rear wheelie-bar emergency wheels help satisfy the wheel-count?).
A few thoughts that come to mind:
I’m not the type that cares very much about being hip and stylish. I’m more than willing to be uncool and goofey, but even I would not be caught dead in that thing?
So it’s a high speed version of a wheel chair?
It’s a sad sad sad day when this thing is covered by “Motor Trend” and considered part of the automobile market.
I’ve seen something similar, old people ride them in the mall…
And I’m not even kidding. The image above is of the Ospre Electric Scooter, which is available for about three thousand US dollars. It’s the kind of product that is targeted at senior citizens, those with circulatory or other problems that prevent them from walking great distances and the handicapped in general. It can travel about 35 miles and has a top speed of about 10 mph. It’s a bit slower but otherwise pretty much on par with the Segway P.U.M.A. It also doesn’t have two seats, although there are electric scooters that do. There are also electric scooters that cost much much less than the one cited above, but might not have as great a range of speed.
While there’s been no price announced for the GM/Segway PUMA, it’s worth noting that even the basic model Segway units are a cool five grand or more. Some of the more featureful models of the Segway, which come with enhanced battery packs and more powerful motors sell for upwards of ten thousand dollars. If the new PUMA is based on the same technology, you’re looking at an investment of at least several thousand dollars.
But lets not forget something else: While this thing looks more like a competitor for a wheelchair than a transport scooter, there are plenty of products which offer one to two person transport at speeds, ranges and footprints comparable to this thing. Have they taken over the urban transport market? Not exactly. Sure, electric powered carts have found nitch markets on golf courses, in large warehouses, airports. There are also electric mopeds, small scooters, electrically-assisted bicycles and even (GASP) human-powered bikes.
This site, for example, has all manner of urban electric scooters, many with speeds and ranges greater than the PUMA thing. They generally only seat one person, but at less than $500 a pop you could buy two (or ten) and they’re even small enough to carry up to your office or apartment. What do you do with the PUMA when not driving it? Chain it to something and hope nobody pees on it?
What makes this GM/Segway thing better than all the existing electric carts and scooters? Beats the hell out of me!
Another question:
How exactly could you even get around the city in one of these things? It certainly does not seem like it would be fit for the sidewalk, especially a crowded one. (Assuming its even allowed on the Sidewalk. Segways are not in many places) So what do you do? Drive it with traffic? Sorry, but there’s NO WAY I’d take that thing on FDR Drive in New York City or try to drive it over the Manhattan Bridge at rush hour. Getting stuck between two cabs over the East River in that thing would be a nightmare.
It could probably be driven on wide walkways that are not too crowded and in areas where the streets have a large shoulder or a dedicated bicycle lane it would certainly be possible. It may be possible to use it in downtown city traffic, on the slower, more stop-and-go kind of streets. Those kind of streets can be navigated with a scooter or a bike relatively easily. This thing I’m not so sure about. Perhaps it could get by if it had a safety flag on it, so trucks and buses could see it. (As if it doesn’t look ridiculous enough to begin with.)
At least New York might be survivable in this thing. Boston on the other hand, would almost certainly be fatal.
It *might* work in cities with lanes for rickshaws, but I’m not sure I’d want to drive it in the traffic of most Asian cities either.
GM envisions a real PUMA would be stuffed with electronics for constant communications among other vehicles that would handle much of the driving. GM showed off a video imagining how fully formed PUMAs would work – zipping around streets in perfect single file, using telemetry to avoid crashes, and bodywork that folds open like a mechanical egg, like a mashup of “Transformers” and “Paul Blart: Mall Cop.”
“Think Facebook on wheels,” says Burns, the first of several obligatory and stretched Internet references set for this year’s New York International Auto Show.
Facebook? What, was “iPod on Wheels” just too 2006? I have to ask why exactly this scooter thing even needs to be filled with electronic communications systems and video capabilities. On journeys of a few miles or less, most people I know don’t need the aid of a GPS navigation system and when it comes to potholes or or obstructions, the standard way of avoiding them usually involves looking at the road and steering around them.
It seems ironic that they even have to invoke popular web services like Facebook to try to justify how new and current their product is. It reminds me a bit of the Microsoft Zune and AOL’s video service, both of which tried too hard to jump on the bandwagon with popular services and failed quite badly. When legitimate trend setting products like the iPod, Youtube, Facebook or Google come along, they don’t need to try to legitimize their place by comparing their product to other popular products and services.
Needless to say there’s a huge “Green” and “environmental” side to this assault on good taste and better judgment.
This looks like nothing more but the same peak-energy, low-consumption, miserable future crap we’ve seen so much about recently. One newspaper called it ” GM’s Segway to a fuel-miserly future.” It’s also been pointed out that GM is considering the possibility of ditching the Hummer brand. The “much despised” Hummer is not selling very well at the moment, but at least the Hummer is a vehicle which has some utility. Whether or not GM decides to keep the Hummer not withstanding, this is sure as hell not the replacement. The Hummer appeals to a very natural human desire: To be comfortable while traveling and having safety, space and utility in a vehicle. The current “Green” fad and guilt trip is the only reason anyone would want to consider riding in one of these things.
There has been a guilt-based trend toward praising those who take one for the team and do things the “green” way by giving up a nice smooth air conditioned ride. In this spirit, vehicles which are especially noticeable for their lameness get bonus points. Nobody ever seems to notice when you ride the subway or bike around the city, but when you ride in one of these, it screams “Look at me. I’m ridding in this to be responsible and ecologically friendly.” Still, even this mentality has to have its limits. Driving to work in this thing with full upper body restraints takes things to a new level of ridiculous.
Many reports cite that this vehicle is “Green” and that it could potentially be powered by “renewable energy” making it an orgy of buzzwords and feel good terms. It is true that the vehicle does run on a very small amount of energy compared to a car and because it’s electric, the energy is pretty damn cheap. Of course, that also means that it’s really a coal powered vehicle, at least in the US, Australia, Germany, the UK, Russia, China and many other places. But coal is cheap as dirt and dirty as dirt too.
I’m actually floored by how out of touch GM could be with what makes a good, useful vehicle. It may be a case of the pendulum swinging too far. GM has suffered much criticism for not providing the economical small cars that a recession creates demand for, but this is ridiculous!
Apparently some disagree with this sentimant, such as this commenter at market blog:
For the first time, well ever, I am optimistic and enthusiastic about GM. Surely everyone can agree that the vehicle described above is the future of personal transportation! While it would have been nice if General Motors had been this innovative and possessed such foresight earlier, perhaps it is better late then never and GM will survive after all.
Now, what is GM trading at today? I might just take a flyer and buy.
That comment seems to be somewhat representative of at least a few who are sold on the low-energy, small-vehicle, small-home, non-consumer, “modest” future. Perhaps I’m just crazy or maybe the emperor does indeed have no clothes.
And just to reiterate, I still can’t figure out what the hell makes this thing any better, more useful or desirable than a traditional electric scooter, moped (electric or otherwise) or for that matter, a bicycle. If anyone can come up with a reason, I’d love to hear it.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 at 9:37 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Culture, Enviornment, Just LAME, Politics, media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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April 11th, 2009 at 12:34 am
J Carlton said:
Actually, the electric ultralight vehicle will be far more reliable than the extremely complex ICE vehicle. Built of composites – should last a lifetime. No problem in extreme cold – no broken brake lines or power steering hoses or CV boots. With wheel motors, zero turning radius, accelerations of 0-60 km/hr in 2.5 secs are easily achievable. Industrial Frequency Drives and Motors commonly run for 4 yrs or more non-stop – the equivalent of over one million miles for a vehicle. You could build an AWD out of composites yourself for about $7,000 using powerful Bicycle Hub Motors like the Crystalyte 5304’s. 25 km per kwh is easily achievable. Less than Obama’s subsidy for buying a new vehicle. For heat in the winter, an onboard fuel powered heater is very economical. Methanol, being the best fuel. It is 6 times more efficient to heat a vehicle with a fuel fired heater than running an ICengine for heat. 1 litre of diesel or 2 litres of Methanol will keep a small computer car warm for 5 hrs. Composites can have 13 times the energy absorbing ability of steel, in a head on collision at a top speed of 80 km/hr, two ultralight BEV’s could be made to simply bounce off each other.
In most cities a peddle bike can keep up to a car in a typical commute. And an E-Bike can easily beat a car, due their high maneuverability and small footprint. With cars in the city, the main premise is hurry up and wait. Why have all those intersections, with people waiting most of their commute, in particular for left turns, when highways designed for ultralight BEV’s could have prefab overpasses, due to the light weight and low height of the vehicles, installed in a day or two.
Note that traffic congestion cost the consumer in the U.S, $64 billion, and traffic accidents $164 billion in 2005. Have a collision between the typical Steel Tank automobile and there will be mayhem & destruction, which caused 40,443 deaths and 2.7 million injuries in the U.S. in 2005. And the mess created in these accidents can block already crowded roads for an hour or more. With the ultralight BEV, if broke down or damaged, grab it with one hand and drag it off the road.
Just bury a communication cable in the road, when on the road the BEV drives itself, take your hands off the controls – and relax until you get to your destination. For longer distance travel, like between cities or a dozen or so points in a large city, use high speed rail lines, you simply drive your BEV onto a carrier which moves it onto a rail line – charges it while its being transported – drops you off on a off-ramp at destination – no waiting – no delays.
Much more efficient to have an open architecture – mass produced ultralight BEV for commuter travel – using standardized components – namely – battery pack, driver interface (drive by wire and steer by wire), wheel motors, Power Electronics Module and battery charger. For pulling loads, 4 or more passengers, country travel, or carrying substantial cargo, the more traditional vehicle would be great, except it should be a series hybrid with 60-80 miles per gallon is quite acheivable – for those who can afford them – or rent one – and they can be driven on the truck route.
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April 11th, 2009 at 1:08 am
Warren Heath said:
The trouble with having spent a lifetime in industry is that when people are pitching an idea you learn to pick up on key words: ‘just’ for example is code for watch my hands wave us past this difficulty; ‘prefab’ – generally means ‘we expect someone else to solve this problem; and ’should last a lifetime’, ‘No problem’, ‘no waiting’ and ‘no delays’ are all code for ‘we haven’t even considered these things’
Again, I will point out that these ideas were being modeled 70 years ago, by GM (ironically) in their pavilion at the ‘39 World’s Fair. They haven’t been implemented because they do not meet the markets needs and they would be expensive to create. They are as J Carlton said: pipe dreams of engineering schools, not practical systems.
Systems like this are very hard to make, just look at the similar efforts of building automatic baggage routing at major airports. Some systems have been in beta for over a decade, just over the software and these were builds that had the advantage of being compact, indoors with a limited number of operators. They also got to change existing infrastructure on a scale that would make any urban planner wet his pants with glee. Yet still many just don’t work.
The other factor is that always good enough is the enemy of better, and that means that all of these systems, if they are not evolutionary, and based on existing infrastructure and hardware, will always be stillborn.
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April 11th, 2009 at 1:12 am
Jason Ribeiro said:
Understood that the concept of a small electric person mover has applications, but going back to the well formed arguments, please explain why this hyper-expensive thing is better than say a golf cart or electric scooter. It’s a lot of engineering toward a non-existnat problem. Why bother with the whole segway thing? just put four wheels on it and a small electric motor.
There is a big difference between saying this thing is crap and saying that small electric vehicles are crap. As far as small electric vehicles go, this is an unnecessarily complex and expensive one with no real benefits and it also happens to be of a form factor that makes it less portable than some of the same performance and it’s also appears to be not the safest thing because it’s too short and squat to see well.
we can make short-range electric vehicles that fill needs without this kind of reinventing of the wheel.
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April 11th, 2009 at 1:18 am
Wow. I love the “Facebook on wheels” comment. That’s horrible. That guy needs to be fired NOW. Have you ever heard such a missplaced and blatent attempt to try to make something seem hip, trendy or new?
What else can he throw at it “Web 2.0 of transportation” “It’s transportation for the blogosphere” “This is the Youtube autombile” “It’s the prefect companion for your iphone and your Wii”
That just about made me sick.
No, idiot. Facebook is a website that is popular becasue it makes it easy to organize your contacts and network and connect with friends you haven’t seen since high school. That’s why it’s popular. This is not “facebook on wheels” This worse than the microsoft Zune when it comes to horribly failing to get in on some new trend.
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April 11th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Warren Heath said:
This makes a very nice sounding paper, just like the ones I was talking about. Practical-NOT! For instance for a Batter electric to be lightweight all the parts have to be lightweight, which brings us to the electric vehicles Achilles heel, the batteries. In order to store the energy they do batteries, even the new type have either heavy cases or are heavy themselves. If a battery pack weighs several hundred pound then everything has to be designed for several hundred pounds and your entire advantage just flew out the window. Note that the Tesla, the most advanced electric vehicle, is about the same size as a car and can hardly be called so light weight that you can lift it and push it off the road. For an electric vehicle to be light weight it has to get its energy from attached power, which has it’s own sets of problems. As for light weight vehicles in general, you should look at DV8’s unrepeated link. Suffice to`say, been there, done that.
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April 11th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
And in a blast from the recent past-
The solar powered bicycle car:
http://depletedcranium.com/?p=577
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April 11th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
DV82XL said:
I’ve spent a lifetime in industry as well, and have seen in the past 20 years the revolution in Industrial Controls – where mechanical speed controls have been replaced with Frequency Drives, Relay Panels with Programmable Logic Controllers and Distributed Control Systems. These changes are now ubiquitous in industry and the movement to Electric Drive vehicles is related to those changes – and is now unstoppable.
The type of transportation system I am advocating could not have been done 70 yrs ago or even 15 yrs ago. It feasible now due to the dramatic drop in the price of power semiconductors and intelligent control systems.
You are just nit-picking and evading the essential issues by using your keyword argument. For instance prefabricated steel overpasses and off ramps would certainly be feasible in a transportation system for bicycles and ultralight vehicles. It is not a significant part of the argument. Fast rail transport systems, as well as automated driving capabilities are features that would become viable after large numbers of these alternate vehicles are on the roads.
You are correct however that it is difficult to bring on stream systems that are not evolutionary. And also of course the chicken-and-the-egg problem. I can see it happening though. The E-bike is a start. The widespread use of bicycle routes in European cities is another step. The advent of small electric vehicles like the Aptera, the PUMA, Segway, E-Trikes and E-Scooters are also part of the evolution of this concept. Already in China typical roads are commonly half cars in the middle and half e-bikes on the sides. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out maybe we should build separate roads for the E-Bikes and other alternate vehicles, so that 50 e-bikers will not be flattened if a Heavy Iron Monster veers off the road. The decline of Suburbia, the decline of the Middle Class, who are becoming unable to afford modern vehicles, the impending 2nd financial meltdown of the USA, due to its inability to make payments on its new, large Foreign Debt plus pay for expensive imported Oil, increasingly in short supply, and the GHG emission reduction efforts are all forces that could facilitate these changes. Paris is experimenting with rental bikes and small electric car rentals – London is severely restricting ICE vehicles from the downtown cores, some cities are being built without roads for vehicles. Ultimately if we don’t make serious changes to our transportation infrastructure – most commuters will be stuck taking the tedious overcrowded bus.
Here’s a good statistic for you – the average urban vehicles goes 6.1 mph – if you include the amount of time the average commuter spends working to pay for his fuel guzzling steel tank. A pedal bike is much faster than that.
Jcarlton, BSME said:
Not True. E-Bikes now will go 70 km at 50 km/hr with a 1 kwh battery pack that weighs 8 kg. This in spite of the terrible Drag Coefficient. I’m talking 25 km/kwh. The average vehicle only travels 50 km per day. Thus even a 2 kwh battery pack would be sufficient for an ultralight BEV. That weighs 17 kg in commonly available LiFePO4 and costs about $1400 in low volume. Recharge time off of a standard 115v, 15a circuit would be less than one hour. These outlets can be located everywhere – restaurants, parking lots, the workplace, shopping malls. A recharge would cost about 20 cents, @ 10 cents a kwh. There is no problem whatsoever building such a vehicle, I’ve fancied building one myself, and know how to do it, and have worked the numbers. The vehicle weight I’ve calculated is 360 lbs with 4 powerful HUB motors – thus 0-60 kmh in 2.5 secs. However it would not be street legal. That is because it would not meet collision safety standards (that is it would not survive being hit by 5000 lbs of metal against a brick wall) – but it sure would be a hell of a lot safer than riding an E-Bike. The idea is to have an alternate road system optimized for moving People – not Heavy Metal. The complete streets movement is advocating such a network and it is happening in European cities.
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April 11th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
Warren Heath said:
If you bothered to read up thread, we have covered the essential issues which are cost, reliably, utility, and public acceptance. Your argument is that these systems are technically feasible, however that ignores the fact that the other factors in this case are large and cannot be dismissed by ignoring them. This is the core of my argument. Personal Rapid Transit/ Personal Automated Transport systems have been considered for several decades, and some are still under active development, but the past is littered with their failures, and it isn’t just because the technology wasn’t mature, although nothing I have seen to date that has made it to the prototype stage looks like it could scale worth a damn.
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April 11th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
DV82XL said:
The problem there is that it would cost a lot of money to roll out a complete PRT system and since it is an unproven concept (despite the potential to be the nuclear energy of personal transportation, or maybe the internet of personal transportation) no one is going to spend the money needed to build a PRT network in their city (and transport has the advantage over energy that people actually notice differences).
The past is also littered with the failures of car makers, railways, aircraft manufacturers, computer companies, etc.
The London PRT system has already started construction at the airport that needs another runway (I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what it eventually becomes).
DV82XL said:
I haven’t seen any reason why it would be impossible to scale it (in the way that there are reasons why wind and terrestrial solar will never produce a significant proportion of our electricity). As long as you could get a network of guideways and have the software running it spread the vehicles out so that you go to work a different way each day it should be able to carry a very significant amount of traffic. Two test tracks crossing each other with grade separated interchange between them would make it merely a software problem.
For it to work you need to get the costs down, at a maximum I would say equivalent to a one lane each way sealed road (pre-fabrication could help there) and you’ll need very reliable vehicles (automobile reliability would probably do fine (seems to work for taxis), just make it so that if a vehicle breaks down the one following can push it into a station) which likely means they’ll be simple (linear motors look like the best propulsion technology, probably don’t need maglev although it has been proposed).
I’d also design a separate safety system that had the power to slam on the emergency brake completely independently from the main control computer and not programmed by the same people (just in case a bug causes the computer to command a pod run into the back of another one).
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April 11th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Anon said:
Some did survive of that lot – not to date have from the PRT effors
Anon said:
Don’t you see? Again you’re basically saying: ‘as long as it works and it’s cheap, it will be fine’ – that’s the crux of the matter now isn’t it? These things are not cheap and they are not easy to build and get working. I swear, I don’t think anybody who is working on these systems has any grasp at all of the level of complexity that will be required to make these systems competitive with cars for utility. That or they do know and just choose to ignore it.
I mean really, write software that can manage a whole city’s worth of rush hour traffic by controlling each and every vehicle individually to its final destination – we are a long way from that level of reliability for C&C software.
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April 11th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
Warren Heath said:
In order for your world to happen you are making a lot of assumptions. One the second financial meltdown. Not going to happen. It’s likely that the Democrats will be out of control come 2010 and there is already a heavy push for severe tax and entitlement reform. As for the GHG people I think too many people got a clue last winter for people like James Hansen to have much credence when they rave about the dangers of global climate change. We are not all stupid here. The Dems made too big a power play too fast and its going to hurt. Second a whole bunch of game changing technologies(see Next Big Future for hints) are about to make it into mainstream. Third there won’t be a big push to move out of suburbia anytime soon, as much as the Greens would like it to happen. Here in the US we like it in suburbia and there is just too much investment to give it up. Also, I’m not sure where you got your 50 km/day, but its rather ridiculous unless the vehicle spend most of its days not being driven, which in Europe may actually be the case. A vehicle with a <50kph top speed and 25 km range is useless. Unless it’s a milk float. You can’t design a vehicle for a low daily average. You have to design for maximum typical use. Which brings us back to the energy requirements for batteries which again raises the weight and there we are. Here’s Tesla’s website:
http://www.teslamotors.com/
The problem with our concept is that it can’t handle the crowding of a dense urban situation and is useless under every other circumstance. You have to study urban problems for a long time to understand how their unique transportation requirements work. The problem with your system is that it provides no real solution to existing issues and there is no forseeable need for it.
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April 11th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
DV82XL said:
What about civilian nuclear powered ships that aren’t icebreakers?
DV82XL said:
Yes it is, although the whole if it works thing is less likely to be a problem than the cheap part and that’s likely to be a guideway problem (mass producing the vehicles cheaper than a car is unlikely to be a problem), we know that we can afford to spend money on roads and covering a metropolitan area with one way sealed roads so if guideway costs were of that order then PRT would become possible (and remember that there aren’t many public transport systems that are actually profitable).
DV82XL said:
Or maybe they are the ones who do have a grasp as to what it’ll take to get people out of their cars without crappy roads and the detractors not having a grasp.
Considering that people who think PRT wouldn’t work often use the capacity of a single line as their comparison with heavy rail instead of the network that PRT is designed to operate in I would not be at all surprised if it is the PRT people who actually do understand it (the network is the key to PRT, smaller vehicles means cheaper guideways and with cheaper guideways you can cover more area for a given amount of money and also spread the traffic around to get higher capacity than what you’d get from a single line).
DV82XL said:
Driverless trains already exist.
But you probably would decentralise the control somewhat (but have all the control nodes communicate with each other handing vehicles off).
Although, there once was a time when a lot of people wouldn’t have believed that the internet could work because centralised control over every packet wasn’t something we could do.
Jcarlton, BSME said:
Or they manage to keep things from getting any worse and get some more seats.
Either way, if progress at fixing the economy hasn’t been by 2012 the US is screwed since a theocrat would have a good chance.
Jcarlton, BSME said:
Do the people who incorrectly believe global warming isn’t happening still think the public agrees with them?
That weather is not climate or that it is possible for local areas to cool down even when the global mean temperature rises should be obvious.
Jcarlton, BSME said:
Oh come on now, if the people in the US weren’t annoyed at the previous government and wanting change there would not have been the landslide that was provided last November.
Jcarlton, BSME said:
I’m going to have to agree there. Some cities have natural barriers (ocean, mountain, etc) that force expansion to be up and not out but not all cities are like that yet (and legislative boundaries have a habit of creeping outwards ever so slightly).
Jcarlton, BSME said:
People who live around 20 km from work and drive to work would probably do about that much although It’d really depend on where they are as to how far they’d travel. In areas with good public transport there are quite a lot of people who don’t drive their car very much so that’ll probably pull the figure down as well.
Jcarlton, BSME said:
If it could travel at 50 km/h non-stop it’d easily beat peak hour traffic on the roads (and probably the train as well) although I’d like to know why you measure speed in kilopicohour.
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April 11th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
Look Anon, as I said up thread, we have been there already with big systems of this sort , and they don’t work all that well, nether does the Internet, (for that matter) which at ant rate can take a few lost packets, delays or a hit from some malware without killing someone. The fact that we are becoming more dependent on the Internet, given that it still has lots wrong with, it doesn’t give me any comfort. There is a certain expectation of reliability from a system that is operating all the cars in a city that isn’t expected from one delivering porn.
As I said I have already been on the wet end of big software systems that don’t preform as advertised, and more than once, and you will find that there is a more jaundiced view of these thing in the decision making levels of big organizations than there was in the past. Generally speaking people that build software are the poorest judges of its utility, so the opinions of those working on these systems is of limited value.
As for infrastructure costs you are right, laying track has always been more of an expenditure than the rolling stock, that’s not the point. You are also right that you can’t compare PRT’s with even light urban rail, but the reason is a single line of a tramway can start carrying passengers while the rest of the network is being built. The minimum amount of guideway for a PRT system before it can be used is expidentially larger by several orders of magnitude.
But the biggest issue is that any project like this will have to get by people like Jcarlton, and me before any ground will be broken and nothing I have read here or on any of the sites pushing PRT’s addresses the questions that we have brought up in any practical way. Systems like these will be of a magnitude in cost to dwarf most big ticket urban spending, and the gee-whiz aspect is just not going to be enough for the commitment.
Quote Comment
April 11th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
DV82XL said:
First you are saying that any system has to be evolutionary, next breath you are saying that if it can’t be installed as a fully developed system it is futile. I’m very much for the former, rather than the latter. Dedicated bicycle routes are already being added to city infrastructure, especially in European cities. Some cities are already banning or severely restricting ICE vehicles from the downtown core. That’s a beginning right there. The vehicles I’m advocating, are lightweight, limited to a top speed of 50-60 mph, and carry 1 or 2 persons, plus maybe a child and a dozen bags of groceries. There is no technological difficulty to building such vehicles, in the $5000 range, complete with steer & drive by wire, with zero turning radius. I know because I could build one myself using standard off-the-shelf E-Bike parts. It will be far cheaper to add those systems then to try improving already overcrowded existing city road infrastructure to efficiently handle greater traffic flows. The Greater Vancouver region has completely abandoned adding increased urban road expansion. Take the bus – or the LRT or put-up & shut-up and enjoy tediously slow traffic flow. An E-Bike can easily beat any vehicle or express bus on a long commute in the Vancouver region. After the alternative, lightweight, low peak speed, infrastructure is in place, then you could start adding features like automated driving on CERTAIN LONG ROUTES. No need for a massive central control system for all vehicles. Going onto the main highway, a vehicle would switch to Auto Mode. The controlling software, at least in the first phase, would only need to control local variables, maintaining distance between vehicles, maintaining maximum possible speed, and if a driver presses his off-ramp button it would make a space in traffic and move the vehicle to the next off-ramp, and then switch back to manual. Don’t sound too difficult to me. And a rail carrier system could also be added at some point that would move vehicles quickly to a dozen or so nodes or along a few rail lines in a large metropolitan area. Also sounds pretty simple to me, once there are a lot of the vehicles on the road already.
Jcarlton, BSME said:
I’m not making any assumptions, I listed a number of factors that ARE ALREADY HAPPENING that are facilitating these changes. Another one is the demise of the Big Three. And it doesn’t have to have to happen in the USA. If European cities go this route, the United States will inevitably follow, at least if the system works as good as I think it will – whereas the U.S. is going nowhere fast. It will bankrupt itself on the Renewable Energy scam alone. People will ride E-Bikes, like they are doing in China, because they can’t afford any other way to travel.
As for the demise of suburbia, check out:
The Decline of Suburbia – CBS News
Jcarlton, BSME said:
The 30 miles or 50 km per day is a well known number. Not everybody lives in huge cities way out in the suburbs you know. I said 50-60 MPH top speed and 50 km range, 25 km/kwh. You want 100 km range. Not difficult, add an extra 2 kwh of LiFePO4, an extra 17 kg and $1700 in low volume. Besides if you’re going say 30 km to work, just plugin at work, or the coffee shop, or the parking lot, to a standard 120vac receptacle with a flimsy little extension cord, and in one hour you have an extra 50 km range. If you really do drive like 100 km a day, then I would suggest you need a series hybrid vehicle. All high speed urban vehicles accomplish is big traffic jams – like trying to force water at 200 gpm into a pipe that can only discharge 20 gpm. Crowding – are you kidding me – these are small, lightweight highly maneuverable vehicles – perfect solution to urban crowding. No solution to existing issues!?!– you must be mad – resolves the high cost of modern vehicles that the average American can no longer afford, substantially reduced urban traffic congestion and tediously slow travel, substantially reduces the huge burden of traffic deaths & injuries, insurance costs, highway maintenance, foreign oil dependence, loss of foreign exchange, GHG emissions, the 30,000 Americans who die each year due to Urban Smog, excess use of resources and waste due to scrapping Heavy Metal every 5-10 years – to name a few problems resolved.
Quote Comment
April 12th, 2009 at 1:02 am
Warren Heath said:
Please don’t misquote me. Yes the solution will be evolutionary, because we have no choice, but the commenter Anon was suggesting the construction of an automated system with guideways and computer control of individual vehicles and that I don’t think ether of us believe is likely to happen in the foreseeable future. Once the fleet is electrified, then there might be a chance to introduce some automation to allow for higher speeds on trunk routes, smart traffic lights and the like, but these will be addons, not part of the initial design.
As for light BEV’s I don’t see them getting any further than the host of microcars I linked to in comment 50 did, ultimately the trend seems to be towards electric drivetrains in more or less standard size vehicles, and that is what the public is expecting. The Lower Mainland and the Island in B.C. is about the only area in Canada that your type of car is usable, that is not the case anywhere in the North American snowbelt, or anywhere else with similar weather. Here market expectations will be the driving force, and the manufacturing side seems to be responding in kind.
As for commuting in general, it is more likely that there will be increased investment in public transit and increased inducements to encourage its use probably in the form of arm-twisting fees and taxes for using a car in the city. More to the point, it’s easer for governments to enact regulations of this sort than to commit a region to a novel , unproved and horribly expensive system.
Its not that your ideas are bad, there just not going to happen, more because there isn’t a clear route leading there than any technical issues I agree, but nevertheless the path of least resistance will be towards more or less standard automobiles with electric dive than any currently conceived PRT/PAT system that I have seen.
Quote Comment
April 12th, 2009 at 1:03 am
DV82XL said:
Which turns out to be nonsense, as long as you have a single loop you can carry passengers with PRT (destinations are limited, but a tram will suffer the same fate while it is under construction), not to mention that smaller PRT guideways are likely to be a lot quicker to install than a tram line.
Besides, it’s not as if a small tram line that goes from nowhere to nowhere (which is what most of them would be when they first open unless you wait for the whole thing to be finished before you use it) is going to get very much use and light rail does take a long time to build.
Simulations show that even a small PRT system around an airport or university would be useful, then you can expand from that. It’s also been proposed as a feeder to railway lines.
DV82XL said:
It got past some people at BAA, a small scale system like at an airport would help debug it and if it works out there I could easily see the system extended to cover the surrounding areas (although I’d retrofit that to have external power supply hidden in the guideway instead of batteries).
Though if I were setting up a public transport system in a city, I’d probably be inclined to use rail simply because it is known to work and I’d resign myself to the possibility that it’ll all need to be ripped out in a decade (or become a dedicated freight network) should PRT succeed.
Warren Heath said:
Though I understand a lot of cyclists don’t want them.
Warren Heath said:
Depends, if public transport is good enough then it might be workable but otherwise you’d just bring the city to a standstill. Unless public transport already has majority market share for trips around and to the city and is operating under capacity in peak don’t even think about it.
Warren Heath said:
The problem I see there is that there is no way those things could be used on footpaths around pedestrians and they are too light to be driven on roads so you must have a segregated infrastructure for them, running them on bike paths would defeat the whole purpose of bike paths (and they usually aren’t built to the same standard as a road).
Warren Heath said:
Makes sense when there is another option, when put against crappy roads public transport does very well even with all the stopping and starting at stations or stops you don’t care about.
Warren Heath said:
The infrastructure you are referring to is really not very good so for that to work you’ll need to build a lot more infrastructure, may as well just build PRT guideways and then instead of using batteries you could get your power from the grid (batteries could still work and you’d still have batteries for emergency power to make it to the nearest stop should the grid lose power even if it were a full all electric PRT system).
Warren Heath said:
Such a dual mode system could probably be evolved into a PRT network although getting onto the computer controlled part would be the hard bit since you probably won’t be allowed to use such a thing on the roads or footpaths you’d need to drive it on to get there (at which point you may as well just lay light rail with a park and ride).
Warren Heath said:
Unlikely, a lot of money will be wasted yes, but it won’t go bankrupt because of that.
Quote Comment
April 12th, 2009 at 1:23 am
Anon said:
Historically most of these statements are provably wrong, Santa Clara might not be able to construct a mass transit system on time; other cities don’t have the same problem. Most of the older lines were built and operated by private companies first, and they did not build them from nowhere to nowhere.
PRT/PAT systems are just not going to happen, it doesn’t matter how much supporters argue for them because they are too expensive, and the public is not that enamored with the concept. The money to build these things will not be forthcoming because of that lack of support from the people that have to pay for it.
Quote Comment
April 12th, 2009 at 3:24 am
Seems like a dumb idea to me. If people wanted little vehicles like this they’d buy more scooters and stuff, which they do buy some of, but not a huge market or anything, not a major product, just a minor one with a small buyer group.
Also, this seems like the perfect size to be unusable anywhere. It’s not something for the sidewalk and take it on the street, NO THANK YOU! I don’t care what city you’re in, that will not mix with cars.
Nice try for an alternate transport system, but this is so not it.
It’s a wheelchair and that’s about it. A two seat wheelchair. Zero cargo space. No thanks. I’d rather ride one of those old people electric chairs.
Quote Comment
April 12th, 2009 at 8:55 am
DV82XL said:
Even on time is rather slow.
DV82XL said:
Eventually they did connect them to something people would actually want to go to, most of the time (the property speculators that didn’t ended up bankrupt), it’s just that when under construction much public transport infrastructure is from nowhere to nowhere for quite a bit of time.
DV82XL said:
On what basis do you claim it is too expensive?
We’re not going to know how expensive it is until there is an operating system but guideway cost estimates are low enough to be doable.
Of course there are subsidies to competing modes as well.
DV82XL said:
Which is provable wrong given that money has already been spent to build a small system at Heathrow Airport. If it works out then that system will be expanded to serve the rest of the airport and nearby hotels and others are going to become interested in the technology.
Quote Comment
April 12th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
DV82XL said:
I agree that the trend is to standard type vehicles with electric drivetrains, such as the Project Better Place is using. And that is going to encourage the development of electric drivetrain technologies, including better batteries. Already Electrovaya has produced 330 wh/kg Li-Ion batteries. And it will be great for the Oil dependence problem, smog problem etc. But these vehicles will be expensive. The biggest hype is for the PHEV, and the Volt is expected to cost $40,000, with a $7,500 subsidy to buy one. I could build a little E-Car that would blow the Volt away in urban travel for that subsidy. How many people can afford a $40,000 car anymore? Its not going to be significant solution to the coming Oil Crash, Trade Deficit problem, GHG emissions problem, potential of Middle East Oil cutoff problem. Too little – too late.
And most countries in the world, cannot afford PHEV’s and can’t afford to buy Oil – for them its E-Bikes or a very bad Public Transit system. Does this make sense to you, when you can easily turn e-bike technology into a vehicle which goes faster, more maneuverable, allows you to carry some cargo (like leave some groceries in it), protection from the weather, cheap as borsch to operate, blow away any ICE vehicle in urban travel, last for 10 years or more, very easy maintenance, and mass produce them for under $5,000.?
DV82XL said:
Not use in the snowbelt? Are you kidding me. That’s one of the reasons why I fancy building an AWD. This thing will FLY over packed snow. Will cross frozen lakes where any 4×4 would get stuck, because they’re so heavy, devoid of the starting & maintenance issues of ICE vehicles in the cold. Uses a mere tidbit of fuel to keep warm & defrosted. Far superior to an ICE 4×4 in bad snow conditions – this vehicle ain’t getting stuck
DV82XL said:
I agree that is likely to be the main effort of governments. And it is going to drive people to bicycles and e-bikes. It’s no accident that most Chinese commute with E-Bikes – the pragmatic Chinese aren’t interested in getting exercise – they usually don’t use the pedals – it simply is the most practical means of travel. I just don’t follow the logic of this. We are given a choice between a practical e-bike, which is REALLY DANGEROUS to commute in, or a big fuel guzzling steel tank, that you can’t afford. Even the cheap ones have high maintenance and insurance costs.
DV82XL said:
The route will be the Oil Crash, the decline of the Middle class, and the widespread use of bicycles, e-bikes, recumbent trikes and recumbent e-trikes. And the dismal failure of our current transportation system to move people about efficiently.
Anon said:
It is working out in London, and a number of German cities (which completely ban vehicles from the downtown core). And in London they are using similar vehicles to what I’ve proposed, calling them quadracycles to get around vehicle safety regulations.
Anon said:
E-bikes are routinely used on bike paths, and recumbent Trikes, and recumbent Trikes with wind farings, and recumbent E-Trikes with wind farings, small step from that to a one passenger E-quad, totally enclosed. And as I mentioned previously, there is the quadracycle classification used in London. Problem is your bike “paths” are going to prove a sick joke, when they are crowded with E-Bikes and E-Trikes, at which point “paths” must become roads. Case in point China, where there are more E-bikes on the roads than cars, and the E-bikes take up at least half of the road area (on both sides). In the west we may consider that too dangerous and decide bikes and e-bikes must be separated from cars. In developing nations, the ultralight BEV’s will be built and people will use them en masse because they will be the most practical, affordable means of transport, when Oil is too expensive and the pollution from poorly maintained auto exhaust becomes unbearable, as it already is in a number of developing nations cities.
Anon said:
I like the PRT systems, especially the Danish RUF system, that is the types that allow you to run your own personal vehicle home and then drive it onto a high speed rail. And I hope they get installed, but I don’t see many cities have the money, and it will only be in larger cities, in wealthier nations. Won’t even make a dent in the coming problems of Oil Crash, Emissions and Financial Meltdowns, worsened immeasurably by our government embracing the Renewable Energy Scam.
Quote Comment
April 12th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Anon said:
Please. A fully automated system that uses individual units and can deliver riders as close to their destinations as a car is not going to be cheaper than mass transit. I have see specs for several PRT/PAT systems, and I have worked on the component side of the transportation industry long enough to see that these systems will be expensive to build and maintain. Nor in all fairness have seen any of its other boosters ever claiming that these builds would be less expensive than current public transit systems,
The Heathrow project is again more of a prototype system serving a smallish high traffic area. Even its builder Richard Teychenne, of ATS, said publicly that the system has its limits, and that it cannot compete with mass transit systems in large cities, such as the London Underground. (BBC News 18, Dec,’07).
Warren Heath said:
As someone who has commuted in winter most of his life, the only conclusion I can draw from the above statements is that you have no idea what you are talking about. It’s also apparent you also don’t have much experience with batteries in cold weather ether. This doesn’t even begin to address the control issues for an automated system in low traction situations, or the fouling of guideways, both of which are non-trivial problems.
Warren Heath said:
No question public transit has suffered from lack of attention in the last half of the previous century, primarily because it has been the mode of the young and the lower income classes. It may be that as the cost of operating a car climb, there will be renewed interest in mass transit by more people, but that is likely to manifest as demands for improvements to the existing system than building something new from the ground up.
Quote Comment
April 12th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
DV82XL said:
Actually, I know a lot about the performance of these electric drive systems in cold weather. Certainly like any vehicle, it has to be designed to work effectively in the cold, take a Tesla which probably has not yet received cold weather testing and design adjustments, would undoubtedly give you a lot of problems in Northern Winter conditions. Batteries – definitely lead-acid are a bad idea in the cold, but who wants to use them in EV’s anymore? Li-ion and NiMH function very well in the cold, even at –45 degC (I’ve tried them). You do loose capacity of course, but they quickly warm up under load. An ultralight BEV, with 4 wheel motors, will have true all-wheel drive. Unlike even quadratrac 4×4’s, on ice all 4 wheels will give traction, and on corners, both inboard and outboard wheels will supply driving force. Regenerative braking is automatically anti-lock – there is no braking force when the wheel isn’t turning. The PM wheel motors and controllers work just fine in the cold, even at –45 degC (I’ve tried them). Whereas an ICE vehicle will not start below about –28 degC (unless plugged in), these vehicles will run just fine. No broken brake lines, power steering hoses, CV boots, frozen fuel lines, dead lead-acid batteries (run down and frozen in the cold), with expensive maintenance charges on all of those items – plus towing charges. Even a 4×4, if it hits ice, say on a corner, because of its huge weight, it will slide and because of its high center of gravity, may roll over as well. With 5000 lbs of Heavy Metal sliding across the road, death, mayhem and destruction can easily happen. The ultralight BEV, since it weighs so little, even if it does slide some it will quickly come to a stop. Due to their lightweight they will quite happily drive on snowmobile trails, walking trails, or frozen lakes, providing there isn’t deep soft snow. They will also push their way through a snow bank, and if they get hung up on the smooth, flat bottom, they are easy to drag or dig out of the snow (i.e. they are small, light and powerful). For cold, a one or two person cab would need about 1kw of heat to keep it warm and defrosted at –30 degC. That would be quite a drain on your battery pack, so I would recommend a small fuel fired heater. 1 litre of diesel will provide 8.5 hrs of heat @ 1 kw and 85% efficient heater. It is typically 6 times more efficient to use a fuel fired interior heater than to idle a vehicle for heat.
Make no mistake about, an ultralight BEV, with 4 wheel motors, properly designed, will blow away any ICE vehicle on the road today, in urban northern winter driving conditions. Superior in everyway – except of course for hauling cargo, or a bunch of passengers. Actually it is more difficult to design them for extreme heat conditions, where Air Conditioning would be an issue and the battery pack will likely have to be fan cooled.
As for the automated drive system option, I would agree it would bring up some serious issues in cold, icy or snowy conditions. Although I’m not talking about using guideways, only a buried communications/control cable. Probably you would want to shut off automatic operation in unfavorable conditions.
Quote Comment
April 12th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Warren Heath said:
Again the key words here are “properly designed”, and yes I know in theory EV’s with independent drives on each wheel can out preform a standard powertrain in most conditions, however I still think that in all likelihood, we will see electric drive on what we would now call compact and sub-compact cars before we see any wide adoption of ultralights.
Again, microcars aren’t new they have showed up in three different eras, but they have never been that popular despite the fact the by all logic there should be a large market for them as city cars or as station cars. I think I know the reason if my experience driving an Isetta for six weeks in London one summer long ago is typical. These just are not pleasant vehicles to drive or ride in compared to a sedan, and given a choice the public will go for the latter.. Its all very well to invoke economic meltdown and fuel shortages and other doom-and-gloom reasons why things will change, but as long as there is the option of “regular’ sized cars, (as BEVs) microcars/ultralights are going to stay marginalized.
I can also recall some plans in the early Sixties to integrate these cars to rail with special roll-on, roll-off equipment and stations for the commuter, but again the numbers never materialized
I just read for example that batteries for EV’s may be leased instead of sold with the car, both to reduce price, and to assure their return for recycling to the OEM. Not only will this reduce the cost of owning a BEV considerably, it is to the OEMs benefit not to have to pay over and over for the same raw material.
Quote Comment
April 12th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
Warren Heath said:
I’m beginning to suspect that you do not own a car or have ever owned a car. Nor for that matter actually ever driven in an all weather environment. let alone spent 3 hours driving through a steadily worsening blizzard to go 25 miles. The problem with your BEV is that they don’t have excess heat energy to keep the batteries and the driver warm. Cooling batteries do not have the discharge they need at low temperatures, which raises the possibility of a driver or drivers, suck in a traffic jam someplace and freezing to death because they are stuck. Also, your BEV might do everything you claim in less than 3 inches of snow. More than that and you need mass to overcome the snow and provide adequate traction. and then there are the hills. For hills you need inertia and your vehicle just doesn’t have enough. You also need footrpint area on the road and the kind of lightweight tires you are describing just don’t have it. another issue is sensors in the road. In my experience anything in the road surface doesn’t last very long. Roads are a very hostile engineering environment. I’ve see many seemingly good ideas go bust on the road. Even simple and very robust stuff get wrecked. For instance highway depts put reflectors in the pavement to mark the lanes. In about 2 years or so those reflectors have all been smashed by road traffic and need to be replaced. I’m not sure costly sensors would last long enough to be useful on general purpose roads. This has been an issue with self guided vehicles from the beginning. Look, lightweight and electric vehicles have been around since the dawn of the automobile. With the exception of semiconductor motor controls and the new batteries everything you describe has been around for decades, in some cases for over a century. So if a lightweight electric vehicle was a practical alternative chances are somebody would be using them. Yet nobody does. Not in China. Not in Japan. Not in Indonesia. Not in South America. Nowhere. That should tell you something.
Quote Comment
April 13th, 2009 at 1:11 am
Warren Heath said:
I’m just wondering what market you expect this is going to be for. Nobody is going to argue that electric vehicles don’t have advantages over ICE in many situations, and I think that battery electric cars will eventually be the norm, but not in “ultralight” cars.
You have to consider for one thing that most people would rather own one vehicle that serves all their major purposes than many for different things. An ultralight battery car with small capacity and limited speed, endurance and climate control is only going to be useful in a few narrow situations. Anyone who lives in the suburbs or a rural area – it’s just plain out of the question. In the city? Eh, maybe, but there’s limited infrastructure.
These have been around forever in various incarnations and they work well in some situations, but as general purpose transportation?
When it comes down to it an “ultralight” vehicle has a lot of limitations. For one thing, safety. You can use carbon fiber and titanium alloys and everything but when it comes down to it, less is less. You also don’t get very good traction in a light vehicle and to some degree inertia is your friend. Mass keeps you going straight. Try driving a very lightweight vehicle across a bridge with a strong crosswind. Believe me, you feel that wind.
A lightweight vehicle can theoretically stop faster, assuming it doesn’t flip over or go flying.
There’s no way I’d want to take one up to highway speed, sitting near the ground in a light weight car where a significant proportion of the momentum was being carried by myu body.
Jcarlton, BSME said:
I agree that self-guided vehicles have a lot of issues. I still think we’ll see them eventually. One of the big thing will be setting standards for how they can talk to eachother in a circumstance where vehicles are rolling down the highway in automated mode. They’ll need to signal one another to change lanes or something. They’ll need to work with systems in the road, potentially. If one company wants to use an RF system to guide the car and another wants to use infrared then it won’t work. The government, the car companies and everyone has to be on board o make it go all the way.
I think you’re right about the road sensors too. To make this happen we’re going to need systems so robust that they can fall back on just reading the lines in the lane and using optics and proximity sensors.
We’re going toward that. Slowely – very slowely – There is now active cruise control that can keep a car from getting to close to the one in front. There are lane change alerts for those who drift. They’re talking about automated lane-steering in the near future.
It’s all technically feisable and has been demonstrated, but it’s going to be a while before it all comes together in a vehicle.
Quote Comment
April 13th, 2009 at 3:38 am
DV82XL said:
By properly designed I mean use half a brain, and don’t forget the obvious. I’m no genius, but I have no trouble making the necessary adjustments for cold weather. You are right that the electric drive will predominately appear in compact & sub-compact cars first – since batteries have a much lower energy density than fossil fuels, the smaller, the lighter and the slower the vehicle, the better they are. What I do know is that an ultralight AWD BEV will be a hell of a lot more fun to drive than any of those run-of-the-mill EV’s or any ICE vehicle on the market. I don’t see why some of you folks are so against giving people options other than the boring ICE vehicle clone – and I don’t agree with the concept that the taxpayer should be funding streets strictly for the benefit of fuel guzzling, terrorist funding, economy destroying, smog belching, global warming enhancing, death and destruction causing steel tanks – masquerading as passenger vehicles. If other people don’t want to drive them, fine, but who knows once they see enough of them they may change their mind. However these type of vehicles are not well compatible with roads designed for steel tanks. Give us bicycle, e-bike, e-trike and ultralight BEV roads and they will be used. See:
The Complete Streets Movement
DV82XL said:
You need to take a look at the hard numbers for the amount of imported oil needed to fuel the transportation sector, and think maybe doom & gloom is coming. Obama’s big answer is the PHEV, but they are way expensive and for the amount of his subsidy you could make a vehicle like I am describing.
Jcarlton, BSME said:
Get a life, I’ve driven in 45 below zero, both cars and E-Bikes – have you? I covered the heat problem if you had read what I said. A fuel fired heater is much more economical than idling an ICE vehicle and EV’s don’t use significant power when driving slowly or stopped in say a blizzard. And batteries warm up when load is drawn from them. No problem dude, been there, done that.
Jcarlton, BSME said:
I’ve driven E-bikes through a foot of fresh snow, dude, no problem there. Mass is your enemy not your friend. Four Crystalyte 5304 motors on 20” wheels provide over 400 lbs of thrust. The average person can only push 85 lbs. This on a vehicle that only weighs 360 lbs. Up hills – piece of piss. How about up the stairs, in the door, in the elevator right to the office – can be done. What sensors, a cable buried in the road would be sufficient, not a problem. Roads are a very friendly environment compared to typical industrial environments.
drbuzz0 said:
For people who want to get from point “A” to point “B” in the city, faster, cheaper and more fun than any ICE vehicle on the road. And this while being totally environmentally friendly.
drbuzz0 said:
The Aptera is an ultralight 2-1/2 passenger vehicle, designed for normal roads – not my cup of tea – but not bad – and others are being prepared for the market. Just why do you think heavy iron is such an advantage for a vehicle?
drbuzz0 said:
I don’t agree. For Obama’s subsidy you could buy an ultralight commuter car for someone. If they can afford it, buy an SUV or truck for hauling cargo, going down the highway, or a lot of passengers. The fuel savings alone will pay for the small, compact, fun-to-drive ultralight BEV. Or else rent or use an Auto Share Club. We are running out of Oil, what do you think the Tar Sands will save the day?
drbuzz0 said:
Most people I know travel to work and back every day with their own solitary little bodies and the statistics are something like average 1.2 persons per automobile. That’s a pretty common use. You want a 120 lb person to ride in 5000 lbs of heavy iron – does that make sense to you? Limited speed? – will get you from point A to point B in the city faster than any ICEV on the market. High maneuverability, zero turning radius, all wheel drive, light weight and small footprint are the key. Urban vehicles only average 20 mph when traveling, and that number is declining.
drbuzz0 said:
Not true, great in the suburbs for short errands, and commutes of up to 40 km. Covers a lot of suburbs. Rural towns are small, and speed limits are low, a small car is a very economical addition to a pickup or SUV, for most trips in town.
drbuzz0 said:
The infrastructure is coming – for various reasons – and its going to be cheaper than any functional alternative.
drbuzz0 said:
The world has changed, fuel economy, emissions, Oil dependence, Peak Oil are now important issues. I haven’t seen any E-Bikes around until the last few years – and what I’m describing is fundamentally E-Bike technology.
drbuzz0 said:
Actually, much, much safer than your steel tank, when segregated from the same, on Bike/E-bike dedicated roads. Composites can absorb 13 times more energy in collision than steel. Traveling at lower speeds, much lower mass, of course means much less kinetic energy. I am confident that these vehicles could be built so that a head on collision between them at top speeds of 50-60 mph, they would simply bounce off of each other. The low center of gravity, due to the battery being in the floor under the driver, and the heavy wheel motors close to the ground, and no humungous engine sitting in front of the driver means a much more stable vehicle. The gyroscopic action on the wheel motors also improves stability. You could also use air shocks on all 4 wheels, since there is no axle, you could adjust the height of the vehicle according to terrain. In an accident blow the air out, and the vehicle will skid safely to a stop on the belly plate. I’ve road my E-Bike at 50 km per hr in strong crosswinds with a very bad drag coefficient and high center of gravity – no big deal.
drbuzz0 said:
I don’t see why not, sure as hell safer than in your steel tank. Ever see racing car driver’s crash at 200 mph protected by their Carbon Fiber cage – note Composites – Not Steel. People ride E-Bikes at 50 mph – a hell of a lot more scary than that. Also as I said I believe in limiting top speed to 50-60 mph in the city, since going faster is pointless and high speed eats up a lot more battery energy.
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April 13th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Warren Heath said:
I wouldn’t count on that. Your idea seems to be hinging on the concept that there will be independent right of ways for these vehicles so that they are not runover and knocked around by full sized cars and so that they have their own way around traffic jams. That being the case, there are a few issues with this. For one thing, where do you put new right of ways in a city? All the avaliable space is taken up by buildings and existing roads. You would be left with either tunneling under it or possibly doing some kind of suspended causway, which is an idea that has been around since at least the early 20th century world’s fairs and still is not materialized. Expensive for one thing.
Then the other thing is where to start. It’s a chicken-egg problem. What comes first? Mass adoption of said vehicles or building the infrastructure. Do you spend billions on building the infrastructure and hope that plans for people to use it work out? What if it doesn;t take off. In a few years you have empty tunnels and skyways because nobody bought into it. Or do you expect people to buy these vehicles before the infrastructure is ready?
Conventional wisdom still stands here: For commuting in urban areas, mass transit like subways and lightrail wins the day. For longer distances and independent transportation, automobiles work out best. For occasions when independent lightweight transit within cities and short distances is wanted: scooters, bikes or even walking short distances.
Visit any city with a complete and well managed subway system like New York or Boston or London and you’ll quickly see why this kind of thing is not necessary.
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April 13th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Gordon said:
Not quite. These vehicles are much more road friendly than bicycles or E-Bikes or Motorcycles. They could ride in traffic – and legally if you only use three wheels – otherwise they face a nightmare of expensive, archaic, crash-safety standards – air bags the whole works. I got a problem with that concept. It’s the equivalent of saying, for the young girl who was shoot & killed in a street gang crossfire in Toronto – its her fault for not wearing a bullet proof vest. The traffic safety problem – IS the steel tanks that are unnecessarily populated our roads. Bicyclists, E-Bikes, Trikes, E-Trikes and E-Quads deserve to be protected from them. Its not these vehicles that are causing $64 billion in traffic congestion costs, $164 billion in traffic accident costs in 2005 and 40,443 deaths and 2.7 million injuries in the U.S. in 2005 and about 30,000 deaths due to urban smog. Its your steel tanks that are causing an unsustainable reliance on foreign oil – in particular highly unreliable Middle Eastern Oil. Your Oil driven machine is going to grind to a halt – and we need to start looking at viable alternatives.
Gordon said:
I don’t see a big problem there. First off these new vehicles are very compatible with evolutionary change of the transportation sector. Unlike your enormously expensive subways and LRT’s which most cities don’t have and can’t afford. Realize that the vehicles are not going to suddenly appear on the roads by the zillions. All that is needed is a recognition by City Planners of the coming revolution in personal transport – and gradually making modest changes to accommodate it. Dedicated Bicycle, E-bike routes are a good start. People do ride on those in recumbent Trikes, recumbent E-Trikes, and Recumbent E-Trikes with Wind Farings. Not much further to go to the enclosed E-Quad or Quadracycle like they are being designated in London. Certainly, there is no difficulty whatsoever, except the vehicle classification problem, for these vehicles to ride in most low traffic urban or suburban City streets. I wouldn’t like to take them on expressways or busy thruways, anymore than I would like to take an E-Bike or a Motorcycle. An example of these changes are in this article:
EVWorld – the Copenhagen Example
“…In Copenhagen, where 36 per cent of the population commutes to work by bike, cycling has developed such a style that they have even invented a verb for it — to Copenhagenize. Just look at the economics… They know that cycling for four hours a week — 10 kilometres a day, a typical Copenhagen bike ride — makes a person physically active. They know that if Copenhageners cycled 10 per cent more kilometres each year, their health system would save $12 million a year, and their economy would benefit from $32 million a year of production not lost to illness. They know that each additional kilometre of bike lane attracts 170,000 more cycle-kilometres a year, 19 per cent more bikes on that stretch of road, a 9 to 10 per cent drop in cars, accidents and injuries, $51,000 in saved health-care costs, and $134,000 in saved production costs. For every $1 they invest in the bike lane, they save $5. Knowing this, Copenhagen has set a goal that 50 per cent of all work trips should be by bicycle by 2015….”
“…What would such a future look like? Every major road would have a cycle lane, separated from traffic by a yellow rumble strip. Throughout the region, there would be a network of safe cycle routes where most traffic was not allowed, using a mixture of railway rights of way, back lanes, and quiet residential streets. At every major intersection, cyclists would be allowed to gather in front of the traffic, and given 30 seconds to advance with all lights on red, before cars were allowed to go…”
Gordon said:
City traffic is already being divided. There are dedicated Bus lanes, dedicated lanes for commuters with more than two passengers, truck routes and bicycle routes. The trend is to kick the steel tank passenger vehicles out of the downtown core – where they don’t belong. Just what point is there in filling up that high density real estate with unbelievably inefficient, automobiles. Utterly insane. They go average maybe 5 miles per hr, spewing toxic smog by the mega-ton. Downtown cores are being turned over to bicyclists, small e-vehicles, the PUMA, the Segway, the E-Bike, E-Trike or E-Quad, all good options. And of course delivery vehicles, traveling at low speed, no problem for E-Vehicles or Cyclists. And maybe free downtown core shuttle buses.
Gordon said:
What infrastructure? Except maybe would be expedient to put in receptacles widely for EV plugin. Already part of Obama’s PHEV plan. The electrification of transport in the cities is happening – and it will take over. If these vehicles are allowed on neighborhood streets, and bike routes they will be bought and used. Also the AWD’s are great off-road vehicles for quietly traveling on park trails.
Gordon said:
Your conventional “wisdom” has created the modern mess of traffic congestion, smog and the huge Oil Trade Deficit. For what, a system in which a pedal bike can beat a 120 mph, 4000 lb car, typically carrying one person, on even long commutes. That wins the day? Your subways and lightrail are enormously expensive, and most cities, especially small to medium sized, or in less wealthy nations can’t afford them. So you ride in on the subway, walk some distance to find a bus. Wait for bus. Maybe wait for 2nd bus – or third. Breath smog all the way. You want to buy a few things, a book, a pair of pants, some groceries – be prepared to carry it on your person everywhere – like even all day – and some stores don’t allow you to bring packsacks inside. Inefficient, Insane, Slow, Tedious and Expensive.
Gordon said:
Depends what you mean by longer distances. Between cities, yes, Within cities, no. Most people don’t need that feature, and if they do a Car Club or Car Rental maybe all they can afford anyway.
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April 13th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Warren Heath said:
Actually the current system works very well when you consider what we’ve come from. No system is perfect but if you think urban congestion with cars is bad, consider that at one time 90%+ of the population had no way to get around other than walking, limiting travel badly and when walking one had to avoid the horse manure (big cities had hundreds of tons of the stuff to dispose of) and the constant danger of being hit by one of the forms of mechanized public transit which included elevated tracks with steam engines that constantly blew out embers that set fire to things, not to mention the horrendous smoke and a few cable cars which did not have the ability to stop on command.
Our four thousand pound tanks mean that the worst thing to worry about is being stuck in traffic for a half hour on the way to work. That’s really not a huge problem when compared to a century or more ago.
Warren Heath said:
I don’t know about that. Citydwelers have more expensive living costs anyway and automobiles are unnecessary and cost a lot to find parking plus there are limited gas stations and it’s expensive in the city. The current cost of cars is pretty affordable though. Everyone I know who is over the age of 18 and lives outside a city has a car. Some are ten years old and have a few dings in them, but it’s not beyond the cost of even lower middle class individuals.
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April 14th, 2009 at 4:47 am
LOL, laughed then I saw that thing, first thing in my mind was a horseless carriage, as the first cars was called, it look like a sort of horse wagon where the horse and handle is removed.
Only reason for this item would be regulations, but you already have partial enclosed motorcycles and scooters with two wheels, who would be faster and safer, look better and are easy to handle without drive by wire.
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April 6th, 2010 at 8:44 pm
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