Tag Archives: electric scooter

The Electric Auto Show

Posted on by
2

The Electric Auto Show – The Greater LA AutoShow 2002
By Jeffrey the Barak

Approaching the Greater LA Auto Show in January 2002 makes one’s motorhead pulse race. Here are acres and acres of new, concept and even vintage cars of every marque sold in the United States. It’s time for self control however because I know you can go to any newsstand or browse many equally glossy web sites and read about Ferraris and Porsches, or look at pictures of family minivans and sedans. In true the-vu tradition, my focus here is to be on the new alternative car culture, the formerly experimental world of electrics, hybrids and fuel-cell powered vehicles.

Definitions:

* Electric: Propelled by an electric motor, powered by rechargeable batteries.
* Hybrid: Propelled by an electric motor and also by a gasoline engine, with batteries that are charged by the vehicle’s own engine.
* Fuel-Cell: Propelled by an electric motor which derives its electricity from hydrogen gas and ordinary air combined in a fuel cell to create electricity.

Honda

The first car to hit us in the face is the Honda FCX-V4 fuel cell vehicle. In this ultra-modern looking vehicle, the hydrogen tanks are in front of the rear wheels, allowing the user to use the trunk as a trunk instead of the typical hydrogen tank display case. This idea also removes the chance of a Hindenburg style explosion when that cell phone wielding soccer mom slams her Ford Excursion into the back of your car. This really is an exciting new car and should be available in 2003. It should run for about 185 miles on a tank of hydrogen.

The official Honda line on fuel cell cars is: it will be at least ten or twenty years before the internal combustion engine loses it’s dominance. Honda expects to begin limited commercial distribution of fuel cell vehicles in 2003.

For now, Honda has higher hopes for the gasoline and electric hybrid cars such as the 1999 Insight and the brand new Civic IMA Hybrid. Unlike Toyota who left their top selling Corolla alone and introduced their hybrid with a fantastic new model called a Prius, Honda are putting out a hybrid version of America’s best selling small car, the Civic.

IMA stands for Integrated Motor Assist. The performance and practicality of this 2002 model is way ahead of the original hybrid, the 1999 Honda Insight. Apart from the slightly compromised trunk area, this Civic is as roomy as any other four door Civic, but it will deliver 50 mpg in the city or on the highway. This little hybrid should sell for around $20,000, and the fuel savings should make approximately 2,000 people per month decide to get one.

Daimler-Chrysler

Daimler-Chrysler’s GEM line of tiny trucks are really electric golf carts taken to the next level. Big enough and useful enough to be used as primary transportation in tiny old towns or large private residential communities, their motto seems to be “We don’t need no steenking doors.” Typical of today’s Daimler-Chrysler, the GEM e825’s are beautifully designed and they really are the Rolls-Royces of the indoor driving scene.

Ford

Ford’s competition to Daimler-Chrysler’s GEM line is the Think line. Not quite as pretty as the aforementioned GEMs, the Thinks are probably just as good and display nicely alongside the Think electronically assisted bicycles. Even though it wasn’t at the show, Ford is going to be introducing a research Ford Focus which runs on a mixture of diesel and a substance known as Urea. Urea is ammonia based, (just like urine is ammonia based) and its purpose here will be to remove that awful black diesel soot from the exhaust emissions. It’s difficult to resist the temptation to picture a future driver peeing into his gas tank to get Urea, but I’ll try.

General Motors

GM decided to bypass the Greater LA Auto Show and wait for Monday 7th January at the Detroit show to announce their own fuel cell project. The GM guys came out and publicly announced that we’ll all probably end up running hydrogen fueled, fuel cell powered electric cars eventually. When that day comes, GM will finally have to stop accurately reproducing the driving experience of the 1976 Chevette in cars such as the 2002 Sunbird and Cavalier. Oh well, that’s progress I suppose.

Nissan

If you want a tiny electric car with a 40 to 60 mile range and a top speed of 62MPH between 4 hour recharges, there’s nothing quite like the extremely cute Nissan Hypermini. Amongst all the American cars it looks dangerously small, but put one in say Japan or Europe and it’s not much sillier looking than the standard compact cars in those places. The first time I saw a Hypermini it was barreling past me at top speed on a freeway in Los Angeles, which was an impressive demonstration of its capabilities. Up close and inside, it really is very attractive and much more interesting than the BMW Mini that even on media day drew a large crowd at the Greater LA Auto Show.

EVAA

While the young lady upstairs at the main Nissan display stand stated with conviction that Nissan has been too busy to develop any alternative fuel technology or electric cars, the aforementioned Nissan Hypermini is on display at the stand of the Electric Vehicle Association of the Americas. This stand is not up with the big displays of the major manufacturers such as Nissan; it’s down in Kentia Hall with all the chrome rims, polishes and accessories.

Beside the gleaming paint of the Hypermini is a big car, which in comparison to the waxed perfection of everything else at this show looks decidedly grubby. There has been little effort to clean this one up after its 7,000 miles in the real world. Powered by Think, it’s the Ford P2000 Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle. The platform for this car is a “Stretched Aluminum Ford Contour” which accounts for its monstrously boring appearance. What the car represents, however, is far from boring.

This four-door sedan will run for 100 miles on a tank of hydrogen and reach speeds of 80+MPH. Last October, this car ran for 24 hours on Ford’s high speed track in Dearborn. It maintained an average speed of 58MPH including stops for hydrogen and driver changes. The average speed on track was 65MPH. Crawling on the ground beneath the back end I am amused to see the soft white polyurethane exhaust tips. The exhaust emissions of a hydrogen fuel cell powered car are of course nothing but clean plain water!

So how does a fuel cell car work? Very basically, Oxygen from the air compressor and hydrogen from the fuel tank combine in the fuel cells to create electricity. This is the sequence:

* Hydrogen fuel flows into the fuel cells.
* An air compressor supplies air to the fuel cells.
* Oxygen from the air combines with the hydrogen in the fuel cell to generate electricity, which is sent to the “traction inverter module”.
* The traction converter module converts the electricity for use by the motor/transaxle, which converts the electric energy into the mechanical energy, which turns the wheels.
* Water vapor and droplets are the only byproduct of the process and the exhaust is even drinkable.

Kateri Callahan, executive director of the EVAA tells the-vu that in routine demonstrations, this exhaust is actually collected into a cup and drunk. In this particular Ford the hydrogen tank is situated in the trunk, but it’s really an experimental car for demonstration purposes, hence the internationally acquired road dust covering everything under the hood. This ugly Contour is simply just a “mule” for the fuel cell process.

How does it drive? Like an electric car! The electricity is coming from the fuel cell process as opposed to storage batteries, but it’s like driving any electric car, except that you can fill the hydrogen tank in a couple of minutes which is quicker than charging batteries for hours and hours.

Parked around the EVAA stand, we also see a Honda Insight, an all-electric Toyota RAV4, a beautiful, traditionally styled, 40 mile range Scooter by Rad-2-Go, A Prima electric bicycle, an enclosed 2001 model Ford Think, Zapworld’s Power Ski electric pull-along device for skaters, a sea scooter for scuba divers and even a plug-in hybrid electric Suburban and an electric US Post Office van. The post office has around 500 of these in use today, mostly in California. Mail carriers either have to keep their trucks idling or shut them off and re-start them repeatedly, so electric is ideal for their average 30 mile routes.

Kateri predicts that we will be using electric drive systems in the future and there will be room for all of the systems. She says it may be a decade before we see a viable commercial fuel cell vehicle, but even then there should be a market for lower speed battery powered vehicles also.

Whereas the Ford P2000 gets all of its energy from the hydrogen in the tank, Daimler-Chrysler are experimenting with the onboard production of hydrogen using methanol as a fuel source. Methanol can be a renewable fuel source if it is produced from grain, but currently it’s often made from coal, granddaddy of the fossil fuels.

So who are the EVAA? They are an industry association working to advance electric vehicle transportation technologies in the United States and they represent the US in the World Electric Vehicle Association (WEVA). They are quite a political force, defending the planet Earth from the forces of carelessly burned fossil fuel. For a more serious definition I recommend their website at http://www.evaa.org

Little Charge, Much Burn

Electric, hybrid and fuel cell powered vehicles are of course in the tiny minority at this vast international car show, and the proportion of giant trucks to normal cars is still alarmingly high, but it is at least reassuring to note that the popular full size SUV’s of today are clean. While they may use as much fuel per mile as your 1969 Olds 98, their annual emissions are about the same as those put out by a dash around the block in the old barge, so you’re not exactly choking the planet when you shine your headlights down through our rear windows and whack cyclists on the back of the head with your door mirrors.

The real challenge is two-fold. Not only to we need to develop alternative long-range propulsion, we also need to change our mindset so that tiny cars and scooters can be seriously considered for use on shorter trips.

After walking ten or fifteen miles across the carpet of the Los Angeles Convention Center, my legs were wishing I’d been mounted on one of Dean Kamen’s Segways!

Writer Jeffrey the Barak is also the publisher of the-vu

Scoot Electric

Posted on by
Reply

The electric scooter could one day become as common a sight as the bicycle, if only there were better batteries.

By Jeffrey the Barak in Los Angeles.
Originally published in the-vu in July 2000
Revised December 2000 and again in August 2003


2000 Phat Flyer by Currie Technologies

Bad gas

We live in a world where it is perfectly acceptable for a free adult to go wherever he or she wants to go, at any time that suits them. That’s a good thing! Unfortunately, more often than not, an individual will do this in a large passenger vehicle such as a car.

In the seventies, Americans drove big American cars that used gallons of fuel, just to drive a few miles. When the fuel crisis began the evolution to smaller cars, there began a latent urge to get back into the giant beasts of yore. The same people who said terrible things about the land yachts of the seventies are now driving solo to the local coffee house in giant fuel-thirsty Sport Utility Vehicles. So what’s the difference Suburban Drivers? Enjoy it while you can, planet killers, because the human race is reproducing at an ever-increasing rate, and the elderly are living, and driving longer.

In the not too distant future, there will have to be restrictions on car driving in order to avoid total gridlock and air toxicity. Enter the concept of the small electric car. In the early days of automobiles, electric cars outnumbered gasoline powered cars. Sure, they were terrible, but so were the fuel cars! When battery development hit the technological wall that it’s still pressed against today, the internal combustion engine became the champion of the highways, the railroads, the oceans and later the skies.

General Motors, Honda, Toyota and other manufacturers have brought electric power back into focus, but the fact remains, it’s impossible to equal the convenience and range of the fuel car. With gasoline, you can drive hundreds of miles in one direction; refuel in three minutes, and then keep on going without delay. Electric cars go a little way, and then they’re useless until re-charged.

But where are you going? Are you going from Saint Louis to New Orleans, or are you going from the beach in Los Angeles to your apartment near the beach? Do you really need four tires, four doors, six seats, a roof, a trunk, a windshield and an engine? Or are you just trying to avoid that slow process known as walking?

You might not know it yet, but in the future you are going to be one of the millions of people in the world who rides an electric scooter on a daily basis!

Why a scooter?

If you have ever tried using a bicycle as your means of conveyance, you know what the main problem is. What do you do with it when you get to your destination. It requires parking. Making matters worse, you arrive tired and sweaty and with a sore or numb butt. I’m all for exercise and fitness, but a man in a suit and tie, or a lady in make-up and hose is better off without that bicycle ride. They can always work up a sweat later at the gym. Lets maintain the separation of transportation and exercise here!

Picture this, you unfold your scooter, step on, push off once and hold the switch and steer. You say good morning to the people and dogs as you glide almost silently past them at a reasonable speed. You arrive, step off and fold it down.

Electric scooters are clean, quiet, small, light and fun. They’re a lot of fun. Like the electric car, the range is disappointing to some, but it’s getting better. Oddly enough, the acceptance of electric scooters got a boost from the phenomenal success of the toy known as an in-line scooter in 1999. The original was the Razor, but there are as many knock-offs as there are bumps in the sidewalk. The main advantage of the in-line scooter is it’s ultra light weight and portability. You can stuff it in your shoulder bag and forget it’s there when you finish your ride. These vehicles are made of aluminum and the wheels are like the wheels on your in-line skates. You can steer with the handlebars and the skill required is minimal. Unlike skateboards, they are not difficult to master.

Human Power

Riding any human powered scooter might seem at first glance to require a large input of energy, and compared to bicycle riding, this is true. But if you pass a pedestrian at the start of your journey, you will shortly glance back and see that pedestrian as a mere dot in the distance. That is the key to human-powered scooting, 4X walking speed and zero input on the downhill sections.

I have known about this for years. I’ve ridden a human powered scooter in England, Hawaii and Los Angeles. Scooting at low speed is effortless enough to make walking seem like an exhausting chore. But electric scooting is heaven. On a hot day you don’t get any hotter when you ride, because you are not using your own energy to propel yourself.

Electric power

Our disabled friends sit upon a subset of electric scooters. These are basically electric wheelchairs and they cost up to $3,000. The principle is the same though; batteries, a motor, a switch or potentiometer to go, and brakes to stop. With the modern explosion of electric scooters, the variety has been astounding. Just as in the early days of cars and airplanes, individual manufacturers have launched wildly different designs, and the consumers have steered the evolution of the class with their buying choices. The undisputed winner in the electric scooter in the early days was the Zappy. A similar design is still a popular seller today in the guise of the Tomb Raider.

My first electric scooter was a blue Zappy which I rode for over one year. I loved it. Bicycles passed me and I didn’t care because I wasn’t in a hurry. I just stood there and held the switch as I silently got where I wanted to go. I went fast enough to feel the wind in my face on a windless day, and slow enough to notice every little thing on my route. At first I wore a bicycle helmet, but soon abandoned it. At 7MPH I could step off and run if I ever had to. It was safer than a bicycle. I got to my destination and plugged it in to top up the charge.

I only ran out of charge once, even though my range was less than four miles. It was always enough. However battery technology has endured one of the slowest rates of development in the industrial age. Our batteries today aren’t much more efficient than the batteries which powered the electric cars before the gasoline era!

For a long time I never saw anyone else riding an electric scooter, then actor Kevin Spacey rode a Zappy to the 2000 Academy Award Nominations, and then they began popping up all over the place.

Then in November 2000 I upgraded to a Phat Flyer. Made by Currie Technologies in California, this was a truly practical electric scooter. Based on inaccurate specifications at the time, I imagined I was going 15MPH with a range of 15 miles.

The larger wheels meant you didn’t have to scan the road ahead for every stick, stone and crack. The wide handlebars, low center of gravity and general strength of the tube frame provided a ride that felt stable, safe and completely controllable. It was wobble-fee.

I got one of the first Phat Flyers released, courtesy of Scott at EVdeals.com. Following some bicycle-style safety checks with a wrench set and a delay of 40 hours owing to work and darkness, I finally planted the yellow monster on the pavement at daybreak and pushed down my right thumb.

My first generation Phat Flyer photographed in 2000

This is what electric scooters were meant to be! Okay, so the chain drive was a little noisy in all of that silence, but believe me, all you can hear after a second or two is wind blasting against your helmet. (At these speeds, you’d better get out your old helmet again!)

Motorcycles have hydraulic brakes, as do cars, so you have to remember that the Phat Flyer has bicycle style brakes, because those stop signs loom up pretty fast. When it comes to lower speeds, this type of scooter beats the Zappy simply because it can free-wheel. Okay, it doesn’t have the minimal resistance of a Xootr kick scooter or even a Razor, but there are times when you don’t want to be blasting past everything at 10MPH and it’s nice to put your foot down and scoot now and again. As with a kick scooter, downhill gradients are a free ride on the Flyer.

The Law

Laws pertaining to electric scooters vary from city to state to country. In some places in the world you are free to do anything you like on your electric scooter. Usually however, the electric scooter rider is subject to the same laws as the bicycle rider. This means keeping off the sidewalk, dismounting on a crosswalk, and obeying the rules of the road, including stop signs. Almost every policeman in the world has no idea what is legal for an electric scooter, so most will leave you alone unless you are naked and covered in strawberry ice cream.

However, some law enforcement officials will stop you and attempt to think of ways to punish you for having so much fun. The punishments do not include ice-cream and nudity, and some e-scoot riders have wound up arguing over tickets in the courtroom. Insight and advice pertaining to such legal situations can be found on-line at the Zappy eGroup.

The Future?

It’s still another three days until my permit to drive my old gasoline car is active again. I only get one day every two weeks now. Telecommuting from my home office in my bedroom has made me stir crazy, so I’m off to the local café for some good coffee. I smile and wave at a hundred or so fellow electric scooter riders as I glide over the cracks in the boulevard. Plugging in at the café, I remember with amusement how it used to require a seven-seater four-wheel-drive sport-utility-vehicle with air conditioning and mud tires for my ninety pound girlfriend to acquire a cappuccino from the café three blocks from her house. A young mother on skates glides by behind her self-propelled electric baby carriage. The restaurant next door receives a delivery from an electric road barge. The streets are so quiet, you would have been able to hear chirping and birdsong, if only the birds had survived the gasoline era.

Buy one

Links to electric scooter related web-sites have been removed from this article because they keep changing! I suggest a Google search for the latest choices.

Truth in Advertising

EVdeals.com is just about the only scooter-dealer website that has been honest enough to conduct performance tests and publish the results. Every scooter you see for sale in the stores, or online seems to have the range and speed of an imaginary twin, but EVdeals has published the truth. The following figures are from EVdeals in August 2003.

Taking a dozen of the most widely available electric scooters, they have revealed that average speed on level asphalt is between 9.8MPH and 12.7MPH. Duration or run time, in my view the most important figure, is between 28.6 minutes and 37.5 minutes. Hardly enough for an afternoon out and about!

Maximum speed is between 13.3MPH and 22MPH, the latter being attained by a heavier class of vehicle similar to a road-going moped, and range is between 5.7 and 8.6 miles. How many of us have bought scooters and then imagined we had ridden for 15 miles because the box said we could?

True, there are other scooters out there that look like Vespas and claim to go for 35 miles, but these have not been tested in the same honest and true fashion, so buyer beware. Let’s face it, those electric cars of the early 20th century had the same battery technology that we are using a century later. Is there anything else so important in our technological world that has evolved as little as the battery in over 100 years? No wonder there are so many conspiracy theories about various oil companies suppressing battery breakthroughs.

Jeffrey the Barak is the publisher of the-vu