The_Toecutter wrote:vtsnowedin wrote:The light , evolved golf cart or hightec. trike of the future might run in the $4000 to $12,000 range and be an addition to your garage not your primary or foul weather vehicle.
Of course if we get $10.00+ gas and 0.40/KWH electricity such a vehicle might get pressed into 90 percent of your driving, especially if it can be charged by your off grid roof top solar panels.
I've already built that vehicle and use it as my daily driver.
I get slightly more than 100 miles per kWh(no joke, not a typo). It tops out at 45 mph, has a brushless PMDC hub motor with a 46.8V 31AH battery, gets a 200 mile range @ 30 mph, a 150 mile range @ 35 mph, and is efficient enough that using the separate bicycle drivetrain I can even turn the motor off and pedal it to 35 mph on flat ground in a sprint. I can carry 40 lbs of groceries in the trunk without a problem. In its current form, it could be replicated for about $3,000 of mostly expensive, low-volume, hand-built parts and with hundreds of hours of labor hand-assembling it. Which means it's not out of the realm of plausibility such a vehicle could be mass produced and sold for under $2,000 if the market existed for such a thing. It currently weighs about 90 lbs and I'm running the motor at about 3 peak horsepower, which is enough to do donuts in parking lots and out-accelerate some of the slower cars at the stoplights, but the low battery pack voltage limits its top speed. Cruising at 45 mph, I'm not even using 1 horsepower from the motor to maintain speed.
Once I get enough time off work, I'm going to upgrade it. It needs a roll cage, more slippery body shell, hydraulic brakes, an added rear suspension(currently only has front shocks), and I have in my possession the parts required to make it able to reach a 100+ mph top speed with motorcycle-like acceleration all of the way there with the motor in use. It's going to make about 13 peak horsepower when I am done with it, which for what the vehicle is, will be plenty. If necessity dictates, it will still be pedalable with the motor completely shut off at slightly faster than bicycle-appropriate speeds in most terrain(with steep uphill climbs, with the motor shut off it will be slower than a bicycle due to the mass). Some solar panels are on the way for it as well, which will be integrated into the next body shell design. 150W or so should be enough to cruise 25 mph all-day-long in direct sunlight, no pedaling required, without draining anything from the battery pack. Sunlight plus modest pedaling would increase that to about 30 mph, without draining the battery. I plan to make it efficient enough that a 2.5 kWh battery pack could get it about 100 miles range @ 70 mph, increasing that to 120 miles with the solar helping out in good weather.
And because the battery pack is so small, in terms of recharge time, a common 110V outlet is the equivalent to Level II or ChaDeMo charging and a 220V outlet is the equivalent to a Tesla Supercharger.
I have in mind building a "car" that is suitable for a single person, that is so light and efficient that energy costs, no matter what they might become, will remain a non-issue. So efficient, you could put a bicycle drivetrain in it and with the motor disabled you could pedal it to near-highway speeds(at least on flat ground), or while using the motor, cruise highway speeds with a small amount of pedaling akin in effort to walking accounting for nearly 1/3 of the amount of the energy used to move the vehicle. And it will be fast enough to out-accelerate vehicles with 15-20x its horsepower with the motor in use.
Best of all, my vehicle concept uses a lot of low-tech and dumb-tech.
last November (2020) took delivery of an electric trike an FUV from Arcimoto
www.Arcimoto.com
it's the perfect urban "covid" transport (threw "covid" into the description because its "open air")
I've got a couple thousand miles on it now, basically using it to get out of the house to pick up "to-go" food,... what I find really noticeable is how loud and smoky ICE vehicles are at stoplights
even though the FUV is capable of achieving freeway speeds, I don't find it enjoyable on the freeway in traffic because at gets noisy w/ the wind AND what I find annoying is the sounds of other car tires,... have an old land cruiser and also find the tread noise from all terrain tires also pretty annoying at freeway speeds
basically what I find enjoyable on my FUV is just cruising around neighborhood streets
years ago thought about a GEM which is a NEV (neighborhood electric vehicle) or said another way it a street legal golf cart
basically didn't' get it because I live in an area w/ hills so an NEV (i.e. golf car) would have been annoying to drive
) as well as, you know, not business reporters but 