One giant leap for electric motorcycles

[bigpoppa]

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"Honda, Yamaha, KTM and Piaggio have all signed a ‘letter of intent’ for the creation of a Swappable Battery Consortium for Motorcycles and Light Electric Vehicles. This means four of the main motorcycle manufacturers will standardise batteries in their electric bikes, so that which ever bike you are on you can quickly, conveniently, and cheaply replace your battery."

Electric bikes; Honda, Yamaha, KTM, and Piaggio change the game – 44Teeth

www.44teeth.com

https://imgur.com/3vk8Hoi

 

[GreyGhost]

"Honda, Yamaha, KTM and Piaggio have all signed a ‘letter of intent’ for the creation of a Swappable Battery Consortium for Motorcycles and Light Electric Vehicles. This means four of the main motorcycle manufacturers will standardise batteries in their electric bikes, so that which ever bike you are on you can quickly, conveniently, and cheaply replace your battery."

Electric bikes; Honda, Yamaha, KTM, and Piaggio change the game – 44Teeth

www.44teeth.com

https://imgur.com/3vk8Hoi

I'm glad they're working together. I still think swappable batteries sound interesting and may be a good intermediate step to grow the market quickly but they are the wrong solution for many reasons (packaging, security, cost, etc).

 

[Brian P]

I'm less than enthusiastic about the battery-swap concept. It works great for portable power tools and lawn and garden equipment ... as long as the battery doesn't go obsolete. Then you're toast. (I have a couple of dead battery-operated power tools in inventory for which the tool is fine but the battery is dead and I can't get a replacement because they're obsolete.)

With battery-swap - The battery is limited to a size and weight that a person can manage. Even a petrol tank in a combustion-engine vehicle isn't like that, and even the best batteries weigh a lot more than a petrol tank does. I doubt if this standardised battery pack will have more than about 4-ish kWh capacity ... and that's not much. It'll do for a run-around-town scooter. It's not going to facilitate cross-country travel in the future equivalent of a Gold Wing. That needs DC fast-charging just like any other EV.

With battery-swap - The design of the vehicle has to be constrained to fit around the standardised battery pack and the method by which it is installed and removed from the vehicle.

With battery-swap - The technology of the vehicle and the battery pack is locked into the technology that was current at the time of design-freeze. Imagine if we did a design-freeze on mobile phones for whatever reason ... and we design-froze it 10 or 15 years ago. And if you ever un-freeze the design and modernise it to the next new battery design, what do you do with the legacy vehicles that rely on what came before? How long do you keep supporting them? (This is why I have a couple of dead power tools kicking around ...)

Batteries that support fast-charging capability, and more extensive and more common DC fast-chargers and plain old SAE J1772 AC chargers, are what will facilitate EV growth onward and upward ... not battery-swapping. When we get to a point where there are DC fast-chargers at every highway rest-stop and J1772 AC chargers at every restaurant, coffee shop, hotel, and tourist attraction ... worries about travel with an EV will cease to exist. We know how to do this. No major technological developments are required. We just need to do it.

Those DC fast-chargers on PetroCanada's "electric highway" across Canada have 350kW charging capacity ... beyond what any EV on today's market will take!

By the way, the SAE J1772 and CCS DC fast-chargers don't lock the vehicle into any given battery chemistry. The charging station just supplies AC or DC power to the connector and the car's on-board charger does whatever it needs to do to whatever batteries that the vehicle contains.

 

[MacDoc]

Nice for the off pavement crowd to have. Don't think they have touring bikes in mind.
They have to see a threat from increasingly capable eBikes.

Best Off-Road Electric Bikes ~ Top 10 Off-Road EBikes In 2022 (reviewed)

To help you find the best off-road electric bike, we have tried out a multitude of top ebikes, testing to ensure they featured fantastic shocks and suspension

www.gadgetreview.com

 

[GreyGhost]

Nice for the off pavement crowd to have. Don't think they have touring bikes in mind.
They have to see a threat from increasingly capable eBikes.

Best Off-Road Electric Bikes ~ Top 10 Off-Road EBikes In 2022 (reviewed)

To help you find the best off-road electric bike, we have tried out a multitude of top ebikes, testing to ensure they featured fantastic shocks and suspension

www.gadgetreview.com

Offroad bikes could be a great fit. Give you enough for an hour of play before you return the vehicle for a swap. It will be hard to overcome price without a miracle in the near future. Buying more than one battery per bike is crazy money. Rental fleet of batteries would be hard to be viable as there would be some times where everybody wanted them (summer weekends) and much of the time, nobody would want them (the rest of the year).

 

[blackcamaro]

I would buy a electric MX bike. My criteria would be performs at the same level as a current 250F, 1.5 hour or so run time and priced $2000-$3000 more then a YZ250F or CRF250R.

No interest in a watered down trail bike. Also not interested in a electric street bike at this point in time.

 

[bitzz]

Unless battery technology advances exponentially, "battery swap" is the future.
The battery pack(s), for motorcycles. don't HAVE to be that big. You can't carry a HUGE battery.
Check out the battery for that Segway. Perfect example. The battery pack weighs about 15#. (and costs $1600USD)
A bigger Segway bike would get TWO battery packs. Your Goldwing gets 12.
(You WANT the smallest battery pack you can abide, that way when one cell dies you're not replacing a $5,000 battery pack. there IS a battery rebuild industry).

Cars are a different matter.
Make a standard battery pack, mounted under the car. Pull into an automated battery change center and bingo bango bongo, the machine changes the battery(s) in your car and off you go. The logistics involved is simpler than the petroleum model we're working with now.
You could own a battery for local trips (little $) that you charge at home, but on the weekend when you're off to visit nana in Le Belle Province, you go to your local battery center, get a extra long range rental battery (BIG$$$$$), stop in Kingston or Cornwall, swap batteries, carry on. When you get home go back to the local battery center, turn in the rental, and get your battery installed... in three minutes.
When batteries improve, they get more power dense, they don't get bigger, so a standardized battery size will not hinder development.
Vehicle design is "constrained" to allowing for a standard size battery and access to it. Hell they can build a car with CUP HOLDERS so I don't REALLY see any design issues. It goes under the car. Put in the front, back or middle (you want it in the middle) as long as you have access....
Want proof?
We've had "C" cell batteries for more than 50 years. EVERYTHING that runs off "C" cell batteries has changed immensely in that time, but the battery is the same... BUT you can buy a lithium ion "C" cell substitute.
The GM EV1 did three battery updates in it's short life, all with a standardized battery pack, and the plan was to have "swappable" battery packs.

While we're at it we should standardize drive train, for all the same reasons.
What we need is what a Checker Marathon tried to be.
Buy a body shell that you can put any of several different drive trains into.
The hot setup for a Checker was a Mopar Super 6, GM TH400 trans with a Ford 9" diff. They'd go FOREVER.

... the biggest problem is the auto industry has no interest what so ever in selling us the car we need or even want. We NEED a car that doesn't kill us and the environment
The auto industry likes when they can charge $9,000 for a battery pack and doesn't want to change THAT part of the equation. They like all this proprietary BS. The auto industry's biggest "constraint" on design is the auto industry's bottom line. Always was, always will be.

 

[GreyGhost]

Unless battery technology advances exponentially, "battery swap" is the future.
The battery pack(s), for motorcycles. don't HAVE to be that big. You can't carry a HUGE battery.
Check out the battery for that Segway. Perfect example. The battery pack weighs about 15#. (and costs $1600USD)
A bigger Segway bike would get TWO battery packs. Your Goldwing gets 12.
(You WANT the smallest battery pack you can abide, that way when one cell dies you're not replacing a $5,000 battery pack. there IS a battery rebuild industry).

That bike looks like fun. It looks like their battery packs are ~15 lbs for 1 kwh for 1600 USD. Who rides a dirtbike around for an hour averaging 1 hp? Alternatively what is the average hp used on a dirtbike? Maybe 20 hp? That means you get ~4 minutes of dirtbiking per battery. Boo. Assuming you want a four hour range on your goldwing (seems reasonable for touring), you need more than 50 of those batteries. Yikes.

 

[bitzz]

I saw a test of that segway
The battery lasts 15min at full tilt. IIRC
His answer was to pull a little trailer with a Honda generator... sounds like a TV series I recently watched....
It's a bicycle.

 

[KWDRZ]

That bike looks like fun. It looks like their battery packs are ~15 lbs for 1 kwh for 1600 USD. Who rides a dirtbike around for an hour averaging 1 hp? Alternatively what is the average hp used on a dirtbike? Maybe 20 hp? That means you get ~4 minutes of dirtbiking per battery. Boo. Assuming you want a four hour range on your goldwing (seems reasonable for touring), you need more than 50 of those batteries. Yikes.

This will always be the limiting factor for adapting battery powered vehicles. Until battery technology has some huge breakthrough it's a big compromise. ICE engines will be around for a long time yet. We are so far away from it being a reality but people like to dream and say it's 5 years away.

 

[bitzz]

Found it
Sorry it wasn't 15 minutes. It was 10 miles

 

[mimico_polak]

My needs are simple...gimme a range of 100km, and a price of under 6k and I'm sold. Unless an electric motorcycle can meet that, no chance for me as it would never meet my needs. The 100km range is to get to work and back. If I can charge the pack at work on a 110V...sure I can deal with 60km range each way.

EDIT: I'm ok with the short range because going for a quick evening ride is usually 30-50km anyway within the city limits. If I'm going for a full day, no bike I know of has a 300+km range.

 

[GreyGhost]

Found it
Sorry it wasn't 15 minutes. It was 10 miles

Holy mother of fails. Locked to 10 miles an hour until you download an app on your phone, register your bike and watch a safety video. I hate "technology" companies. I bought it. F you and your mandatory registration.

As for the range, the reviewer is an idiot. Everyone should know by now that any vehicles top speed and max range are mutually exclusive. In the case of battery powered vehicles normally shockingly different. I was amazed he could get 25% of the advertised range at top speed. Tesla roadster was something like 1% battery for every second at full throttle.

EDIT:
Confirmed, he's a moron. Next video was a livewire test and he was trying to extract power for his house out of the DC fast charge port.

 

[Mad Mike]

I'm less than enthusiastic about the battery-swap concept. It works great for portable power tools and lawn and garden equipment ... as long as the battery doesn't go obsolete. Then you're toast. (I have a couple of dead battery-operated power tools in inventory for which the tool is fine but the battery is dead and I can't get a replacement because they're obsolete.)

With battery-swap - The battery is limited to a size and weight that a person can manage. Even a petrol tank in a combustion-engine vehicle isn't like that, and even the best batteries weigh a lot more than a petrol tank does. I doubt if this standardised battery pack will have more than about 4-ish kWh capacity ... and that's not much. It'll do for a run-around-town scooter. It's not going to facilitate cross-country travel in the future equivalent of a Gold Wing. That needs DC fast-charging just like any other EV.

With battery-swap - The design of the vehicle has to be constrained to fit around the standardised battery pack and the method by which it is installed and removed from the vehicle.

With battery-swap - The technology of the vehicle and the battery pack is locked into the technology that was current at the time of design-freeze. Imagine if we did a design-freeze on mobile phones for whatever reason ... and we design-froze it 10 or 15 years ago. And if you ever un-freeze the design and modernise it to the next new battery design, what do you do with the legacy vehicles that rely on what came before? How long do you keep supporting them? (This is why I have a couple of dead power tools kicking around ...)

Batteries that support fast-charging capability, and more extensive and more common DC fast-chargers and plain old SAE J1772 AC chargers, are what will facilitate EV growth onward and upward ... not battery-swapping. When we get to a point where there are DC fast-chargers at every highway rest-stop and J1772 AC chargers at every restaurant, coffee shop, hotel, and tourist attraction ... worries about travel with an EV will cease to exist. We know how to do this. No major technological developments are required. We just need to do it.

Those DC fast-chargers on PetroCanada's "electric highway" across Canada have 350kW charging capacity ... beyond what any EV on today's market will take!

By the way, the SAE J1772 and CCS DC fast-chargers don't lock the vehicle into any given battery chemistry. The charging station just supplies AC or DC power to the connector and the car's on-board charger does whatever it needs to do to whatever batteries that the vehicle contains.

That’s thinking inside the box. I disagree

there is no reason batteries can’t be modular. This is a simple concept, it’s used in small batteries today - you might have a toy that has a “AA” battery, and another that delivers a lot more by using 2 or 3 “AA” batteries.

standardization helps with economies of scale, I’m sure bike makers would prefer battery makers to pour in the r&d and build manufacturing capability, standardizing that attracts more participants, reduces risks and ultimately consumer prices.

 

[Brian P]

It will work in some applications. (Around-town scooters of the type shown in the press intro for this concept ... low power demand, not much range needed)

If you have an application where someone wants to get a few hours down the road between recharging stops, or is wandering about in the boonies, or has high power demand ... it's not going to be practical with current knowledge.

20 kWh worth of state-of-the-art li-ion cells (not the battery assembly, just the cells) weighs 75 kg. You're not swapping that without a lift-assist, forklift, or crane!

 

[killvino]

It will work in some applications. (Around-town scooters of the type shown in the press intro for this concept ... low power demand, not much range needed)

If you have an application where someone wants to get a few hours down the road between recharging stops, or is wandering about in the boonies, or has high power demand ... it's not going to be practical with current knowledge.

20 kWh worth of state-of-the-art li-ion cells (not the battery assembly, just the cells) weighs 75 kg. You're not swapping that without a lift-assist, forklift, or crane!

I was thinking the same thing about battery swaps. Even with smaller batteries the weight will be a concern, I would assume all the starting battery swap stations would not be self serve. As a result, the weight and repetitive motion would necessitate mechanical aids. I just had to get a new battery for my f150 and no one is swapping that or even regular 12vs all day without injury.

Another option is having larger main batteries for your day to day, and smaller swappable batteries in addition to your main battery. Let's you have one fixed battery that is harder to steal, will do 100-200kms fully charged be lighter for daily riding but a swappable battery adds ~100kms for your trips.

Biggest issue I see with this idea is implementation of the battery stations and degrading of batteries. The main cost of EVs is the battery, unless they do a rental system, the stations are going to lose out in the end. They need to have good condition batteries but anyone can go swap their degraded crappy one for a nicer battery for little cost.

What routes will these be on? Motorcycle riders don't stick to 400 series or big highways trying to get to destinations.

I don't see this taking off with how many charging stations are already being implemented.

 

[GreyGhost]

I was thinking the same thing about battery swaps. Even with smaller batteries the weight will be a concern, I would assume all the starting battery swap stations would not be self serve. As a result, the weight and repetitive motion would necessitate mechanical aids. I just had to get a new battery for my f150 and no one is swapping that or even regular 12vs all day without injury.

Another option is having larger main batteries for your day to day, and smaller swappable batteries in addition to your main battery. Let's you have one fixed battery that is harder to steal, will do 100-200kms fully charged be lighter for daily riding but a swappable battery adds ~100kms for your trips.

Biggest issue I see with this idea is implementation of the battery stations and degrading of batteries. The main cost of EVs is the battery, unless they do a rental system, the stations are going to lose out in the end. They need to have good condition batteries but anyone can go swap their degraded crappy one for a nicer battery for little cost.

What routes will these be on? Motorcycle riders don't stick to 400 series or big highways trying to get to destinations.

I don't see this taking off with how many charging stations are already being implemented.

Some of those negatives can be reasonably easily solved. For weight issues, part of the battery standard could include mechanical lifting or lowering (eg the charging station has a gantry crane or floor jack to take the weight, you drive the bike into a chock and that allows easy and safe battery removal/replacement). For rental batteries, either put one in the fleet and swap as desired (propane tank rental model) or just go straight rental for your extended range idea (scuba tank model). I still think it is a bad idea for the vast majority of bikes but mainly due to the added weight and packaging constraints imposed by a swap scheme.

 

[Brian P]

Keep in mind that if the thought is to use battery-swaps as a substitute for recharging, you will need a battery-swap station everywhere that you otherwise have a charging station and then some, given that these standardised batteries have to be of manageable size, thus limiting the range of the vehicle ... means more swap stations, including everywhere out in the boonies if you don't want people complaining about places that they can't go.

Perhaps it works in Bangkok where there are vast numbers of scooters that everyone uses for daily transportation and the distance driven isn't really all that high, and the distances involved aren't all that high, and the performance demands of the vehicles aren't all that high, so you could put these battery-swap stations at several places around the city and each one has a hope of seeing enough customers to be viable. (I'm pretty sure that this is the design intent.)

For other situations (like ours) - It is a WHOLE lot easier to just put SAE J1772 Level 2 charging stations everywhere, and the occasional fast-charging station on motorways. Same charging stations for cars and bikes. No paid labour involved. No backbreaking lifting involved. No special tools and fixtures involved. Doesn't matter if it's raining or snowing. Doesn''t have to be inside a building to avoid slips and falls while lifting. Anyone who can handle a self-serve filling station nozzle can handle a self-serve charging plug.

 

[Priller]

It will work in some applications. (Around-town scooters of the type shown in the press intro for this concept ... low power demand, not much range needed)

Perhaps it works in Bangkok where there are vast numbers of scooters that everyone uses for daily transportation and the distance driven isn't really all that high, and the distances involved aren't all that high, and the performance demands of the vehicles aren't all that high, so you could put these battery-swap stations at several places around the city and each one has a hope of seeing enough customers to be viable. (I'm pretty sure that this is the design intent.)

I think you nailed it here. There's a reason Piaggio is in the club. This isn't for the US or Canada, and I'll be very surprised if we see anything here. It's for cities in Europe and Asia, where scooters are used to commute and shop with short-hop trips in urban settings. One thing I saw mentioned is the difficulty people who live in high-density urban environments have with home charging, as they rarely have secured parking. This addresses that problem on two fronts: first, you can swap a battery as necessary without needing to charge; and second, you can bring a battery indoors to be charged with a plug-in station. As a bonus, it helps reduce theft, as a potential thief would need to provide their own battery to ride something away.

The other market for this is courier and delivery services, who can quickly swap batteries to keep a bike on the road. Motorcycle couriers are big business in European cities, as vans just get stuck in traffic.

The upshot of this could be a significant reduction in emissions from places that struggle the most with air quality, so I'm really hoping this takes off. It could make a meaningful difference in a lot of places...

 

[Delboy]

Nice for the off pavement crowd to have. Don't think they have touring bikes in mind.
They have to see a threat from increasingly capable eBikes.

Best Off-Road Electric Bikes ~ Top 10 Off-Road EBikes In 2022 (reviewed)

To help you find the best off-road electric bike, we have tried out a multitude of top ebikes, testing to ensure they featured fantastic shocks and suspension

www.gadgetreview.com

Nice. There is a programmer in our office that has one of these for his daily commute. He has the Segway 260 like the one in the picture. He also uses it at the weekend for trails. It actually looks like fun

His one way distance to work is around 25 miles and he gets to and from work with enough power to go out and pick up some lunch all on a single charge so its very practical - for this use case. And he's not sitting in grid lock like me.

Cost is a bit of a downer, I think it was around $4k. Still, I wouldn't mind one myself

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