Renew Magazine

Often the next step after looking at a bike is trying it out, but unfortunately the opportunity never presented itself and I returned home wondering what it would be like to use one of these amazing machines for real.

I started looking at them on the internet and discovered that I could purchase an imported Bakfiets cargo bike quite easily, but the prices were enough to make my eyes water.

Birth of a shed project
Somehow the idea of owning a cargo bike just wouldn’t go away and six months later I hit on an answer—I’d build my own! Perhaps I have too much spare time, but all of those shed projects have to start somewhere.

What about raw materials? During an early morning walk around the local streets I noticed that the piles of junk waiting for the next council kerbside collection included several bikes, in various states of repair. Some were complete wrecks, while others were in reasonable condition and even too good for what I had in mind. I returned home with a couple of likely candidates: a venerable Malvern Star ‘racer’ and a ‘supermarket’ mountain bike, complete with sprung fork.

A conventional cargo bike has a smaller front wheel, typically about 20 inches (51 centimetres). This is for practical purposes, allowing the front fork to fit in front of the cargo box and making it easier to arrange a steering linkage. However, among my collection of ‘it’ll be useful some day’ bits and pieces, I had a front wheel complete with a 200 watt motor, which seemed like a worthwhile addition to the project. I couldn’t see any way of building the motor into a smaller wheel, so I decided that my cargo bike would have a full size front wheel.

The station is powered by 2.7kW PV panels that have been fitted on the station’s roof. The station is fitted with a ChargePoint, which is compatible with all major electric vehicles on the market or about to come on the market. EV drivers will be able to locate and navigate themselves to the station with an iPhone or Android app.

The project has been realised through a Green Precincts Grant from the Federal Department of Sustainability and is a collaboration with the Victorian Department of Transport, Delta Energy Systems and Q-Cells Australia.

The solar PV system that will generate clean and renewable electricity to power electric vehicles was donated by Delta who provided the inverter and Q-Cells who provided the solar modules.

The station is part of the Victoria Government’s Electric Vehicle Trial, created to better understand the process, timelines and barriers for making to transition to electric vehicle technology. The trial is being delivered by the Department of Transport until mid 2014 and 180 households and 60 company fleets will be involved.

Go to www.ceres.org.au

ZERO Race is the brainchild of Swiss adventurer Louis Palmer, known for circumnavigating the globe in his Solar Taxi.

Some didn’t think the event was possible, thinking there would be no electricity to be found along parts of the route. The race rules were that teams had to travel 250km at 80km/h then be able to charge fully in two hours. The days would be split in two drives, with a battery charge over lunch. All very simple in theory!

Australia’s entrant was TREV, the bright green three-wheeled electric vehicle borrowed from the University of South Australia by an independent team of enthusiasts, environmentalists, adventurers and Alternative Technology Association members known as TeamTREV. Internally the car was stripped then equipped with a new motor, batteries, suspension and electronics designed to take it around the world. We purchased $400 of wind power to be fed into the grid while we were driving and pulling dirty power from the grid elsewhere.

The race started in Geneva, Switzerland at the UN headquarters on August 22 and travelled 7000km through Germany, Austria, Hungary and the Ukraine. When I met the race in Russia the crew was exhausted; it had been a massive effort from the beginning to get sponsorship, get the car together and get it registered and to the start line on time.

My journey

I met the race in Tula around 200km before Moscow. There had been a mistake with distances for this day meaning we got into Moscow at 5am, my welcome to the race!

We headed due east out of Moscow through the beautiful and mystical cities of Nizniy, Novgorod and Kazan, passing the mighty Volga River. The days were demanding: the schedule was tight through Russia with media events during lunch time, charging generally in the town square and again on arrival in our overnight destinations, bad roads and thick traffic slowed down by the endless line of trucks.

Onward and eastward we crossed the Ural mountains which divides Europe and Asia. I will remember the freezing wind and snow and the battery temperature sensors reading 0°C. This race is definitely a great test of an electric car, with the cars tested in all conditions.

Driving through the Asian part of Russia into Chelyabinsk, which is the world’s dumping ground for nuclear waste, we passed within 60km of the most radioactive place on earth, a lake where waste was simply poured in. We were told if you were to spend one hour here the chances are you would drop dead! We spent that night sleeping in a disused sanitarium for radioactively exposed children.

Crossing the border into Kazakstan we were all a little nervous heading into the unknown. I had two folders full of official papers, one for me and one for the car. It was a half day process to get us and the cars through. The biggest hold-up was that border officials could not believe the number plate was ‘TREV’; apparently it was the first time they had seen a number plate without any numbers in it.

Kazakstan was where the real adventure started. There was no charging or accommodation organised, no plan, no guides to help us—just a map and a date we had to cross the Chinese border 2500km away.

This was truly the wild East; think yurts on the side of the road, wild horses, cattle across the road, seemingly endless deserts, very long driving legs, terrible roads full of pot holes, sometimes not seeing the support vehicle for three days at a time. One night the town I stopped in had no beds so I slept in TREV whilst I plugged in at an old barn. The charger kept the car warm overnight and it was suprisingly comfortable!

I made a brief stopover in Atana, the booming new capital city built with oil money. It’s amazing to think there was nothing there 10 years ago. We had a chance to catch up on sleep and maintenance on the cars. I was very lucky after hitting a pot hole that the only damage was to one of the shock absorbers. The last leg in Kazakstan was through the traditional capital Almaty, a very beautiful historic city with a huge mountain range backdrop and which was very green, almost tropical, like an oasis in a country full of desert.

Crossing the border into China at Khorgas was another half-day affair. The only way they would believe the number plate was to look for themselves, which lead to another 20 minutes of photos!
It was a cultural shock to go from a very poor country to the booming economic powerhouse that is China. After we changed language and changed electrical plugs we thought we were ready for the switch. Yet, it seems Chinese electrical standards are non-existent. We melted cables, blew up powerpoints and made switchboards so hot that they smoked. The second night I plugged in at the hotel’s reception the outlet caught alight. After the ensuing argument, where I tried to explain it was the fault of the hotel’s wiring not my car, I was kicked out of the hotel!

I had to change my tack towards charging. I bought my own outlets and thick cable and would wire them direct into the switchboards, live, connecting direct onto the incoming supply. It worked well, so from then on I looked for switchboards, not power outlets.

The motorways were generally great through China, except the parts that were under construction. We sometimes encountered detours onto dirt roads 100km long. TREV was designed for city commuting, not driving around the world, but stood up well to the dirt roads that would test most 4WDs!

We headed through the Gobi desert, again faced with long days of nothingness. This is a serious desert though, the second largest in the world. After spending the night below sea level in Turpan, we spent a very hot day behind the wheel with the stretches between towns getting longer. One leg there was nothing but sand and road for 150km. Not realising this on the map I nearly misjudged it and only just crawled into town with 7km left in the batteries.

In the city of Lanzhou I worked on a new charging method: plugging in at a carwash would mean paying for the car to get washed whilst getting a free charge.

Passing along the Great Wall of China we were travelling the ancient silk route, with more broken roads and more mountain passes. We did fit in some sightseeing, stopping in Xian to see the terracotta warriors, but this meant we had to make up the time, so I drove through the night, arriving at the hotel at 5am. I had a lot of trouble with charging that night, getting a total of one hour of sleep, which I could not catch up on as the distances in the last two days were massive.

On the last leg I opted to drive straight past the last hotel and drive through the night so I could be first into Shanghai. I hit the last motorway and the sun was getting higher in the sky. What a feeling of euphoria weaving through morning peak hour traffic and overtaking cars at over 100km/h.

Seeing the gradual change from Europe to Asia was the adventure of a lifetime.

Discover the full ZERO Race story at www.zero-race.com

With most major car manufacturers having EVs in the pipeline or already on the road, a large number of EVs will be trundling around in the next decade. While they may not make up the majority of vehicles on the roads, as petrol prices continue to climb the incentive to go electric will become irresistible for many people, especially those who commute relatively short distances.

What batteries EVs will be using in 2020 is up for debate but the majority will be using a lithium chemistry of some sort. There have been a number of advances in laboratories around the world in recent years, especially with nanostructure modifications to battery electrodes. These advancements have shown considerable promise in increasing battery capacity, from a few 10s of per cent to anything up to 1000 per cent. In around 10 years we should expect to see electric vehicles with ranges of 300km or more and charge times of only a few minutes.

The biggest hurdle will be charging infrastructure and the increased demand on the electricity grid. However, manufacturers are already looking at making EVs smart grid compatible so that they can act as energy stores to provide peak loads when they are parked and fully charged. Combined with inductive charging bays in carparks and domestic garages, where you won’t even have to remember to plug in to recharge, the often feared running out of charge will be a very rare occurrence.

There’s no problems with electric vehicles that can’t be overcome with some intelligent thought. As part of that intelligent thought, let’s hope the trend towards large SUV style vehicles will be reversed and we see smaller, more personal vehicles such as the Smart fortwo EV pictured here.

Big batteries

The world is powered by batteries. Lance Turner looks at future battery advances.

Battery technology over the next decade will tend to trend towards higher capacities in smaller volumes and with less weight—in short, higher energy densities. The main driver for this will be the need for higher capacity batteries for portable electronics, as well as for electric vehicles. While there are a number of interesting battery chemistries being worked on, for larger scale storage, lead-acid and lithium chemistries will still be the mainstays, with a trend towards lithium as the batteries become cheaper. Indeed, by 2020 we may even see the end of the lead-acid battery if lithium and competing technologies can become cheap enough.

While many people are predicting that lithium batteries may in fact become more expensive as demand rises, they seem to be overlooking the ingenuity of the human race. There’s vast quantities of lithium available in seawater, and while it isn’t economically viable to extract it now compared to land-based sources, history has shown that when faced with such problems it’s only a matter of time before it’s solved.

However, advances have been made in the efficiency of battery design, with several prototype designs providing huge increases in capacity for the same or less materials used. This has become possible with the redesign of battery electrodes and the inclusion of specialist materials such as carbon nanotubes and foams and silicon microfibres. While these are exotic materials at present, in time they will become as common as batteries themselves.

Large (utility) scale storage is now becoming realistic without huge lead-acid battery banks with the increased availability of flow batteries, such as the zinc bromine batteries from Redflow (www.redflow.com.au), Premium Power (www.premiumpower.com) and ZBB (www.zbbenergy.com). Redflow’s largest battery, the 120kVA, 240kWh model, is designed for large-scale network storage and stabilisation. There are also smaller units, down to 5kW, 10kWh models suitable for RAPS and backup power use. By 2020, much larger systems will be available that will allow utilities to flatten out demand and provide a reliable method of stabilising the varying output from renewables.

For smaller applications, lithium will most likely still be the mainstay and, as mentioned, advancements in this technology will see smaller, higher capacity batteries using less lithium. One company, Excellatron (www.excellatron.com), has recently opened a pilot plant producing their thin film lithium cells which are claimed to have almost twice the energy density and power density of current lithium cells. But more amazingly, they have demonstrated that some designs of their cells can retain 95 per cent of capacity after 45,000 cycles.

The pilot plant can produce 10,000 cells per month, with a target of ten times that. If the technology lives up to expectations, lithium batteries will have moved into a whole new arena.

Some battery technologies do away with one electrode altogether, replacing it with oxygen taken from the air. The most common of these is the zinc-air battery normally used in hearing aids, but lithium-air batteries are also being developed. Fluidic Energy, a spinoff from Arizona State University, is working on large-scale batteries that use ionic liquids for their electrolytes instead of aqueous solutions. The hope is that low cost, high capacity batteries will be the result.

Whatever the technology, by 2020 you can bet we will have low cost, low toxicity batteries with capacities that make current technologies look feeble. Electric vehicles with 500 kilometre ranges that can be recharged in minutes will be commonplace.

Read the full article in ReNew 116

The SUV has a 380 volt, 35kWh lithium titanate battery pack that gives it a range of up to 208km. The vehicle has a 0-100km/h time of under 10 seconds and a top speed of around 150km/h, making it a versatile vehicle. Both the SUV and SUT are front-wheel-drive vehicles.

The Phoenix SUV comes in four models, with the top level, the Luxury, having a full range of features, so it should satisfy most gadget-hungry people.

While it would have been great to see Phoenix produce something a bit smaller than a two tonne plus vehicle as their first car, it goes to show that the majority of practical electric vehicles that will soon hit the roads won’t come from the major auto makers, but instead from smaller start-ups who are not restricted in their thinking about vehicle design. www.phoenixmotorcars.com

If you look at what’s happening in other parts of that world, you can’t help but be jealous of some of the amazing high speed rail networks operating both inside countries and between co-operating countries.

High speed rail has many advantages over other forms of long-distance mass transit. Emissions per passenger are much lower than flying or driving and with train speeds approaching those of airliners, transit times are similar to flying. Of course, driving can’t even come close to these sorts of speeds. Cars burn fossil fuels while most high speed trains are electrically powered, often at least partially from renewable sources such as hydro power.

In this article we will take a look at what’s being done around the world to provide viable options for long distance travel. We will also take a look at air travel and what the future might hold in terms of greater efficiency and reduced emissions.

Firstly, we should start by looking at what an electric bike actually is. There are two broad categories of design. The first is of a standard style of bike, such as a mountain bike or similar, which has fitted to it a motor and battery, along with some form of speed controller. These are quite common and come in a range of sizes, with many varied drive systems.

The other type of electric bike is known as a ‘step-through’ bike. These more resemble a moped than a regular bike and are often designed so that the motor does all the work—the pedals are not much more than ornaments. Because of this, many riders of such bikes have run afoul of the law, as while they may have a motor power output within the legal 200 watt limit (more on this later), they are considered to be a motor scooter and as such need to be registered. However, because they generally are not designed to be road registered, they don’t meet Australian Design Rules (ADR) requirements and so cannot be registered.
Whether this style of e-bike is considered illegal in your area seems to depend on the powers that be. Some people ride them without problems, others have been pulled over and been told they can no longer ride their bike. This is a rather expensive problem as you are then left with a bike that is designed purely for on-road use, yet can no longer be used on the road.

This issue seems to come about from the more open definition of what a bike is in the countries these types of bikes are made. Of course, these are also countries where bike use is actually encouraged, rather than in countries like Australia, where bike riders have to deal with roads without bike lanes, motorists with bad attitudes (not to say there aren’t bike riders with the same problem) and poorly thought out and overly draconian regulations.

Like a normal bike, e-bikes are used for commuting, car replacement, mobility for less able and elderly, and even just for fun. For many people, they provide the extra assistance needed to get up that steep hill, or a sense of assurance that should you become too tired (or strain a muscle), the motor can get you home.

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