Earlier today while talking with a colleague she asked me for advice about different kinds of electric vehicles. She's thinking about getting some kind of scooter to tide her over until full size electric cars are available (e.g. Chevy Volt) and since I've owned several small electric vehicles that probably means I have some useful advice to give.
Let's start by cutting the field into some major clumps:-
- Bicycles
- Scooters that pretend to be bicycles (have pedals)
- Scooters with max speed of 30 miles/hr
- Scooters and motorcycles above 30 miles/hr
- Three wheelers that are car-like but due to three wheels are motorcycles
- Full size cars
What I've been doing over the years buying different EV's is to experiment with different solutions to this problem: How to stop using oil and cut as much of my driving as possible. My focus has been the practical daily driving because if I'm going to replace my car for the vast majority of my travel, the replacement vehicle had better be able to replicate my driving needs.
The first thing I did was to understand the distances I drive on a regular basis. The first time I did this I got a small notebook, kept it in the car, and recorded every trip, every purchase of gasoline, the date, and annotations of the purpose. At the time I did this I found that on a regular basis I had days driving 70 miles per day, due to a 30 mile each way commute through the worst section of Silicon Valley's highways. My solution for that commute problem was to move to a different city closer to my job ... In any case I regularly repeat the distance gauging but not so strictly done as with a pad of paper. It can be as simple as noting your odometer reading through the day and especially for specific trips you regularly take.
The distance you're driving on a regular basis will then determine what direction you take in finding a solution. For example a small EV is not going to have the range to handle a 30 mile each way commute.
Bicycles: Bicycling can be utilitarian, bicycling doesn't have to be recreation, bicycling doesn't have to be load bicycles in the back of a truck and drive to a park so you can ride the bicycle. Bicycling can be for commuting, it can be for grocery shopping, etc. Especially if you add a trailer to your bicycle. When I go grocery shopping it's with an electric bicycle hauling a trailer that's big enough for four bags of groceries. The trip takes about .1 kilowatt-hour of electricity, an extremely miniscule cost.
Electric Bicycles generally look like regular bicycles, but they will have an electric motor and a battery pack. Sometimes the motor is built into the hub of one wheel other times it's a chain drive going to the rear wheel. I strongly recommend finding a bicycle with a NiMH or Li-ION battery pack as my experience with lead-acid batteries on electric bicycles is not so good. The weight of lead acid batteries is not terribly compatible with bicycling, whereas the other battery chemistries have enough power density by weight that it's a much nicer experience.
My current favorite bicycle is an Electra Townie 21 with a Wilderness Energy hub motor. I've installed a high powered lighting system, a really nice power monitoring dashboard, and the relaxed riding posture really feels fabulous to me. The bicycle goes 15-20 miles per hour pretty easily, it uses .3 kilowatt-hours each way for my commute, a miniscule amount of energy, and the commute takes 45 minutes each way. The battery pack (Li-ION) I use on this bike seems it would give a 25 mile range but I haven't tried to go that far because my butt gets sore after 15 miles.
The 45 minutes for the commute is a little problematic making it difficult to fit into my schedule. However one way to rationalize the commute time is it gives you a chance for exercise. Some bicycles go faster and perhaps would get me to work more quickly.
There's a class of vehicle where the maker claims it's a bicycle, but it looks like a scooter. They have pedals but the pedals are mostly for show and to help the thing fit a legal definition as a bicycle. These scooter-bikes are larger, have on-board cargo, larger batteries, great lighting systems, etc.
Some brands to look for in electric bicycles are: iZip, Currie, BionX, Wilderness Energy, Go Hub, Crystalyte
On the V is for Voltage forum the most popular brand is from X-treme scooters. There are many owners of the XB-600 and XB-700li which are these scooter-bikes. The XB-700li, judging from the pictures, has very ample cargo capacity and a lithium-ION battery pack giving it a great range.
Electric bicycles, even these scooter-bikes, do not require special licensing or registration.
Electric Scooters: Scooters are defined to have a floor board and a step-through design, but the name has been applied to other bikes besides the traditional scooter design. One clumping of scooters are limited to 30 miles per hour while other scooters can go faster than 30 miles/hr. In some states this 30 miles/hr cutoff means the owner has less licensing requirements to meet than if the bike had a higher maximum speed.
The higher speed makes scooters capable of traveling among the cars on the road, whereas electric bicycles with their slower speed should remain on the side of the road.
It's easy to have a trunk on scooters and if the scooter has a floor-board it can be used to carry cargo. Some scooters have hooks to hang bags, large trunks, the ability to hang saddlebags, etc. Scooters have motorcycle-quality lighting systems and in many ways behave as a motorcycle.
Range can be from 15 miles up to 50 miles depending on battery chemistry.
Some brand names to look for are: Zapino, X-treme, EFUN, EVT (but not EVT America), Oxygen Lepton, Vectrix
The Vectrix is an especially interesting scooter. They call it a Maxi-Scooter, it will go nearly highway speed and gets a very long range, can climb mountains, and the Vectrix owners on the V is for Voltage forum are reporting phenomenal results with this scooter.
Electric Motorcycles tend to look like regular motorcycles but that's because most existing electric motorcycles are home built conversions of gas motorcycles. There are essentially zero commercial electric motorcycles available. Several makers are getting ready to sell electric motorcycles but they're all giving different "Real Soon Now" type of estimates.
I recently talked with the staff of Electric Motorsport and took a real close look at their GPR-S motorcycle. It looks very nice and it uses a custom designed frame meant to be used for an electric motorcycle, however it looks for all intents to be a regular motorcycle. They are right now in the process of setting up a production line to assemble their first batch of motorcycles and they should start selling them in September. They use a Li-ION battery pack and claim to do up to 65 miles/hr and up to 60 miles range (but not at the same time).
I own a Lectra motorcycle which I refurbished. It is using a lead-acid battery pack and delivers up to 47 miles per hour speed and up to 13 miles range (but not at the same time). It is a very small motorcycle and handles like a dream. The Lectra was originally made by Electric Motor Bike in the 1990s, and the frame was purpose-designed as an electric motorcycle. Approximately 100 of the Lectra's were built before ZAP bought EMB and ran it into the ground.
Electric motorcycles use motorcycle style cargo, such as trunks and saddlebags. That makes the cargo capacity pretty minimal.
Three Wheeled Motorcycles fall into an interesting category. The government apparently meant for this category to cover the 'trike' motorcycles but some vehicle makers noticed this category, saw it requires less stringent safety and crash testing than regular cars, and are driving their three wheeled "cars" through this gaping hole in the regulations. ZAP's Xebra was the first of these but the Aptera and the Triac are both coming along with their own take on three wheeled electric vehicles.
With three wheels they register as a motorcycle and motorcycles generally don't have any safety requirements. Motorcycles, right? But the Xebra, Aptera and Triac all have steering wheels, enclosed cabins, seats, seatbelts, doors, windows, a roof, sound systems, etc. For all intents and purposes they behave like a car. In a way this is a hole in the regulations in that car-like vehicles should follow car rules. But then other loopholes have allowed SUV's to be lumped with regulations meant for utility trucks, which is what allow the SUV's to be the horrible gas guzzlers they are.
The Xebra is available now, however the speed is low enough it cannot go on the highway. However the speed is high enough to make the Xebra practical for a wide range of driving needs. The Xebra is much more practical than the NEV's and due to their limited speed (25 miles/hr) I've never considered NEV's a viable solution. The Xebra however looks to be an attractive solution, especially if you modify it to 84 volt or 96 volt operation and install larger sized batteries.
The BugE is sold as an inexpensive kit which appears to be very simple to assemble. It is a little odd looking with a bulbous clear front wind-shield, and it is not entirely enclosed. It is a single person vehicle and it has a decent amount of cargo space.
The Triac and Aptera however are highway capable vehicles with great range. The Triac is due to be available for purchase any time now, while the Aptera still has a short time before they begin being delivered to customers. The Aptera corporation has pre-sold a couple thousand vehicles!
The Corbin Sparrow was an earlier three wheeled car-cycle. It is a single passenger vehicle with a design that came direct from Toon Town. It does highway speed but due to the lead-acid battery pack does a paltry 20-30 miles range. Myers Motors has done a redesign of the Sparrow and calls it the NmG, for No More Gas.
Full size electric cars are not being sold however a large number exist. In the 1990's the car companies were selling some EV's due to California requirements for zero emission vehicles. However the car companies bitched and moaned and kicked and screamed and fought the regulations and eventually talked CARB into relenting. Someone in that story was a traitor.
Some people build their own electric cars, and a few of the cars built in the 1990's survived the murder spree conducted by the car companies and their crushers.
Tesla Motors has famously designed an ultra expensive high speed sports car that totally smashes all preconceptions about electric cars. Are electric cars ugly slow golf carts? Nope, an electric car can go 0-60 in 4 seconds, go up to 150 miles/hr and travel 250 miles per charge. That's enough range and speed for nearly anybody, I'd say. And the response has been fabulous and it opened the market to peoples eyes, they could see that in truth electric vehicles can be really good. However their car is beyond the budget of most people.
Some other companies are promising to begin delivering electric cars to the market. Not all of these are from the major car companies. Phoenix Motors has a very nice looking pickup truck also powered by lithium-ion batteries that gets fabulous range and speed.
What's made the difference is the new availability of large format lithium-ion batteries. These batteries have sufficient power density to let a car carry enough energy to do a credible job of driving around a metropolitan area. While the recharge time is enough to interfere with taking really long trips, a car with a 200 mile range clearly can satisfy even the longest of commutes or the most radical of hopping around town.
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