So here is the idea, fuel too expensive to burn is coming, so how
about a DIY electric bicycle?
Should be nice and efficient, minimum extra mass per pound of
rider, ticks all the eco boxes, ticks all the cheap boxes, why
not?
Especially for me, who hasn't pushed pedals around since I
was at school, a frame is just a way of carrying an engine,
I'd die if I had to pedal a mile right? Besides, pushbikes
are just too slooooow...
Well, no, this is like making plans for how you are going to live
in Africa, when you are sat at home in England. What you are
actually going to plan for is an English lifestyle.
A lot of the electric vehicle options out there fall down because
they "only" have a range of 40 miles and
"only" have a top speed of 30 mph, and we all say that
if only they had a range of 150 miles and a top speed of 75 mph
we would buy them in a flash, really, we would.
And then you get to Africa, your cooker consumer more current
than the supply can provide, your fridge is too small and should
have been running on kerosene anyway, plus you'll be buying
powdered milk, tinned goods and fresh produce. It's not
England, and all your plans amount to nothing. You'd have
been better off arriving with nothing.
Our attitude to electric and alternative vehicles is the same.
Pre internal combustion the rule here in England was one market
town could not be less than six to ten miles from another market
town, because 12 to 20 miles was the limit for a one day round
trip, on foot or with pony and cart. Simple as that.
Right there you have your low tech, lead acid battery, electric
vehicle performance, it has the range and at an average 20 mph it
has the speed for a maximum 1 hour journey each way.
Claiming that this "isn't enough" is missing the
point and catching the bullet, your electric vehicle does not
need a 150 mile range and 75 mph because both of these factors
are by-products of the age of so cheap as to be essentially free
hydrocarbon energy and the internal combustion engine.
Now that that age is waning, attempting to hang on to the
by-products of that age, such as the 40 mile commute or the 75
mph journey in a private vehicle, is setting yourself up for a
lot of pain.
My dad was one of the greatest engineers I ever knew, he grew up
around Rudge Ulster motorcycles and stuff like that, one of my
earliest memories is riding pillion on a BSA C12 through the
Malay jungle.
More than once, my dad made the point to me that as far as
engineering was concerned the materials were the same, the skills
were the same, the real revolution between early (er) machinery
like the bike above and more modern ones were the tyres and the
lubricants.
I can go out and buy tyres and lubricants that absolute cutting
edge world beating racers couldn't even dream of as science
fiction a generation or two before.
I am old enough to have run my first bikes on Castrol R, a
vegetable oil, that was at the time far superior to any of the
mineral oils, and a smell that will never leave you. Today even
the cheapest of the synthetic motorcycle oils will utterly blow
away Castrol R, and Castrol R simply isn't good enough to use
in a modern Japanese bike engine and expect it to last.
So by and large, while people like my dad were pottering around
on Rudge's and Nortons and BSA, there were those, they were
rare, but they were out there, who were going very fast indeed,
especially on the roads of the day, using the lubricants of the
day, and running the tyres of the day....
I once did 130 mph on a Vincent Rapide, entirely original, new
old stock 1930's tyres and tubes and all that good stuff...
modern bikers will tell you that much of the ride is down to the
primitive frame, primitive suspension, primitive geometry, easy
to say if you've never ridden a vinnie fast, dead easy to say
if you've never ridden a vinnie fast on 1940's style (eg
thin, and not so smooth or cambered) blacktop.
But riding those same roads to work every day as an apprentice on
his Rudge (long before I was born of course) my dad would be
doing his 8.5 mile back roads journey at 30 mph, with the odd
spurt up to 50 mph, and it was enough.
Today, the "viable commute" distance from any town is
no longer a mere 8 or 9 miles, even here is the UK you don't
have to go very far to find people travelling 30 or 40 miles each
way. Take any business with say 40 staff and maybe 10 of them can
actually walk to work distance wise, maybe 1 in 4 are
"local".
These sorts of daily journeys are only viable in a world where
oil energy was so cheap as to be nearly free, because a
by-product of such a world is a vast catchment area for every
employer, supplier, retailer, wholesaler, etc, and this in effect
means that while your journey time might equal my dad's when
he was an apprentice, you absolutely have to travel three or four
times the distance, which means travelling far faster, which
means needing far faster roads, which means even more miles...
Suddenly the commute isn't a thing you do, the commute become
a part of the machinery, in effect you start work the minute you
embark on your journey.
But...
When oil energy stops being so cheap as to be essentially free,
sitting there and saying the electric vehicle must have
150 mile range and do 75 mph is like sitting in England and
planning a life in Africa, because simple human nature dictates
that all your plans will revolve around keeping everything the
same, whereas simple fact dictates that practically nothing will
be the same.
Insisting that electric vehicles, such as could be, and are
available simply aren't good enough is to UTTERLY MISS THE
POINT.
It is the commute, and the attitude that a 40 mile range and 30
mph isn't good enough, that is the problem, that is
non-sustainable, that simply will not fly, no matter how much you
want it to, no matter how much the continuation of your English
lifestyle in Africa depends on it, no matter how unwilling or
unprepared you are for the consequences.
When my dad was a boy apprentice, people did travel fast, and
people did travel far, they just did not do it twice a day, that
was unsustainable.
You worked and shopped and socialised and lived within about ten
miles of home.
If you were a shopkeeper or business much of your produce and all
of your employees and customers were within that ten mile radius.
If you lived in Africa
here and the nearest shops were
here and a lot of the journey was along unmetalled roads then
you went shopping once a fortnight or once a week at the most.
The USA as I understand it has a serious problem with the whole
issue of suburban communities, however, this applies to cities
too, and the fact is that wishes ain't horses, and it really
doesn't matter how much it is going to hurt when oil hits 200
bucks a barrel, and then 300 bucks a barrel.
You either live within 10 or so miles of your work and your shops
(and by extension the bulk of their supplies and infrastructure)
or you don't.
"You don't" as in you don't live, you don't
survive, you don't support a roof over your head, and all
that goes with that.
You want to come and live here, which is a place that should
survive 300 dollars a barrel better than many, the barriers
aren't going to be, as they are now, can you afford a
stupidly expensive house to live in, quarter of a million pounds
for ex council houses for god's sake, and the barriers
aren't going to be getting yourself here or paperwork and
visas, the barriers are going to be "what are you going to
do when you get here?" Because, there are only so many jobs.
I have an Ohm pedelec. It's really fun to ride and
I'm pretty sure the only thing faster I could commute to work
using would be teleportation. OK, Truthfully I have a
Ducati and if one is extraordinarily caviler with traffic laws it
is possible to get back & forth through the city faster but
this isn't something I'm particularly willing to do very
often. I haven't really tried to find out the true
range but I have no doubt you could drive 70km on charge even if
you leaned on the electric quite a lot. Having as
much fun with it as I do, I think there is a far larger market
for them than anyone realizes... particularly in the face of $200
per barrel oil.
One thing I am interested in looking into is adding a bank of
super caps to my bike. I bike mostly in town and I imagine
that super caps would handle the regenerative breaking and then
resuming more efficiently. I don't thing they would
have to be all that big either. I can only generate 22, 60,
93, or 105 watts and typically I don't brake for very long
I also had been thinking along the lines of an electrified
motorcycle... mostly because my American friends recoil in horror
when I talk about bicycles. When you get up in speed the
aerodynamics becomes more & more important and let's face
it, anyone who isn't willing to peddle a bicycle isn't
likely to be very aerodynamic. Also the limitation for the
speed isn't motor / battery technology it is your local
traffic law... there are 350W in-hub motors & 38V 12AH
batteries available now and those surpass many local traffic laws
and then require helmets, tags, insurance, and more attention
from bored constabulary.
Another consideration is weight. Just looking at my
Ducati... and imagining it without the engine or fuel tank.
The front forks and swing arm are far too heavy. I
haven't looked at the forks on mopeds or scooters but maybe
they would be more appropriate.
Just one final note: I've seen many websites showing
motorcycles converted to electric and I have to say while I
applaud these people's ingenuity and industriousness... they
have absolutely no sense of dignity or style.
Many of us, even in the USA, would love to be those
"locals" you describe. But the problem is not the
"size" of the USA, nor "the whole issue of
suburban communities".
Size of the country is irrelevant unless you intend to cross it
on a regular basis. And, there just isn't enough room in
cities for the USA population. Hence, "suburbs".
The problem is that areas where rentals are affordable have few
jobs. And areas where there are jobs are often far away. So, if
you are in a position of power in the job market, you can arrange
housing and job close to each other. If your position is
marginal, you have to settle for what you can get. The people in
power have often moved the workplaces close into the country-club
areas where *they* live, essentially outsourcing fuel use to the
peons. The higher the range of your possible commute, the more
likely you are to be employed.
"And, there just isn't enough room in cities for the USA
population. Hence, 'suburbs'."
The reason there isn't enough room in the cities is because
we stopped making room. I lived in a town of about 80,000 people
in Colorado there where maybe literally 10 buildings in the whole
town more than 5 stories tall. Most buildings where built as a
single floor and had plenty of room between each building. This
is what causes urban sprawl. Everybody wants to live a long way
away from their neighbor and they do, relatively speaking.
When no one wants to live in the city, the city stops existing
and becomes all suburban.
Now when I go to Denver, I can see downtown for miles and when I
get there I can find housing, it is actually about the same price
for an apartment there as it is in the small town, except there
is also about 40 restaurants, and a bunch of theaters of all
kinds, many within walking distance. When they are not close
enough to walk to, then the bus and light rail is and can be used
to get to just about anywhere that is downtown. So the real
mental change that needs to happen is the switch from hiding away
in the 'burbs so we can all have "space" and
getting used to the idea that a shared wall with the neighbors
means that we can also get benifits like: entertainment; being
able to actually walk home from the bar; in Denver, being able to
walk home from a baseball game or taking a short light rail ride
home from a football game; eating at the good restaurants; going
to the good museums; and being able to go to all the good shows.
All of that and you save money on gas for each of those trips
because you can leave your vehicle parked in the garage and if
you can avoid the 30 minutes to an hour of driving to all of
this, you will also feel less stressed and less likely to get a
speeding ticket.
Of course this mean building new multi-story building and then
making sure that the urban areas are taken care of so that they
do not turn into slums. Luckily having everything in a small area
also means fewer buildings to maintain. As for the power, let
'em rot in the country, <fantasy>If everyone just
bucked up and demanded fair wages that compensated them for their
travel they might be able to keep those people coming out there
to clean their balls for them.</fantasy> Those people at
the country club pay a lot for their memberships, maybe some of
that could actually go to the staff.
.....and some sort of control and basic human needs come into
play when you start thinking about more than a small building,
they become very expensive. Very expensive, especially high rises
which today take in a lot of cases multiple partners and
investment concerns and complex deals to get put up, then the
rents are high because they not only have to cover costs and
maintenance, but also turn a handsome profit for the
shareholders. It is *expensive* to live in cities, you have to
pay everyone there at very high global rates because they made
this a forced global labor arbitrage economy, and it isn't
sustainable. And everything they need in the big cities has to be
trucked or piped in in an expensive manner to expensive stores
and shops and needs oodles more expensive "governance".
We can't all be donald trumps, and for a lot of people having
some green around them is of primary concern as well. Suburbia
after ww2 expanded actual mass numbers of owners as opposed to
the three thousand year old system of a few royal fatcats and a
lot of serfs/renters. Ya, we are stuck now temporarily because of
transpo costs, but they-the petroleum goons- overreached
themselves and the alternatives will be developed, happening as
we speak, look at just the interest on this board.
Places in big cities that are cheap invariably turn into
landlord/renter crime infested ghettoes of ultimate despair. And
the jobs keep poofing away, meaning...how do you make a living?
Been checking the latest industrial retail stats? Tons of big
retail chains are going bankrupt or in trouble. Tons of white
collart layoffs all over, pick a white collar industry. Like
before, we can't all be donald trumps and we can't exist
just retailing stuff at each other, the old phrase is "doing
each others laundry", because real wealth is mined, grown,
or manufactured from the other two, and that is IT, and that is
wealth *production*, wealth creation, everything else is wealth
skimming/rearranging/managing/governing, etc, but it is not
wealth production, it merely dilutes the money pool. they try to
get around that by over inflating the currency, and as you can
see, that isn't working for them, because uit violates the
laws of physics! You can't "declare" wealth! If you
could, zimbabwe would be the richest place on the planet now,
they print up money above and beyond what can be represented by
their true wealth creation by the truckload. It will never work
in the long run, A to Z, america to zimbabwe, you just can't
say your pile of poker chips is worth a lot of real stuff, not
for long anyway, eventually the idiots who have been trading real
stuff for pictures of dead folks on pieces of paper get wise to
that. may take them awhile, but it'll happen, inevitable.
And huge cities trying to exist now in the declining west on
massive wealth rearranging and trying to milk the really
artificially promoted no scarcity digital bits things and toxic
waster paper products are part of why we have this huge economic
mess now, since they decided we could do away with the bulk of
day to day tangibles manufacturing and so on. That great
experiment has about run its course, you are experiencing the
last dregs of the good old days right now, with all the benfits
you like there, and the proof is in all the headlines, those
doofuses have "screwed the pooch" now, there is no fix
for it, none whatsoever, the decline will continue unabated, and
it is quite clear where the real growth and wealth is, and where
it is shifting and fast, and that is over to the nations that are
embracing the manufacturing and true wealth production,and thats
why those folks run billions and combined trillion dollar balance
of trade surpluses and have more trillions to use for soverign
investment funds, etc, while the nations that shafted their
manufacturing don't and are trying to wall paper over the
cracks in the financial disaster tsunami that is coming on hard
now with paper work shuffling and weird press releases that say
nothing important but sure "sound" important.
The all retail and alleged "service" economy is a
*complete hoax and grifter's conjob* perpetrated by the big
pirates and economy looters at the tippy top levels, it is grand
theft larceny at unimaginable scales. In one generation -the last
25 years- they have utterly stolen what took ten previous
generations to build up, and to top that off, they are selling
off the remainder of whatever is valuable of the actual still
functional infrastructure, the roads, bridges, water works, etc,
for pennies on the dollar to people not of the nation so they can
run that stuff into the ground just like they have with
everything else and turn some more short term megaprofits. They
not only are major league crooks, they are traitors, IMO.
anyway, as the economy continues to implode, it will be felt more
in the cities, because you have fixed costs and no credible
workarounds for anything. Your system works and is up and running
ot it collapses, on a micro or macro scale. Your "for this
your means from one person to everyone there, all
inclusive)landlord won't care if you can't pay the rent
because you got laid off, the grocer won't care if you
can't afford food, the utility company won't care if you
can't afford your electricity and water and natgas, your
public transportation costs will keep rising, your taxes will
keep going up and so on. Back duering the depression in the 30s,
city folks starved because they had no money, the country people
still got eat, even though they didn' t have any money
either. Apply that to all of modern technological reality.
Personally, I don't care if millions more get faked out and
run screaming back to the cities, because it is a very short term
bandaid for this economic mess, it is not sustainable, and
sometimes people only learn after going through hard times, long
range thinking is not part of the national group mindset now.
That has to change before we get any productive societal changes
unfortunately. Yes, *right now* it is still somewhat calm and
still functional, it "seems" normal, but the changes
that are coming are going to rock your world, and soon. The urban
cushy life is based completely on cheap oil once all is said and
done. The oppoisite of cheap is expensive, what oil is now and
what it will keep getting more of, and the opposite of cushy
is....we'll all be seeing what that is soon.
And you know what? I hope I am so wrong it ain't funny. I
really do, but I doubt I am wrong. If I was really wrong you
wouldn't be reading a single negative economic headline, but
even massaged as they are it is still dismal, so that should say
something right there. If I am wrong, you wouldn't be reading
about emergency meetings and so on, they wouldn't have
fatcats going off to go consult with prince fatter cat. And along
those lines. We wouldn't be reading about new secure parking
lots being setup so that folks could live in their cars, but we
are, because there aren't enough jobs and cheap enough
housing now as it is, let alone in another year or so. There
wouldn't exist an imploding mortgage mess or derivatives mess
or fast rise in bankruptcies or pawnshops doing booming business.
You wouldn't be reading about airlines having to cut back and
imposing extra fees, they'd be fighting over giving away freq
flyer miles instead. And all of that and more. Like I said, hope
I am wrong, but if I was a big city resident right now I'd be
enjoying the crap out of the amenities because I don't think
that will be possible for millions of people "coming
soon" now. When exactly, to the day, can't say, but will
say it is coming, and I, for one, do not want to be part of the
big cities when it hits hard, I learned from history, I listened
to the next generation over me and tales of the depression, what
it was really like. It went from boomtown everyone party
we're all rich! to ZOMG what the heck happened buddy can you
spare that moldy turnip in a few short years. Stuff changes
*fast*.
I think the high density living thing is a bit of a distraction.
I once had a house in the outer suburbs on a 800 m^2 site. For
most things I needed I had to drive a car.
Now we have a 400 m^2 site within 7km of the Melbourne CBD. We
have light rail and shops within an easy walking distance.
But this is not really high density living. I don't think you
have to live in high rise apartments to pay for good
infrastructure.
A recumbent forward-pedal frame, but instead of a chain, a small
on-pedal generator, and on the back wheel an electric motor, with
some sort of plug-in battery recharge in addition to the pedal
recharge.
This solves the "steering chain" problem of
forward-pedal recumbent frames, resulting in a shorter bike; it
solves the main problem (for my body type anyway) of constantly
shifting and variable speed pedaling (I'm better with
pedaling at a constant speed/force); and one could theoretically
include a cowling for rainy days (solving that drowned
rat-at-the-office-appearance).
When I find that, THAT would be a vehicle I'd be willing to
borrow to buy.
Figure the average human being can output a steady 100 watts
(given pro cyclists can sustain 220 watts).
Figure on a 150 watt motor assist then, figure on 5 minute
endurance, 5 minutes is 0.084 hours so 0.084 x 150 = 12.6 watt
hours.
Lead acid batteries are good for 35 watt hours per kilogramme, so
a 1 Kg lead acid battery will do.
Figure an overall efficiency of 75%.
2 Kg for rear wheel hub motor, 2 Kg for front wheel hub generator
(more efficient than combining them) and 2 Kg for pedal
generator, 1 Kg for battery and 1 Kg for electronics, 1 Kg for
wiring and 1 Kg for packaging the installation, total extra
weight 10 Kg.
Use smart electrics so never more than 33% of pedal power goes
into charging battery.
Worst case scenario is you output 100 watts of effort and get 50
watts of work at the wheel, this is charging the battery while
pedalling on the flat.
Best case charging scenario is regenerative braking downhill, 150
watts.
Best case power scenario is pedalling uphill, your 100 watts
giving 75 at the wheel, plus 150 watts from the motor,
temporarily over running the motor at 225 watts or 50% overload.
As a basic power transmission system the 75% efficiency pretty
much kills it dead vs the ten speed or better still CVT, however,
regenrative braking is enough to tip the balance the other way.
So the bottom line here is you want maximum quality and
efficiency out of your regenerative braking, out of your electric
motor, out of your pedal generator, and most of all out of the
electronics that run it all.
Given that people pay a thousand bucks for mountain bikes, the
money is there.... but it will take a better electronics bod than
me to make it work.
Some useful numbers for you to play with.
A gallon of petrol is about 35 kWh
A gallon of diesel is about 40 kWh
A lead acid battery is about 0.035 kWh per Kg
A metal hydride battery gives about 0.070
A Li-on polymer battery gives about 0.15
Lead acid and Li-on are both good for maybe 1,000 cycles, but
whereas lead acid with care will last 10 or more years, Li-on do
about 3 before serious loss of capacity.
746 watts = 1 bhp
Human being can output about 1/6th bhp continuous.
1 Electric motor "bhp" = at least 2 IC bhp, heat in
exhaust gases and water jacket... 6 bhp = approx 1 gallon every 4
hours.
I want both... or at least I want something that performs better
or equal per kilo than a separate generator & motor
combined. So I'm willing to take the few percent drop
in efficiency while generating as described in your link.
I'd rather have that weight in supercaps.
In recent years most pushbikes have sprung front forks. I
find this to be particularly beneficial at speeds greater than
about 5kmh and on the imperfect roads found in a city
environment. As a single 350 watt rear motor is sufficient
for a lard ass such as myself (and a case of beer), I wonder why
add the weight to the front wheel. Here I think the tech is
adequate and weight budget would be better consumed by adding
super capacitors for urban bikes and batteries for suburban bikes
I ride a mountain bike to work and I have built my own lighting
system. I have considered building a charger for the lights which
couples mechanically to one of the brake rotors when apropriately
commanded. Even the way I ride I don't think I could recover
enough energy from a system like that to provide enough energy
recovery to drive a motor.
In my Pedelec I use
the regenerative breaking of the hub motor a lot. Basically it has the effect of extending the
electric assist range. I still have
the feeling that a small bank of super-caps would work better for
the regenerative breaking. All you
would need to store is a enough juice to go from a stand still to
about 10kmh… once. I
don’t think most of my breaking would really completely
fill such a bank of super-caps… so it sounds like a good
balance and as the super-caps are more able to quickly absorb the
power from regenerative breaking would further extend the range
of electric assist.
Back in the
‘70s I had a generator powered headlight for my
bike… I don’t recall being able to tell the
difference in pedaling effort between it being engaged or
not. I do remember blowing the
headlight one evening racing my older brother down a very long
hill… I heard it pop and then was in darkness.
Ten miles on the good old fashioned people-powered bicycle is
very doable even at your (our) age GuyFawkes, I do it. Once
you get into that range I'm questioning the need for electric
bike as long as paved roads are available. How about a
mechanical regenerative system for people-powered bikes to ease
the start/stop?
Until she was in her late 50s (at which point she
"retired" and children and in-laws now provide for
her), my mother in law got up a 5am, went to local warehouse and
bought produce, and put tens of pounds of it on her bicycle and
pedaled five miles to her produce stall she rented at market
where she sold the stuff. She was slim and trim until
then, now she's big and fat like her sister who lives in the
U.S., haha (and now if her kids, my wife's cousins,
ever read technocrat and figure out it's me I'm dead meat
8o)
Ten miles on the good old fashioned people-powered bicycle is
very doable even at your (our) age GuyFawkes, I do it. Once
you get into that range I'm questioning the need for electric
bike as long as paved roads are available.
Having a clip in pedal system can help enormously. It takes a bit
of getting used to but it does wonders for power transfer. A lot
of people get put off cycling the first time they have to ride
10km with a strong headwind. Being able to use different muscle
groups and put a bit of extra power into the bike makes a lot of
difference.
I've never tried the special shoes that clip to the pedals,
but have used the old-fashioned toe clip. I've found I
don't gain much efficiency over not using clips, as long as I
focus on lifting my upward moving foot so as not to force the
powering leg to do extra work. I also have fairly
heavy legs, so that may have something do due with
it. With the pedal clips, I spend more time trying to
insert my foot into the toe clip that it is not worth the hassle.
I use SPD pedals for commuting but I have used Look pedals in the
past, and toestraps before that. I find them to be a big help as
long as I maintain a good pedalling style with the legs working
all the way through the stroke. Legs aren't pistons. They can
push in most directions and that helps spread the load between
different muscles.
I hadn't really thought about the possiblity of the back and
forwards motions providing additional power with different
muscles.
In general, though, I'm amazed at the amount of dough that
can be thrown down for sports equipment. Not being an
everyday cyclist, I really can't justify the expense.
I was fortunate to find a $400 road bike a few years back to
replace the one I'd had since 5th grade, which someone
somehow smashed up while it was locked to a telephone pole.
Needless to say, I was very impressed by the increased
efficiency of the new "entry level" bicycle.
Of course, if I joined a cycling club, I'd need every
technical advantage just to keep up. Ignorance is bliss.
This is quite right, it is the expectations and the lifestyle
that must and will change. No-one is ready for it.
The whole commuting lifestyle is going to vanish. In the
UK right now gas is about £6 per (imperial) gallon.
It is real easy to spend a couple thousand a year doing under 10k
miles. Cut that in half, and you can pay for a high end
electric bike in a year.
People will be doing it. Or pedalling. There will
also be people not filling their oil tanks this winter in the
countryside. Heating oil is now around 60p a
liter. Easy to spend a thousand or two on that.
These people will take up cycling as well. We will have
large scale deep fuel poverty this winter, and a lot of
cycling. And free bus passes being used.
it is the expectations and the lifestyle that must and will
change
Alternatively, the technologies we use to fulfill the
expectations and lifestyle will change. I'd put my money on
new technologies long before I'd put money on any long term
major changes in lifestyle. There might be some short term
changes while people feel the pain of transition, but in the long
run the future will look much like the immediate past.
Its a common assumption, that technology will bail us out
somehow.
The question this winter in the UK in the countryside is going to
be real simple. You probably have an oil tank which takes
1000-2000 liters, and you're probably burning 2,000+ liters a
year, mostly in the winter, and in many cases this does not keep
you warm by US standards. Filling this tank is going to
cost £1500. You do a first partial fill in
November. In February you need another £700 to refill
it.
Where are you going to get it?
It is currently costing you 10-20p a mile to drive 5-10 miles or
more to the local Tesco or Sainsbury to buy groceries, which in
turn have risen by 30 per cent or so. Then you have to
drive to work. Its probably well over 10k miles a
year. It can easily cost you £2,000+. This is
not to mention what the car is costing in service, insurance,
depreciation. A year ago your main worry was that your
teenage children were going to cost an extra £1500 a year
in insurance. That's just been eaten by gasoline.
Yes, you can save several hundred by getting a higher mileage
car. But even that is going to be increasingly unaffordable
to run.
Your disposable income is also being eaten by a huge number of
ever rising taxes and extra charges for municipal services.
You are going to turn down the heat, light your solid fuel stove,
and in your one warm room sit down with your wife, who has just
come back from cycling 5 miles over unlit country roads to the
empty parking lot at Tesco, and your conversation is going to be
on the lines of, if we moved to the local provincial town, maybe
we could do without a car, walk to the shops, have the kids walk
to school, and get gas central heating. Its going to be a
shock. You won't like it. You will do anything to
avoid this. You may even vote differently. It will
not help. The next winter or the one after, you're
going to be looking at £3000 on heating, another
£3000 for gasoline. You simply will not have
it. Neither will anyone else. People will move.
Lifestyles will change. Because they will not have the
money to stay where they are, living as they are now.
Look at it specifically, and you see that technology is not going
to solve your problem any time soon. What are you going to
do? This winter, you'll probably not fill the tank, you
may burn solid fuels if, like an increasing number of people in
the countryside, you have a solid fuel stove. This is the
one warm room and a hot water bottle strategy. People
don't like it, but its a necessity. Then, they will
cycle to the shops. Look at the roads around English
country villages today, and look at the number of bikes with
shopping on them. Two years ago you never saw any.
If people do not have the money to buy oil, they will not.
At these and the immediately visible levels, a large proportion
of the population cannot buy it. There is no visible source
of low cost fuel for transport and for heating anywhere in the
immediate future, and that is what is needed for this
lifestyle. Most of the population needs oil at $50 or so a
barrel to live like this, and there is none.
So this will produce changes in behaviour. Employers will
find that they cannot find staff unless they locate in places
that are easy and cheap to get to. Shops will find that
they are empty, and will close. People will move to where
they can get by without what they cannot afford. If the
great surburban exodus could happen in the fifties, the great
urban return can happen in the tens and twenties. It
will.
And cycling for transportation will come back too, with a
distinct absence of Lycra.
It would be interesting to get Guy Fawkes' comments on
household budgets. Doubt they will differ much from the
above.
Without index shifting? Yes, probably. Because they
are probably going to do it with hub gears, and yes, it will be
somehow better. It will be longer lived, less maintenance,
cleaner (easier to use with chainguards), and less likely to be
damaged from being stacked with lots of other bikes or banged
into.
I use bikes with derailleur, and index shifting on one of them,
and like it a lot. I also wear odds and ends that probably
have Lycra in them. But I cycle for exercise and occasional
transport locally, and I take a shower when I get in. Its
not (yet) a main means of transport. Its not done wearing
conventional white collar clothes (for which a chainguard helps a
lot). I don't have to leave the bike at a train
station, or park it in the company bike shed. I don't
do enough regular miles in all weathers that day-in day-out
maintainability is an issue. If I get oil on my pants, who
cares, just throw them in the wash. Different with suit
pants.
I think its a small but striking indication of how difficult
people find it to imagine the scale of the social changes that
are coming. Similarly, as GF writes, people seem to imagine
the world continuing as now except that electricity comes from
windmills, and cars which now get 35-40 to the imperial gallon
become hybrids, and get 55. Both of which however become
unaffordable: the problem is not going to be the difference
between 40mg and 55mpg. The problem is that prices will
have risen to the point that what is affordable with this
lifestyle is 200mpg, and that is nowhere visible.
They put solar water heaters in. In the UK countryside,
with oil heat, this is a several thousand pound installation to
save about 150 or 200 a year. It is not going to make any
real difference, its not going to be what rescues the oil fired
central heating problem. Nothing will. This is why
people are going to solid fuel stoves in one or two rooms.
Ask any installer in the country. Its happening.
The central question which GF raises is: how much lifestyle
changes, and of what sort, does $200 a barrel require. He
comes close to saying, and I agree, that it is back to the
demographics and lifestyle of the 40s and 50s. It is the
end of suburbia, the end of shopping,
The Electric Muscle
So here is the idea, fuel too expensive to burn is coming, so how about a DIY electric bicycle?
Should be nice and efficient, minimum extra mass per pound of rider, ticks all the eco boxes, ticks all the cheap boxes, why not?
Especially for me, who hasn't pushed pedals around since I was at school, a frame is just a way of carrying an engine, I'd die if I had to pedal a mile right? Besides, pushbikes are just too slooooow...
Well, no, this is like making plans for how you are going to live in Africa, when you are sat at home in England. What you are actually going to plan for is an English lifestyle.
A lot of the electric vehicle options out there fall down because they "only" have a range of 40 miles and "only" have a top speed of 30 mph, and we all say that if only they had a range of 150 miles and a top speed of 75 mph we would buy them in a flash, really, we would.
And then you get to Africa, your cooker consumer more current than the supply can provide, your fridge is too small and should have been running on kerosene anyway, plus you'll be buying powdered milk, tinned goods and fresh produce. It's not England, and all your plans amount to nothing. You'd have been better off arriving with nothing.
Our attitude to electric and alternative vehicles is the same.
Pre internal combustion the rule here in England was one market town could not be less than six to ten miles from another market town, because 12 to 20 miles was the limit for a one day round trip, on foot or with pony and cart. Simple as that.
Right there you have your low tech, lead acid battery, electric vehicle performance, it has the range and at an average 20 mph it has the speed for a maximum 1 hour journey each way.
Claiming that this "isn't enough" is missing the point and catching the bullet, your electric vehicle does not need a 150 mile range and 75 mph because both of these factors are by-products of the age of so cheap as to be essentially free hydrocarbon energy and the internal combustion engine.
Now that that age is waning, attempting to hang on to the by-products of that age, such as the 40 mile commute or the 75 mph journey in a private vehicle, is setting yourself up for a lot of pain.
My dad was one of the greatest engineers I ever knew, he grew up around Rudge Ulster motorcycles and stuff like that, one of my earliest memories is riding pillion on a BSA C12 through the Malay jungle.
More than once, my dad made the point to me that as far as engineering was concerned the materials were the same, the skills were the same, the real revolution between early (er) machinery like the bike above and more modern ones were the tyres and the lubricants.
I can go out and buy tyres and lubricants that absolute cutting edge world beating racers couldn't even dream of as science fiction a generation or two before.
I am old enough to have run my first bikes on Castrol R, a vegetable oil, that was at the time far superior to any of the mineral oils, and a smell that will never leave you. Today even the cheapest of the synthetic motorcycle oils will utterly blow away Castrol R, and Castrol R simply isn't good enough to use in a modern Japanese bike engine and expect it to last.
So by and large, while people like my dad were pottering around on Rudge's and Nortons and BSA, there were those, they were rare, but they were out there, who were going very fast indeed, especially on the roads of the day, using the lubricants of the day, and running the tyres of the day....
I once did 130 mph on a Vincent Rapide, entirely original, new old stock 1930's tyres and tubes and all that good stuff... modern bikers will tell you that much of the ride is down to the primitive frame, primitive suspension, primitive geometry, easy to say if you've never ridden a vinnie fast, dead easy to say if you've never ridden a vinnie fast on 1940's style (eg thin, and not so smooth or cambered) blacktop.
But riding those same roads to work every day as an apprentice on his Rudge (long before I was born of course) my dad would be doing his 8.5 mile back roads journey at 30 mph, with the odd spurt up to 50 mph, and it was enough.
Today, the "viable commute" distance from any town is no longer a mere 8 or 9 miles, even here is the UK you don't have to go very far to find people travelling 30 or 40 miles each way. Take any business with say 40 staff and maybe 10 of them can actually walk to work distance wise, maybe 1 in 4 are "local".
These sorts of daily journeys are only viable in a world where oil energy was so cheap as to be nearly free, because a by-product of such a world is a vast catchment area for every employer, supplier, retailer, wholesaler, etc, and this in effect means that while your journey time might equal my dad's when he was an apprentice, you absolutely have to travel three or four times the distance, which means travelling far faster, which means needing far faster roads, which means even more miles...
Suddenly the commute isn't a thing you do, the commute become a part of the machinery, in effect you start work the minute you embark on your journey.
But...
When oil energy stops being so cheap as to be essentially free, sitting there and saying the electric vehicle must have 150 mile range and do 75 mph is like sitting in England and planning a life in Africa, because simple human nature dictates that all your plans will revolve around keeping everything the same, whereas simple fact dictates that practically nothing will be the same.
Insisting that electric vehicles, such as could be, and are available simply aren't good enough is to UTTERLY MISS THE POINT.
It is the commute, and the attitude that a 40 mile range and 30 mph isn't good enough, that is the problem, that is non-sustainable, that simply will not fly, no matter how much you want it to, no matter how much the continuation of your English lifestyle in Africa depends on it, no matter how unwilling or unprepared you are for the consequences.
When my dad was a boy apprentice, people did travel fast, and people did travel far, they just did not do it twice a day, that was unsustainable.
You worked and shopped and socialised and lived within about ten miles of home.
If you were a shopkeeper or business much of your produce and all of your employees and customers were within that ten mile radius.
If you lived in Africa here and the nearest shops were here and a lot of the journey was along unmetalled roads then you went shopping once a fortnight or once a week at the most.
The USA as I understand it has a serious problem with the whole issue of suburban communities, however, this applies to cities too, and the fact is that wishes ain't horses, and it really doesn't matter how much it is going to hurt when oil hits 200 bucks a barrel, and then 300 bucks a barrel.
You either live within 10 or so miles of your work and your shops (and by extension the bulk of their supplies and infrastructure) or you don't.
"You don't" as in you don't live, you don't survive, you don't support a roof over your head, and all that goes with that.
You want to come and live here, which is a place that should survive 300 dollars a barrel better than many, the barriers aren't going to be, as they are now, can you afford a stupidly expensive house to live in, quarter of a million pounds for ex council houses for god's sake, and the barriers aren't going to be getting yourself here or paperwork and visas, the barriers are going to be "what are you going to do when you get here?" Because, there are only so many jobs.