End of an Era
May. 31st, 2009 12:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peristaltorTen years ago, I unpacked a crate from California, did some modest assembly, and rolled the contents to the corner of the old Electric Vehicles NW parking lot to take this picture.
Fresh out of the crate.
That is a 1999 EMB Lectra, one of the first production electric motorcycles with features that I considered essential for both safety and personal reasons -- an alternating current propulsion system with regenerative braking, an onboard charging system, a clean and attractive appearance, and (most importantly) batteries that didn't spew acid on the rider in an accident. It also had to keep up with traffic, even on steep slopes.
I rode that bike for a couple thousand miles until poor design quirks and a lack of support (brought on by the manufacturer's assimilation into a heartless, evil company) finally killed my hope of getting it running again.
Though my lack of Mad Skillz with a soldering iron might have prevented me from fixing my bike, there are others with such skills. One such electrical engineer won the lottery, in that he knew my sister from work and heard about an available electric bike. He got my address from my sister and emailed me, asking how much I wanted. I replied:
Which led to this picture, taken yesterday after all the paperwork had been finished.
Goodbye, Old Pal
I started following the progress of electric vehicles in the late '90s when I joined The Electric Vehicle Discussion List, a well-established listserve email spewer forum that keeps like-minded electric gear heads in contact. I noticed a few trends even then that I felt would kill any chance electrics might have.
First, there is no one type of electric enthusiast, but they can (with some exception) be divided into opposing camps based on their preferences. The most stark divisions can be drawn between the Slugs verses the Smokers, Golf Carts v. Dragsters, between those that drive gutless electrics in traffic sometimes to deliberately slow traffic and those that must under any circumstances be the power on the road. This division exists in the gas car arena, I know; but in the realm of electrics it has real consequences. You see, there aren't that many electrics on the road. Therefore, any time someone gets behind an electric that is holding up traffic, the negative impressions that person gets are institutionally transferred to all electrics. Imagine the hurdle this creates for someone trying desperately to market a decent, road-worthy electric car or motorcycle.
As you might have noted, I am not in any way sympathetic to the Golf Cart crowd. Why? Because it is an avoidable pitfall. The electric technology was at one time limited to creating golf carts. That was just fine in an era where all cars were restricted to golf cart speeds, as was the case at the turn of the century.
A Detroit Electric Drives from Seattle to Mount Rainier, circa 1919.
When you share the road with horse-drawn carts and wagons, no car should try to zip past at too fast a speed. Horses get spooked. Go back in just about any old paper a hundred years and catalog the deaths and injuries caused by runaway horses. It was far more common than one might imagine. Horses also forced some municipalities to pass what are now called Blue Laws for cars, requirements that noisier vehicles go no faster than 10 mph, and be escorted ahead by folks walking and carrying lanterns to warn horses of the vehicle's approach. That was no stupid law in the 1800's. That was simple self-preservation.
Cars have forced the horses to the pasture, to the park and to Amish country. Speed limits are a bit higher today. Therefore, the cars should be able to travel at or above these speed limits. In some cases, electrics travel waaaay over the limits.
As well they should.
There's another division in the electric ranks, one that involves appearances. Some people feel so strongly about weening the planet off of petroleum that they feel driving any available electric is better than not, even if it means driving really, really funky-looking cars that simply scream Mad Scientist on the Road. While I understand where these people are coming from philosophically, I also feel that they are Simply Not Getting It. If you really, truly, sincerely want electric cars to become universal, you've got to sell the concept. Any real estate agent can tell you the value of "curb appeal," the concept that shoves to the forefront the notion that the house must look good, that first impressions count. It applies to cars as well.
You see, the curb appeal of a car extends the interest others might have of the car. What the Mad Scientists of the electric world don't seem to understand -- what evidence would, in fact, suggest they deliberately reject understanding as valid -- is that, to become universal, electrics must be embraced by people the Mad Scientists overtly hate. Yes, those jerks who drive big, ostentatious cars and are always cleaning them in a loving if not erotic fashion and who spend way too much of their available income tricking them out -- that should be your target demographic. Why?
Simply, because they have money. Make the electrics shiny and cool, and they will come.
All of which brings me to the last point; when building an electric for market, iron out the major bugs before it hits the showroom (or owner's garage).
The Lectra had assembly and manufacturing issues even before it left the crate. Someone at the warehouse had bolted a metal washer directly to an aluminum piece and left an orbital scratch right where the handlebars were mounted. It came out with some polishing, but really pissed me off. A piece of cardboard or gasket material between the washer and the aluminum would have prevented this. It was obvious no one had thought to unpack an re-assemble the bikes to see what they would look like after shipping.
Other problems became obvious, like battery and charge management. Batteries need to be treated well if they are to last. Automotive batteries last as long as they do simply because they aren't asked to do very much, just start the car and help run the accessories. Electric drive batteries are asked to do the impossible, to power the drive at high amperage, then to sit for some time before they can be recharged. Worse, they are strung together and charged as a unit. This means that when a battery for whatever reason starts to fail, its failure drags the whole pack down to its level. Think of a chain -- it is only as strong as its weakest link.
This happened on the Lectra. One battery got progressively undercharged, and might have reversed, causing the last fatal blow. Yes, I could have balanced the pack; but how? According to the owner's manual, I was supposed to take the bike to the dealer to have the pack balanced. . . except there were no dealers. They had started shipping bikes before they had a support network in place.
Other design oversights started popping up almost immediately. I started burning out stop lights simply because they Lectra didn't have a way of shedding regenerative power when fully charged. At $10 a piece, that got expensive. I had to remember not to regen on a full pack.
The cooling fan was in the way, mounted right where the shop manual told me to place the jack to lift the rear wheel. Since every bike needed periodic chain tensioning, I was constantly pulling the fan. I finally realized that it doesn't come on very often, and pulled it off and left it off.
Speaking of chain tensioning, the Lectra had a pretty nifty way of getting the tightening done . . . but no tool to do it correctly. According to the manual, one was supposed to stick a ratcheting wrench into the little hole and use the ratchet as a lever. Problem: The hole was in an aluminum cam, and ratchets are steel. Since the hole was round and ratchets are square, one pressed corners into the hole causing ugliness. I built my own tensioning tool to prevent further manufacturer-recommended damage.
Furthermore, every time one tightened the chain, one shortened the rear brake cable, something not mentioned in the manual at all. I noticed my range starting to suffer, but figured it was my driving. Then, after a tightening, I smelled smoke. The cable had finally tightened enough to exert constant drag on the brake. I had to borrow wrenches from a (thankfully!) nearby firetruck to loosen the cable. Had that truck not been there, I would have missed work.
Those weren't the only problems I had, but I'll spare you the laundry list. Suffice to say that all of these listed design/documentation problems could have been avoided had EMB spent more time testing and perfecting their bike. They focused, it seems, all of their time working on the drive system, and I think they got that part right. When it came time to attach that system to a finished bike, it seems they ran into problems that they tried to fix on the fly, leaving the owners to point out -- and fix -- those problems. Bad PR. No biscuit.
These above hurdles are not insignificant. They are faced by every company rolling out a product. Every company faces oversights, some larger, some smaller. The larger ones can cripple a product and even bring down a company. Recall problems on the Evinrude RAM ficht outboard engine, for example, forced that company into a rival merger.
When the industry itself is largely undefined, the problems faced by any company are compounded by the fact that no one around can alert them to problems. The learning curve is vast and steep.
Which dismays me every time I see the same mistakes made by someone selling electric vehicles. Had the makers/importers done some homework, they could have avoided the mistakes or simply abandon their windmill tilt altogether. It's no wonder that the list of bankrupt EV manufacturers is so very, very long.
Fresh out of the crate.
That is a 1999 EMB Lectra, one of the first production electric motorcycles with features that I considered essential for both safety and personal reasons -- an alternating current propulsion system with regenerative braking, an onboard charging system, a clean and attractive appearance, and (most importantly) batteries that didn't spew acid on the rider in an accident. It also had to keep up with traffic, even on steep slopes.
I rode that bike for a couple thousand miles until poor design quirks and a lack of support (brought on by the manufacturer's assimilation into a heartless, evil company) finally killed my hope of getting it running again.
Though my lack of Mad Skillz with a soldering iron might have prevented me from fixing my bike, there are others with such skills. One such electrical engineer won the lottery, in that he knew my sister from work and heard about an available electric bike. He got my address from my sister and emailed me, asking how much I wanted. I replied:
I'm asking nothing ($0.00) for the bike, only that it go to a home where the goal is to get it running again (something I don't have the tech chops or inclination to try). I've poked around with soldering irons before, but never on something this unfamiliar to me. Also, sadly, my eyes just ain't what they used to be in cramped quarters.
Which led to this picture, taken yesterday after all the paperwork had been finished.
Goodbye, Old Pal
I started following the progress of electric vehicles in the late '90s when I joined The Electric Vehicle Discussion List, a well-established listserve email spewer forum that keeps like-minded electric gear heads in contact. I noticed a few trends even then that I felt would kill any chance electrics might have.
First, there is no one type of electric enthusiast, but they can (with some exception) be divided into opposing camps based on their preferences. The most stark divisions can be drawn between the Slugs verses the Smokers, Golf Carts v. Dragsters, between those that drive gutless electrics in traffic sometimes to deliberately slow traffic and those that must under any circumstances be the power on the road. This division exists in the gas car arena, I know; but in the realm of electrics it has real consequences. You see, there aren't that many electrics on the road. Therefore, any time someone gets behind an electric that is holding up traffic, the negative impressions that person gets are institutionally transferred to all electrics. Imagine the hurdle this creates for someone trying desperately to market a decent, road-worthy electric car or motorcycle.
As you might have noted, I am not in any way sympathetic to the Golf Cart crowd. Why? Because it is an avoidable pitfall. The electric technology was at one time limited to creating golf carts. That was just fine in an era where all cars were restricted to golf cart speeds, as was the case at the turn of the century.
A Detroit Electric Drives from Seattle to Mount Rainier, circa 1919.
When you share the road with horse-drawn carts and wagons, no car should try to zip past at too fast a speed. Horses get spooked. Go back in just about any old paper a hundred years and catalog the deaths and injuries caused by runaway horses. It was far more common than one might imagine. Horses also forced some municipalities to pass what are now called Blue Laws for cars, requirements that noisier vehicles go no faster than 10 mph, and be escorted ahead by folks walking and carrying lanterns to warn horses of the vehicle's approach. That was no stupid law in the 1800's. That was simple self-preservation.
Cars have forced the horses to the pasture, to the park and to Amish country. Speed limits are a bit higher today. Therefore, the cars should be able to travel at or above these speed limits. In some cases, electrics travel waaaay over the limits.
As well they should.
There's another division in the electric ranks, one that involves appearances. Some people feel so strongly about weening the planet off of petroleum that they feel driving any available electric is better than not, even if it means driving really, really funky-looking cars that simply scream Mad Scientist on the Road. While I understand where these people are coming from philosophically, I also feel that they are Simply Not Getting It. If you really, truly, sincerely want electric cars to become universal, you've got to sell the concept. Any real estate agent can tell you the value of "curb appeal," the concept that shoves to the forefront the notion that the house must look good, that first impressions count. It applies to cars as well.
You see, the curb appeal of a car extends the interest others might have of the car. What the Mad Scientists of the electric world don't seem to understand -- what evidence would, in fact, suggest they deliberately reject understanding as valid -- is that, to become universal, electrics must be embraced by people the Mad Scientists overtly hate. Yes, those jerks who drive big, ostentatious cars and are always cleaning them in a loving if not erotic fashion and who spend way too much of their available income tricking them out -- that should be your target demographic. Why?
Simply, because they have money. Make the electrics shiny and cool, and they will come.
All of which brings me to the last point; when building an electric for market, iron out the major bugs before it hits the showroom (or owner's garage).
The Lectra had assembly and manufacturing issues even before it left the crate. Someone at the warehouse had bolted a metal washer directly to an aluminum piece and left an orbital scratch right where the handlebars were mounted. It came out with some polishing, but really pissed me off. A piece of cardboard or gasket material between the washer and the aluminum would have prevented this. It was obvious no one had thought to unpack an re-assemble the bikes to see what they would look like after shipping.
Other problems became obvious, like battery and charge management. Batteries need to be treated well if they are to last. Automotive batteries last as long as they do simply because they aren't asked to do very much, just start the car and help run the accessories. Electric drive batteries are asked to do the impossible, to power the drive at high amperage, then to sit for some time before they can be recharged. Worse, they are strung together and charged as a unit. This means that when a battery for whatever reason starts to fail, its failure drags the whole pack down to its level. Think of a chain -- it is only as strong as its weakest link.
This happened on the Lectra. One battery got progressively undercharged, and might have reversed, causing the last fatal blow. Yes, I could have balanced the pack; but how? According to the owner's manual, I was supposed to take the bike to the dealer to have the pack balanced. . . except there were no dealers. They had started shipping bikes before they had a support network in place.
Other design oversights started popping up almost immediately. I started burning out stop lights simply because they Lectra didn't have a way of shedding regenerative power when fully charged. At $10 a piece, that got expensive. I had to remember not to regen on a full pack.
The cooling fan was in the way, mounted right where the shop manual told me to place the jack to lift the rear wheel. Since every bike needed periodic chain tensioning, I was constantly pulling the fan. I finally realized that it doesn't come on very often, and pulled it off and left it off.
Speaking of chain tensioning, the Lectra had a pretty nifty way of getting the tightening done . . . but no tool to do it correctly. According to the manual, one was supposed to stick a ratcheting wrench into the little hole and use the ratchet as a lever. Problem: The hole was in an aluminum cam, and ratchets are steel. Since the hole was round and ratchets are square, one pressed corners into the hole causing ugliness. I built my own tensioning tool to prevent further manufacturer-recommended damage.
Furthermore, every time one tightened the chain, one shortened the rear brake cable, something not mentioned in the manual at all. I noticed my range starting to suffer, but figured it was my driving. Then, after a tightening, I smelled smoke. The cable had finally tightened enough to exert constant drag on the brake. I had to borrow wrenches from a (thankfully!) nearby firetruck to loosen the cable. Had that truck not been there, I would have missed work.
Those weren't the only problems I had, but I'll spare you the laundry list. Suffice to say that all of these listed design/documentation problems could have been avoided had EMB spent more time testing and perfecting their bike. They focused, it seems, all of their time working on the drive system, and I think they got that part right. When it came time to attach that system to a finished bike, it seems they ran into problems that they tried to fix on the fly, leaving the owners to point out -- and fix -- those problems. Bad PR. No biscuit.
These above hurdles are not insignificant. They are faced by every company rolling out a product. Every company faces oversights, some larger, some smaller. The larger ones can cripple a product and even bring down a company. Recall problems on the Evinrude RAM ficht outboard engine, for example, forced that company into a rival merger.
When the industry itself is largely undefined, the problems faced by any company are compounded by the fact that no one around can alert them to problems. The learning curve is vast and steep.
Which dismays me every time I see the same mistakes made by someone selling electric vehicles. Had the makers/importers done some homework, they could have avoided the mistakes or simply abandon their windmill tilt altogether. It's no wonder that the list of bankrupt EV manufacturers is so very, very long.