xkcd #2948: Electric vs Gas
xkcd #2948: Electric vs Gas
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An idling gas engine may be annoyingly loud, but that's the price you pay for having WAY less torque available at a standstill.
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I'm big into motorcycles and all the electric motorcycles are like 100 lbs more and go through tires like twice a year compared to my gas powered motorcycle changing tires once everyother year and can go fraction of the distance. Idk I want to think electric is the future but with these limits I'm still not too interested. If hydrogen ever comes to motorcycles like Kawasaki, Honda, Yamaha and Suzuki want, I'll definitely get one of those but I can't recommend any electric motorcycles right now and before you say anything I would recommend a Surron if you check your welds before you buy those are great commuters but probably not a motorcycle.
Yeah, a general "electric vs. gas" comparison which elides the two big disadvantages of electric in familiar applications (which aren't to be found in the motor) seems slightly subpar for xkcd. It's valid from a certain narrow engineering perspective but not too helpful if what you're thinking about is motorcycles.
If fossil fuels were so easy to give up we'd have done it by now.
Long term we'll get lighter batteries.
That's what people keep telling me
And over time power density in batteries has increased. So far.
Graphically: https://www.epectec.com/images/battery-comparison-energy-density.jpg
From ArsTechnica: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-five-years-away-no-batteries-are-improving-under-your-nose/
And from Cleantechnica as of January 2024: https://cleantechnica.com/2024/01/30/the-rise-of-batteries-in-6-charts-not-too-many-numbers/
People just won't stop telling you this, it seems. ;-)
Well they never provided evidence like you did. Thanks friend.
You betcha BB! Have a great day!
I'm genuinely confused - why are you going through tires so quickly?
Sorry for not being clear, I change tires on my gas powered commuter motorcycle about once every two years. Electric motorcycles seem to go through tires much faster it was explained to me that the bikes are heavier and most tires aren't designed for electric motorcycles.
that just sounds like too much throttle because you're not familiar with the extra torque from take off.
nothing to do with a little extra weight.
my last two bikes were over 1L, with a curb weight of something like 280kg, maybe. 45kg extra in batteries is like a child or a big dog. it's not much.
not enough to double your wear rate.
The torque off the start is so much higher in EVs vs. ICE. I'm not sure from u/blindbunny 's post if they've ridden an EV motorcyle. I'm pretty sure they haven't owned one. They sound like an ICE shill. My bicycle's torque off the start is pretty low, and dependent on this old school "neuro-musculo-skeletal" system. It's kinda jankety, but I'm too cheap to upgrade.
Many motorcycles (not bicycles, those are irrelevant to the comparison) already have more torque off the line than the available traction can handle, so that benefit from electric motors is less critical. The wear is a concern because motorcycles are already more sensitive to tire wear than cars, and simply switching to a harder compound to account for the extra weight has other ramifications that are far less severe in electric cars.
Fair. I've been comparing ICE vs EV cars wrt tire wear. And some folks, depending on driving style, find that the tires wear faster on EVs. Slow off the line should moderate that.
I wish I was a shill I'd probably have more money to buy more motorcycles. I've rode a Surron bee? and a Stark VARG and I kinda like how quite they are especially dual sporting. But it takes almost half a day to charge the Stark VARG and the longest I've rode a Surron was about ~20 miles before it needed to charge.
all the electric motorcycles are like 100 lbs more and go through tires like once a year
compared to my gas powered motorcycle changing tires twice a year
...so, you're changing tires less on an electric motorcycle? I don't see the issue
Sorry I edited the post poorly 😞
