The Vektorr Concept is the first electric scooter ever produced by Husqvarna Motorcycles and is aimed squarely at the urban commuter.
Vektorr Concept
Styled and ridden like a conventional scooter, the Vektorr Concept promises a modest top speed of 45 km/h and offer a range of up to 95 km.
Vektorr Concept
The Bltz Concept will also be on display at the exhibition. It makes short urban travel easy with a stand-up scooter that can be folded up and carried, for example indoors or onto public transport. The rider stands on the Bltz Concept.
Electric motorcycles could soon recharge to 75% capacity in as little as five minutes, according to Californian battery company, Enevate.
Company spokesman Bill Blanning tells us they are “talking to motorcycle and scooter makers worldwide” about their Li-ion batteries that use silicon-dominant anodes.
“We are not ready to disclose that just yet. Stay tuned,” he says … and we will!
“Electric motorcycles can do very fast charging at EV DC fast-charging stations.
“We believe that cooling systems would need to be beefed up and feasible for extreme fast charging of motorcycles while parked.”
Enevate claims
The Californian company has more than 200 patents worldwide and licences its products to many automotive manufacturers.
Here are their claims about their battery:
30% more range, higher energy density;
>100% better low temperature performance;
Safer battery with no lithium plating.
Enables lower cost and affordable EVs
10-times faster charging; and
5-minute Extreme Fast Charge.
The best way to show their charging and range claims in action is in this video using two slot cars.
Given the claimed 30% increased range, in Harley-Davidson’ electric LiveWire it would equate to range of more than 300km in the city and almost 200km on the highway.
Low temperature performance means you would be less likely to get stranded if riding up in the alps.
While Enevate doesn’t give any secrets away about how it is made, the fact that it uses less lithium is another safety, economic, environmental and humanitarian benefit.
Bill explains: “Li-ion cell safety issues are typically caused by contamination or lithium-plating. For today’s conventional graphite Li-ion cells available, lithium plating typically happens at very high charge rates and/or charging at low temperatures. Enevate’s technology does not have any lithium plating and can be safer than conventional graphite cells.”
The company says the size and expense of batteries is a hurdle to widespread adoption of electric vehicles.
It’s also a particular hindrance to motorcycles which weigh less and usually cost a lot less than cars.
However, we have seen electric motorcycles at ridiculous prices. For example, the LiveWire costs almost $US30,000 in the US and could cost more than $A40,000 when it is launched here late this year.
Enevate say their batteries have much higher energy density which means they can be smaller and therefore a lower cost component of the whole vehicle cost.
Their claim that recharging will be 10 times faster means that electric motorcycles such as the LiveWire that take all night to recharge from a standard AC output could recharge in less than an hour.
LIveWires on DC fast chargers
If the rider has access to a DC fast charger, that time can drop to about five minutes with the Enevate battery which compares with Harley’s claim of 30 minutes for the LIveWire.
The big hurdle in Australia is our lack of such infrastructure, but it is gradually being installed across the nation’s highways.
One of the problems with electric motorcycles is finding somewhere to charge the battery, but a Chinese company believes the answer is in removable batteries you can carry inside to a power point for charging.
Removable batteries could be a way forward for electric motorcycles and scooters with several Japanese and Chinese companies now using or considering them.
Yamaha electric scooter with removable Gogoro battery
However, Shanghai scooter company Niu has unveiled their RQi scooter prototype which has removable two-piece Panasonic lithium battery packs which can be charged up on household mains outlets.
Niu RQi portable battery
It makes a lot of sense if the battery packs are light and small enough to carry inside.
We are used to charging our phones and portable devices when we get to work or return home, so one more battery wouldn’t make much difference.
Harley-Davidson’s electric scooter concept also has a removable battery with a handle so you can carry it inside for charging.
Harley electric scooter
Niu don’t specific charging time, but they say the two packs would provide range of about 130km in combined city/highway riding.
The RQi scooter, unveiled at the recent Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show, is powered by a 30kW mid-drive motor with a top speed of 160km/h.
Other features are TFT dash, traction control, belt drive, 5G connectivity for GPS and anti-theft tracking, and an adaptive headlight that lights up the inside of corners as used by companies such as BMW and KTM.
NAWA Technologies has revealed an electric café racer with a hubless rear-wheel motor and world-first ‘hybrid’ battery system, combining next-gen ultracapacitors with a lithium-ion battery.
They say it is the first time an electric motorbike has used ultracapacitors.
Nawa claim it is 25% lighter, 10 times more powerful, with five times more energy.
NAWA claims their regenerative braking re-uses 80% of the energy otherwise lost while lithium-ion batteries can only re-use 30%.
Here is how it works
NAWA’s carbon-based ultracapacitors charge and discharge in seconds and are capable of picking up energy from regenerative braking and supplying it back to an electric motor very quickly.
They can do this millions of times over without degradation, offering fast energy transfer, unlike lithium-ion.
NAWA claim the hybrid ultracapacitor battery system can reduce the size of a lithium-ion battery by up to half, or extend the range by up to double, or a manufacturer’s preferred combination of size, weight and range.
The NAWACap ultracapacitor pack recharges in just two minutes and the entire battery can be charged to 80% in one hour from a home supply.
Lightweight racer
The NAWA Racer concept’s pack only weighs 10kg which makes it ideal for use in a motorcycle.
Together with the bike’s carbon frame, it weighs only 150kg.
It is driven by a hubless rim motor in the rear wheel with 75kW of power for a 0-100km/h rate of less than three seconds which is fairly typical of most electric motorcycles.
Hubless rear wheel motor
NAWA Racer’s NAWACap pack can be removed and swapped for different levels of performance. There are also Race and Eco modes for more speed or extra range.
Other features are LED lighting, painted aluminium and copper, anodised matte black suspension forks and nubuck leather saddle in vintage camel.
A Canadian company is working on battery technology that will recharge an electric motorcycle in about five minutes without reducing battery life.
The discovery by GBatteries is a potential boost for electric motorcycles and other vehicles as recharging time, not range anxiety, is the biggest hurdle.
Harley-Davidson claims its LiveWire electric motorcycle can be recharged to 80% in about 30minutes using DC fast chargers.
LIveWires on DC fast chargers
Recharge in minutes
However, this process degrades the battery, shortening its life.
Now GBatteries has discovered a process where micro pulses of power will charge batteries quickly without any degradation.
They have filed for 45 patent applications, with 10 patents granted and 28 pending.
“Our mission is to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles, by eliminating the final barrier of charge time and enabling electric vehicles to charge as fast as it takes to fill a tank of gas,” the company says.
“One hour isn’t what we call fast. We’re pioneering technology that will enable electric vehicles to charge as fast as it takes to fill a tank of gas.”
How it works
GBatteries isn’t developing new materials or changing battery chemistry. Instead it is working on new software and hardware.
Their ChargeSense software uses artificial intelligence to create a complex series of small charging pulses and learn about the state of the battery as it charges to avoid degeneration and overheating.
Fast charger causes a fire in the Energica garage housing MotoE race bikes
Israel company StoreDot has produced a lithium-ion battery that charges an electric scooter in five minutes.
It is one of the latest developments, along with battery swap technology, that could accelerate the acceptance of electric motorcycles and scooters in coming years.
The StoreDot batteries do not contain graphite, a form of carbon. Instead, they use tin, germanium and silicon in combination wth organic compounds.
StoreDot has demonstrated their battery with a Spanish Torrot scooter, providing full charge in five minutes, enough to travel 70km.
Charged in minutes
It’s not big storage or range at the moment, but it’s a significant leap forward for electric two-wheeled transport.
It also beats the usual four-hour charge, says StoreDot CEP Doron Myersdorf.
“This is showing the world that we can break the barrier of fast charging, and what was considered impossible is actually possible,” he says.
“Ultra-fast charging can help solve range anxiety, one of the hurdles to electric-vehicle adaption, the equivalent of worrying that your mobile phone might go dead.”
The company plans to put its scooter batteries on the market in 2021.
From the above photo, it looks like the battery is about the same size as the swappable batteries used by Yamaha and Kymco in their electric scooters.
Yamaha Gogoro battery
Kymco battery vending machines
These battery solutions are not without their problems, requiring a lot of vending machine infrastructure.
The StoreDot battery would require similar infrastructure as it would be difficult and cumbersome to carry around the battery for when you run out of charge!
StoreDot charges ahead
StoreDot also hopes to be able to charge an electric Mercedes in five minutes for a 480km drive by 2021.
The car battery will need 10 times as many power cells as the scooter battery and a more efficient way of cooling while in use, says Myersdorf.
StoreDot will begin selling five-minute chargers for mobile phones in the second half of 2020.
BP and Samsung are the company’s top investors.
BP technology director Jon Salkeld says ultra-fast charging is “at the heart of BP’s electrification strategy”.
Battery swap technology has received a boost with Yamaha unveiling their EC-05 electric scooter with Gogoro lithium-ion battery packs you can easily swap at a convenient roadside vending machine.
The Yamaha scooter is a partnership with Taiwanese scooter company Gogoro Global.
Taiwan seems to be the epicentre of swappable battery tech with Kymco last year releasing their Ionex electric scooter with similar-sized battery packs.
Kymco Ionex battery swap vending machines
Old battery swap tech
Battery swap technology is not new. In 1938, British company Battery Traction Ltd came up with the idea, but it was sidelined by World War II.
Better Place also suggested the idea for cars in 2008 and went broke in 2013.
Better Place battery switch station in Israel
Several car companies have also dabbled with the idea, but canned it because their batteries are too big.
However, Tesla has patented a robot that can charge an electric car’s battery in 15 minutes and some small electric city cars can swap batteries in under a minute.
Now it seems battery swap technology is back on the drawing board, at least for motorcycles and scooters where the batteries are small and light enough for a rider to carry.
In the case of the Yamaha EC-05 and Kymco Ionex, they fit two lithium-ion batteries about the size of half a briefcase.
There is no technical information on their weight, but the images suggest they are not that heavy as they are carried by a skinny young woman.
They even have a similar handle on top and can be bought from convenient roadside vending machines or charged at home.
Yamaha hopes to start delivering their scooters from August but initially only in Taiwan where there are already more than 1000 battery swap vending machines.
It will only be a matter of time before they are available in other countries. Gogoro already sells its electric scooters in Europe.
Electric motorcycles are coming on a wave of hype about range of more than 300km, but are the claims a hoax?
Traditional petrol-powered motorcycles are quoted in terms of miles per gallon or litre per 100km. It provides a reliable and realistic guide to the range from a bike’s tank. Riding hard or conservatively doesn’t make a huge difference to range.
However, the range calculations for an electric motorcycle are not as simple.
Vacuum sucks
We recently bought an expensive cordless vacuum cleaner which was claimed to have a battery that would last for a couple of hours of cleaning.
However, that was based on using the low-powered mode. If you want to really suck and use the boost mode, you are flat out getting about 20 minutes out of it. And six months down the track, that’s more like 15 minutes.
I also once drove an early Tesla sportster on a hot day around the Ipswich Motorway for only five laps before the fully charged battery overheated and I had to pit.
On another occasion, I rode an electric Zero DS with a claimed 290km of range from the Gold Coast to home and nearly ran out of battery because I was riding on the highway.
MotorbikeWriter and Zero DS
Electric hoax?
So is electric motorcycle range a hoax to rope in riders who want to be seen to be keeping pace with the modern world and showing their “green” credentials (that is, if they have access to clean power for recharging!).
Battery range in electric vehicles is subject to so many variables a range figure is almost a pointless hoax.
Factors that affect battery range include:
Extreme ambient temperatures;
Riding modes such as “eco” and “sport”;
Constant throttle at highway speeds that deplete batteries faster;
Brake regeneration extends range in stop-start traffic; and
Downhill sections conserve battery power.
Riders will have to think totally differently about electric motorcycles and almost disregard the salesperson’s claims about range.
For example, highway and city riding yield totally opposite range yields to a traditional petrol engine.
The latest Zero SR/F comes with this complex table of range calculations that vary from 132km on the highway to amiss double in the city! It’s enough to confuse any buyer.
Range
PREMIUM
STANDARD
City
259km
259km
Highway, 89km/h
159km
159km
Combined
198km
198km
Highway, 113km/h
132km
132km
Combined
175km
175km
Range (based on EU standard)
157km
158km
Electric sales
But the complex range claims have not stopped the surge of electric motorcycle sales, particularly in Asia and Europe.
While more than 90% of electric bike sales are low-powered scooters and mopeds in Asian, Europe is surging ahead on the back of a host of financial incentives for the sale and use of electric bikes.
While motorcycle sales in Europe rose by 9.9% in 2018, electric motorcycle sales rose 81.5%, although they still represent only 0.75% of all motorbikes sold in Europe.
New range claims
Almost every day an electric motorcycle company makes outlandish clams about extended range.
A Chinese company claims it has a prototype power cruiser made of lightweight aluminium withup to 400 km of range and charging from flat to full in just 15 minutes.
Battery life
As for the longevity of expensive batteries, there are few examples as electric motorcycles have not been around long enough.
However, Italian electric bike company Tacita says that in almost eight years their batteries have had more than 1700 recharging cycles with unchanged range.
They say they can guarantee 80% of the battery’s energy will remain after 4000 charge cycles.
I don’t say I disbelieve their claims, but they do make a mockery of my vacuum cleaner experience!
LIveWires on DC fast chargers
Yamaha electric scooter with removable Gogoro battery
Niu RQi portable battery
Harley electric scooter
