Bumper sticker (ridemagnetism.com)
The Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt have hit the market in the United States, to good reviews. But they’re not available in Australia; even if they were, I wouldn’t buy one. The Leaf’s 160 kilometre range just isn’t enough for the driving I do. The Chevrolet Volt, like the Toyota Prius, are by all reports designed for people who don’t actually like driving. They certainly look like it.
So what does somebody with pretensions of both hoondom and a social and environmental conscience choose to drive these days? A Tesla Roadster, perhaps, if you could get a road-legal one in Australia. But, failing that, what else is out there?
The European luxury brands have a number of high-performance diesels available, which are becoming increasingly popular; BMW now sells more diesel vehicles in Australia than they do petrol ones. It’s not entirely surprising; for instance, the 330d sedan is $20,000 cheaper than its petrol equivalent (the 335i), just as quick in a straight line (and as fast as the dream supercar of my childhood, the Lamborghini Countach), and uses less fuel (and emits less CO2) than a Toyota Corolla in normal driving.
While the BMW might be an impressive engineering achievement, $100,000 cars are an indulgence for a very privileged few. Furthermore, diesels are better for the global environment than petrol, but they still emit far more of the lethal non-CO2 pollutants like particulates and nitrogen oxides than modern petrol cars, an issue that gets little attention in Australia but should get a lot more.
After some research, I ended up with one of the first Volkswagen Polo GTIs delivered in Australia. OK, I’m biased, but it’s a pretty impressive piece of kit. As practical day-to-day transport, it’ll seat four (you wouldn’t want to put four basketballers in it for long, but it’s fine for big adults and two kids, or four me-sized adults) comfortably, is quiet and reasonably comfortable on long trips, is pretty much idiot-proof to drive in the city, keeps up with traffic effortlessly (of which more later), and uses about 6 litres per 100 km on long drives, and around 6.5 litres per 100km on urban commuting, pretty much the same as the base model Polo and less than other “superminis” like the Honda Jazz, Mazda 2 and Toyota Yaris. It’s also fitted with a large collection of airbags, and, importantly, electronic stability control.
But as well as being sensible transport, it’s a really fun car to drive enthusiastically. Fast? Roughly as quick in a straight line as the “plastic pig” Walkinshaw Commodore of 1988, and much, much better handling. It’s also pretty much bang-on as fast as my previous vehicle, the ram-raiders favourite Subaru WRX, and uses not much more than half the fuel.
Whether such capabilities are in any way relevant or desirable in a speed-restricted world is open to question. However, Volkswagen has managed to engineer a car with such frankly unnecessary (but lizard-brain-satisfying) abilities and still get it to use less fuel – and emit less CO2 – than most vehicles on the market. And it sells it for a touch over $30,000 on the road.
Look, I’m pleased as punch with my new toy. But there’s a broader point. My new car isn’t a hybrid. It doesn’t even feature automatic stop-start at traffic lights. But it’s lighter than the model it superceded, features a very efficient, small-capacity forced induction engine (a combination of supercharging and turbocharging), and has a tall top gear for low highway fuel consumption – a trait nicely covered by the flexible engine and very quick-changing “automated manual” DSG gearbox. And most other manufacturers out there are developing models using the same principles. Fiat’s TwinAir twin cylinder turbo, for instance. Even our creaky antipodean domestic vehicles are seeing some of this; the Ford Falcon will be available with a turbocharged four-cylinder engine next year.
And there will be even more efficiency wrung out of the internal combustion engine over the next few years. For instance, the major manufacturers are experimenting with petrol engines that use compression ignition – like Diesels – at high load.
Looking at all these rather impressive improvements, though, it’s interesting to compare to other industries that show similar spurts of innovation. At least to this non-expert’s eye there are two broad categories. New industries is the one everyone thinks of, but the car industry is hardly that. Some of the biggest spurts of innovation come in industries doomed by larger forces, be that fundamentally different technologies, or political or social pressures. In the long term, the internal combustion engine is one such technology. The electric car is coming.
But in the meantime, the car industry will scramble to ensure that it keeps in front of government regulation and fuel cost pressure. So even if I don’t get my electric vehicle in 2019, I’m expecting a comparable petrol vehicle to my current Polo to get around 3.5 litres per 100km. If that’s achieved, even if oil costs $250 a barrel by then, my fuel costs will be around the same as they are now. But even 15,000 km a year (the fleet average for Australia; I do a lot less) a 3.5 l/100km vehicle will still emit 1.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually. While it may be enough to meet Australia’s pathetic current emissions targets, it’s enough on its own to push us over a long-term sustainable carbon budget. Battery technology seems destined to reach a point – somewhere in the 2020s on present trends – where they will offer sufficient range at a similar price to the ICE.
So, maybe my next car will be electric, maybe it won’t. But I’m pretty sure the one after that will be.
You know, a newish Honda or a Kawasaki 250 in good nick will do 3.5L/100km even if you ride it like you were seventeen years old, and a 500 or 650 bike gets you a lot more hoon for not much more fuel.
I’m just saying.
Liam,
Difficult to get the baby seat sorted on that one.
I hope you didn’t look up any of the specs online at overseas sites prior to buying a non Australian car and putting Australians out of jobs and making Gerry Harvey and Sol Lew have a bog sook about competition.
All a matter of rational allocation of priorities, AR, as I’m sure you’d sympathise. Babies are un-aerodynamic too.
Liam – I don’t want to be rude but:
I’m not saying it’s for everyone, FXH. But if Rob wants a vehicle for a) someone without children that’s b) under $30,000, c) quicker than a 1980s Commodore in a straight line and d) more fuel efficient than almost all four-cylinder cars, motorbikes are worth thinking about.
AR, but as an environmentally responsible person you wouldn’t have a baby so there’s no issue there.
I’m hoping for a power assisted bicycle revolution. Hopefully involving emissions restrictions on them after yesterday’s debacle. Met a guy who has just bought a two-stroke “power assisted bicycle” that stinks, sits between his thighs and is not legal to operate. It’s too fast for the new standards (which require no power assist above 25kph) and it’s not registerable as a moped or motorbike. He’s not happy. Neither am I, having been able to smell his “scent trail” for at least 2km behind him. I only caught up woith him when he stopped.
I’ve never quite understood why the Prius gets so much stick as being not nice to drive. Having driven one for work and personal ownership now for 5 years it is far and away the most comfortable, smooth and easy drive I’ve ever had (and that has included a range of govt lease vehicles), including excellent acceleration for quick overtaking (a necessity in Tasmania) and decent brakes.
It also has considerable torque -to the effect that the first time I overtook someone on the highway I looked down and to my horror found I was doing 160km/hr and couldn’t even feel it. I’m told it has the torque equivalent of a v6 but I’m not car savvy enough to know how to check that.
We would dearly love an all-electric as a second vehicle for my partner who doesn’t have to commute like I do, but the options in Australia are basically nil without paying far more money than we have.
Guys, I commute to work on a bicycle most days – without the power assistance.
Fuel usage – a Winners bar and a bidon of water (Staminade if I’m really in a hurry..).
While I’m not sure when I will buy my next vehicle, I am confident that it will either be an ell-electric vehicle or at the very worst a diesel-electric hybrid. If I can’t afford it I will simply stick with my TS Astra.
Of course, it’s possible that I will never buy another car because hubby and I will figure out how to live life without two cars.
Oh yeah? How about 200 mph,hybrid powerplant, rocket launchers and made of Fleetonium? Plenty of room for babies too.
Fran, my parents thought they’d do that when they retired. But now it’s “in a few years time” and I suspect that means when one of them dies. At the risk of sounding cynical if you’re not working to make that switch now it’s probably not going to happen without an outside force.
The power assisted bicycle thing interests me because it seems to be the thing that pushes a lot of people over the line. Having been involved in bicycle retail there’s a considerable gulf between “normal” bicycle buyers and the novice cyclists who are interested in the electric assist bikes. For them it’s all about the assurance that they can get where they’re going (without too much sweat). And in many cases they really need that help, being fat and unfit. But at least half of them come back 6 months or a year later and want something without a motor. So I’ve changed from seeing them as spawn of santa to thinking they’re a useful stepping stone or alternative for people who need the motor.
I also have friends who just can’t pedal effectively. For them the “power assist” means not having to get a car because mobility scooters suck for commuting more than a kilometre. If you can sit on a bicycle (or find a trike you like) the options are much better.
I like to think I’m in the “my next car will be a hearse” category, but I also have a friend who’s working on a pedal powered hearse, so maybe not even then.
I’m glad someone called the prius for what it is – a w*nk. A diesel golf will get about the same fuel economy. Prius drivers are likely to have little interest in motoring apart from transport.
Prius is overweight & don’t handle very well due to the batteries. Total life cycle an S500 Merc emits less CO2 due the high percentage of recycled stuff (aluminium and magnesium) that go into its production.
I drive an Audi A3 which I’ve had reprogammed to push its power output to approx 180kW. I pay NO fuel economy penalty.
I have a thing for VW/Audi/Skoda/Seat, so if I were to buy a diesel it would be the Golf GT.
The electric car will save the internal combustion engine for where it belongs – hobbies including the race track. Just like the internal combustion engine saved the horse. (Jay Leno’s idea – not mine).
I would wager that almost every person bar a couple (one older gent that I used to see regularly while riding to work and a young female Japanese student) that I have seen with an engine on a bicycle has been a young male who has lost there driving licence.
Robert, Any idea where the extra power will come from to run these electric cars?
Really they just move the particulates from the cities to where the coal is burnt.
ChrisL said:
Specious. Even if all the existing power sources and road users remain just as they are, electric vehicles are, ceteris paribus less CO2-intensive than HC-ICEs. That’s because electic engines are more thermally efficient when resting, accelerating or decelerating than their HC-ICE counterparts. They don’t waste fuel warming up either. Finally, given that most of the recharging will be between the time people get home from work and the time people want to use their vehicles in the morning, this is going to come at a time when there is redundant capacity in the system. The plants can’t be backed completely off so the marginal load is only a fraction of what would have been produced if nobody was recharging their batteries.
And in Tasmania, it’s mostly hydro and gas.
Of course, if we ever do get near zero-emission plants, then we get an even bigger cut in transport emissions as well and without delay.
The bicycle idea wouldn’t work for either of us Moz as we have much too far to go to work and other commitments to make a bike (even a power-assisted one) practicable. I car pool with fellow teachers and we cut a bit of driving out that way, but Hubby’s hours and times are too eccentric to make that feasible.
I think 10 hours each week in transit * 2 is too much already and if we were increasing that by a factor of 50-80% and risking getting wet, having to carry laptops in panniers … then there’s the shopping, picking up pet supplies (we have four dogs and two cats)… I don’t see it.
I’ve needed a 4WD ute for work for about 2 years now, I’ve been patiently waiting for the VW Amarok to launch and it seems every time I look it’s a later date. The 7.6l/100km fuel efficiency is quite impressive. If I go ahead with that choice, it’ll be my first 4WD and also the most efficient car I’ve ever driven, and when I first started looking, I didn’t think that would be possible. I think it’s an extremely ugly vehicle, but I think that of all dual-cab utes – I don’t have a lot of choice with regard to work though.
@16 Fran – that’s correct. Coal fired (not counting BROWN coal fired) powerstations are much more efficient at capturing the heat from oxidation.
The Carnot cycle says that a 4 stroke ICE is only going to be about 30% efficient. Petrol 4 stroke is about 20%. Diesel is only more efficient due to the massive compression available. This is the ONLY argument in my mind in favour of ethanol as a transport fuel. As there’s no pre ignition, then compression can by much higher.
But in the end, coal fired powerstations are the most efficient way to release energy from fossil fuels (probably in the order of 70% including distn & transmn losses). Therefore, electrical based transport is the right direction to go.
A more fuel-efficient, less CO2-producing car is nice, but you have to look at the whole system.
To get batteries to the same energy/weight ratio as petrol, you need to improve current best performance by around 5 times. This may be possible, but probably not quickly.
You have to factor in 10% plus loss in electricity transmission. Plus extending the grid to remote areas.
There’s also availability of rare earths.
We can undoubtedly wring a lot more efficiency from the system (look at what has been done with railways), but there are limits.
Fran: which is why I suggested that if you’re dependent on two cars now, what will change to remove that? Idly hoping doesn’t cut it.
PeterT: electric cars address a different niche, just as cars do not do what horses did. The niche right now is people who don’t want a two ton long distance hauler to carry them half an hour to work, half an hour home. While probably 50% of the driving commuters in capital cities fall into the “don’t need one” group, only a few of those don’t want one. But that’s still a lot of people.
I’m not sure why you’d need to entend the grid into remote areas to make electric cars practical. Hardly anyone lives there (by definition), so there’s not much demand. There are already RAPS systems used to support electric vehicles, because the combination of PV and batteries in the vehicle is an obvious one.
Scotty Dog said:
This is imprecise. Ignition timing in conventionally-fuelled cars reflects the mixture of potential blends (with varying ignition attribiutes) and the need to avoid pre-ignition and thus serious engine damage. In the old days, lead in the fuel use to moderate this. Ethanol is more consistent and is also has a higher octane rating, so the igntiion can be set to permit a longer stroke.
On the other hand, because ethanol is more corrosive, you need different seals through the fuel delivery system. Personally, I like the idea of butanol (four carbon “ethanol”) better as it can be used in standard vehicles with up to 20% ethanol or other fuels without reconfiguration and is non-corrosive. If we can work out how to make it from waste economically at industrial scale — lovely.
Fran: A relative of mine who works in alternative fuel technology in Europe told me that if 10% of the vehicle fleet were to change to electric vehicles, the electricity generation capacity would need to double.
In Victoria(which btw also supplies Tasmania) there is a call to close power stations rather than any plans to double them.
It is all very well to say they will all recharge at night but on those hot summers nights when air conditioners put a huge strain on existing capacity, where is all the “spare” capacity to charge electric vehicles.
Rob,
Anyone who claims a front-wheel drive car handles well isn’t a proper hoon. Life without controlled oversteer?
davidh
moz (#7)
I have never claimed to be an environmentally responsible person.
Power oversteer? Been there, done that – most spectacularly in a Commodore ute as an undergrad. Good for lairising, not a particularly effective way to tackle narrow mountain roads.
Blah blah blah blah blah. The shortest route to lower emissions is driving less. An NBN and associated technologies that enable every last cubicle-driving office worker in the country to work from home for one day per week will do more to slash vehicle CO2 emissions than all the clap about electric vehicles, for the next 20 years at least.
And frankly most could do it tomorrow, NBN or no.
I would also add, ChrisL, that if one had the choice between a few million tailpipes emitting pollutants or a handful of hydrocarbon plants emitting, one would choose the HC plants. If one really wanted to clean up emissions, filtering the airborne effluent of HC plants would be a far more maintainable program than collecting all of the emissions from motor vehicles.
That sounds extravagantly large. Do you have a model bearing that out?
Right now off-peak power is very cheap, which suggests a lot of spare capacity. In any event, you are talking about rather fewer than 90 days each year. The bulk of the peak from A/C is during the day.
@22 Fran, by pre-ignition I meant premature detonation of the fuel air mixture due to heating cause by compression. I wasn’t talking about ignition timing as such. But you’re right about varing fuel quality. One of the strategies for dealing with this is more advanced timing and rich fuel air mixture. The richer mixture aids with cooling of the combustion chamber. This is why the ECU re-map in my car doesn’t sacrifice economy. I also have a specific setting for RON98; RON95 and RON91.
Stroke length & compression aren’t the same thing though of course are related.
@Zee – why don’t we just take the Utah state government model… 4 x 10hr days. Job done!
ChrisL@23,
It does not sound like your relative or your self have yet twigged to the fact that electric cars use energy with up to 95% efficiency whereas the worlds petrol engined car fleet is between 20 and 30% efficient. Furthermore petrol comes with a predelivery energy efficiency loss of 20% on average from the refinery process. Nearer the 25% mark. Just because one or two car companies “can” produce 40% efficient diesel engines, this does not impact with any significcance on the overall global fleet efficiency.
So what does that mean? Electric cars powered charged from the grid emit less CO2 than petrol powered cars by a significant margin. Furthermore electric cars are far less prone to the inefficient driving practices that are common with petrol powered cars which can reduce fuel efficiency by 30% or more. A rapid take off at the lights in a petrol car can double the fuel consumption for that manouvre. In an electric car the energy consumption is very much the same, further more much of that energy consumption can be recovered at the next set of lights with regenerative braking.
So both your relative and yourself have a lot more to learn about electric vehicles and their future. Electric vehicles in the future will largely be charged from distibuted solar energy systems. This trend is already under way in Europe and Japan.
The best serviceable non sports car performance profile on offer to date but only due for release in 2013 for an electric vehicle is the VW Milano. This vehicle has been designed as a taxi cab, and for that reason is compatible with the needs of a family car in terms of size (about the size of a PT Cruiser), seating capacity (5 when modified for personal passenger use), range (nominal 300 klm), driving performance (top speed 120 kph), and economy (45 kwhr charge = $10 at 22cpu against at least $28 for petrol at $1.2 pl).
Zee, the Falcon four should use about 20% less fuel than the current six with equivalent performance.
Telecommuting one day a week will cut fuel usage…about 20%.
I’m all in favour of less driving. But the incremental changes in vehicle technology appearing now, and in the near-term pipeline, are a pretty big deal.
The other reason Chrisl that your estimate of needing to double energy generation with a 10% transfer of (European) vehicles onto grid sounds extravgantly large is that in Australia, for example, electricity generation is just under 50% of total GHGs whereas road-based transport is about 12.5% of emissions. That includes of course vehicles that would not be on the grid (buses, heavy haulage for example).
Even assuming (as we shouldn’t) that cars were as thermally efficient in using hydrocarbons to produce motion as power plants, 10% of 12.5% is an extra 1.25% of capacity rather than 100% of capacity (your doubling) which makes the estimate wrong by a factor of at least 80.
Even allowing for transmission losses though, cars used by commuters are not as thermally efficient as HC power plants — not even close. I wouldn’t be surprised if your friend’s estimate were out by more than two orders of magnitude.
Prius drivers are likely to have little interest in motoring apart from transport.
This isn’t actually a crime. There are other hobbies to enjoy
Isn’t this a lot of the problem. You now have a car that performs as well as a serious hoon vehicle did 20 years ago. How good would it be if it just performed as a normal car? It has a top speed of 228 km/hr! WTF!? That is just craziness. We need cars with LESS power, not more.
I’d like to know the fuel consumption if you actually drove it at it’s maximum acceleration.
I reckon (in the grand tradition of anonymous web based bloviating) that China’s rapid industrialisation and massive demand for cars will see Chinese automotive manufacturers moving rapidly to electric vehicles. My rationale is commodification. All the amazing advances you describe are technically challenging, expensive and difficult to manufacture. Electric vehicles, in contrast, are ridiculously simple at their heart. The difficulty is the software to wring all the best performance out of them. All engines/batteries/inverters will become commodified, off-the-shelf items. This will bring costs down and cripple traditional auto makers, at least in the low end of the market. Who knows, Apple might end up “making” a car …
Chinese auto makers will leap expensive ICE technologies and go for electric.
Fran, I was amazed with the 10% figure, but it was his business, running around Northern Europe giving lectures on alternative fuels. He seemed to know a lot about the advantages and disadvantages of each.Fascinating really. I think electric vehicles will always be just around the corner, on the horizon, but not quite there….
Chrisl,
Your prediction will come as a disappointing surprise to companies such a Renault Nissan who are planning that 10% of cars by 2020 will be all electric. Other car companies with expectaions as high as 20% by 2020 will be even more crushed.
The most efficient hybride today is
http://www.gizmag.com/infiniti-essence-concept/11178/
the working principle being that with 600 hp available the driver will either loose his lisense in the first 2 hours of driving and be jailed, leaving the car safely garaged 100% emission free, or will accelerate and leave the ground disintegrating as it lands leaving wreckage strewn over a 1 klm stretch of motorway.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/car-life/cheney/globe-journalists-son-crashes-180000-porsche/article1574334/
well that is not the exact article I had in mind, but you get the idea.
Chrisl
When one is amazed by something and is interested in the implications, that’s usually a cue to check the integrity of the claim. I’m reminded of Monty Python’s Interesting facts sketch.
Look Fran, you are probably right I should have challenged the integrity of the claim but in my defence it was a wedding anniversary and I didn’t want to create waves. However I have fired off an email and will get to the bottom of it.If you google “Rap clean air products” perhaps you can judge for yourself whether he has any integrity.
Robert, decidedly non-hoonish here, but I’m very very happy with teh economy of my Skoda Octavia wagon. Fits a damn sight more into it than your VW, and I’ve been getting highway efficiencies of around 5.2l/100km. Plenty enough torque to overtake, but I’m hard-pressed going much over the speed limit.
ChrisL,
I’m not challenging your friends integrity, just some of his knowlwdge. Rap clean air products are right in the thick of energy products, all except electricity from my reading of their site. And that might where a possible bias against EV’s originates. In fairness though,Europeans seem to be more frugal with their electricity useage than Astralians are. I was looking at a sight to discover how Europe pays per unit for electricity, and the household consumptions that they were talking about where tiny.
BilB Just got this reply “Chris,
Let me try to find “official” data concerning infrastructure for electric vehicles. Is it very urgent? I am very busy in the next couple of days, but if you need it urgently I will give it priority.”
We will have to wait and see what he comes up with…
Interesting re your mentioning the Renault Nissan leaf. There was a news item this morning about industrial espionage around the technology and three Renault executives have been stood down.
Reading further, it seems there is a bit of battle looming between car makers over electric cars and hybrid/electric.
Interesting
Chrisi @23: Most of the recharging of electric and plug in hybrids will be done using off-peak power so there will be no need to build extra generation capacity. A quick calc based on Australian emissions suggests that complete electrification of our car fleet would add less than 10% to total power requirements.
For my next car I will be looking seriously for a plug-in hybrid with enough battery power to cover a normal days travel. Means that I wont need to use patrol most days but will be able to do long trips without having to wait for the building of a recharge network.
Moz: I am trying to talk my wife into getting a power assist bicycle because it will allow her to keep up with me on longer rides. If I hadn’t retired I would be interested too because it would allow me to arrive at work without being a sweaty wreck and allow me to wear rain gear without being a sweaty wreck either.
Power assist bikes might really take off if they can be built with weather protection. Turns it into a practical commute vehicle for people who don’t have to travel too far.
As always, Adelaide is at the forefront.
nb Offerings to the God of Speed (brown bottles, red-rimmed labels).
The thing about cars is that their environmental destructiveness isn’t caused by their emissions, but by their size. Cars require so much space, both for driving and for storage, that they effectively mandate sprawling cities and long travel distances. That’s what creates the CO2 and the pollution and the death and destruction etc.
It’s not energy efficiency but space efficiency that’s the issue. Ride a bike or catch public transport.
JohnD: they can, but not yet at a cost most people are willing to pay. Look into velomobiles. A close friend of mine builds the RotoVelo, $6000 for the non-assisted version and another $1000 or so for the assist. That gets you a complete shell. And as Simon points out, even a power assisted velomobile takes up above the same space as a motorbike while making almost any motobike look profligate with energy. One of the european velomobile builders converted a scooter into a recumbent, faired motorbike and was getting 200mpg around the city. Aha, details here: http://www.velomobiel.nl/allert/Recumbent%20motorbike.htm
In mass manufacture quantities a power assisted velomobile will still cost more than a bicycle, especially a cheap bicycle, but $3000-$4000 is quite realistic given the technology etc we have today. I’m sure Ben at Trisled would be happy to sell you 1000 eRotoVelos for $4000 each
Moz: Interesting set of economy figures. Problem I can see is that it appears to be still not completely weatherproof.
What I am really interested in is a combination of this amazingly stable machine with a protective body The combination should give something that is good for driving in the rain, much more stable than a motorbike. Wonder how hard it would be to use these concepts for power assist bicycle?
I’d love to drive a Prius, but they are just not affordable; then again neither is a Bommodore or a Foulcan. I’ll stick with the Yaris for now, an excellent, fun, economical car to drive in any conditions.
JohnD: What I think we will see soon is a velomobile with a windscreen that’s pretty much weathertight and has a power assist to get you to 25kph nice and quickly and help you up the hills, but it won’t have the battery capacity to push you any great distance. It will cruise at 30-40kph with your 150-200W pedalling input so the 25kph cut-out will mean the limited battery capacity won’t actually matter much.
What it will not be is a very small car. Partly for legal reasons (there is no place for such a thing in the legislation), and partly for safety reasons (there is no place for such a thing in the minds of motorists).
WRT your toy above (note that it’s promoted as a non-road legal “exciting toy”, not a transportation device). The added mechanical complexity and drivertrain losses mean that even though it’s fairly simple it’s not likely to be helpful. There is a guy with a high, tilting pedal powered trike out there but his vehicle sucks in so many ways it’s hard to know where to start. How about: it’s over 30kg and easy to tip over?
What makes bicycles so efficient is the very limited power available. The less efficient ones just don’t work. If you start by trying to make a smaller, lighter motor vehicle you end up with the Mini rather than the bicycle. Instead you really need to start with “how little can I add to a bicycle?” Which is where most of the velomobile designers come from.
The main requirement (there was a case in NSW not so long ago) is that a power assisted bicycle (really a human powered vehicle) must be able to be powered by the rider. You’re also only allowed 200W and the power assist has to cut out at 25kph. The pedal requirement means you’re limited to at most 50kg for the vehicle, and you want to be much less than that. The 200W power limit is about what a regular cyclist can put out for 10 minutes or so (longer for fitter people, topping out at perhaps 400W for an hour at the very top end). What that means is that the power assist is not going to make a dramatic difference to how much crap you can add to the bike before it’s not a bicycle any more.
There’s a lot of fairly delicate synergies in a modern bicycle – because it’s light it doesn’t need to be especially strong, so it can be light. And so on. But if you break that by adding a 10kg motor and 20kg of batteries so you can have a 500W motor that runs for two hours, suddenly you need a heavier bike that can carry the extra weight and handle the extra power. Then you want a weather sheild so you add a fairing, which means you need an extra wheel or two so it doesn’t get blown all over the road in a crosswind. But now it’s wider, so the air resistance has gone up and 500W really isn’t enough. So you double that, and add another 10kg to the frame… and suddenly you have a Mini again.
Look at European microcars if you want a potted history of how these things go. Also the Porsche microcar built a couple of years ago that does everything you’re asking for (and IIRC 300mpg). Cost about 20 million Euro, but shows what can be done if money and legal restrictions are ignored.
The current vehicle safety laws are strange. It is OK to drive a not very safe motor bike that goes with a high death rate. It is OK to drive a car with a whole raft of crash protection requirements that is much much safer than a motor bike. But at the moment what is in between is a legal no go zone. At the moment it is still a no go zone even if the vehicle is fitted with a whole raft of crash avoidance technology.
This no go zone is not being challenged at the moment because very few people own electric assist bikes and want to challenge these barriers. However, pressures to reduce emissions and deal with congestion may make a difference.
If I had to guess I would tend to agree with you. The most likely development for dealing with the emission/congestion effort may be some version of the narrow track vehicle. A vehicle narrow enough to safely travel two abreast in a single lane and short enough to fit into something close to the parking spaces that motor bikes now use. Big attraction is that such a vehicle would be good for urban travel, and an all weather vehicle as well as being suitable for long trips.
It is conceivable that electric assist bikes may also develop into a relatively low cost vehicle for trips under 20 km. However, the problem at the moment is that most people would want to switch to cars or public transport on wet days – so the government would be still expected to provide the roads and public transport to deal with rainy days.
It is worth thinking about a whole range of options.