Our Transportation Options

Humans, being a social sort of animal, need to be on the move. On a biological level, we move about to gather food, whether from the garden or the "big box" grocery chain. We travel to find a mate, a companion, or just a gathering of like-minded folks. We go off to "find ourselves" in the solitude of wilderness or to make a splash in a metropolis. We repeatedly relocate 5 days a week to trade our time for money, sometimes to satisfy our "needs", but often just to buy back the time to travel somewhere else. And sometimes we just travel about because we can, as an expression of free will, as a safety valve for emotional pressures, as a way to see what's out there, or as a form of personal re-creation.

Nowadays, viewed objectively, our vastly swollen population travels far more than what's really necessary. But if it's easy, cheap, convenient, and safe, what's the problem? Well, after a century of burning up about half of the Earth's entire store of easy-to-reach liquid hydrocarbons in a ceaseless struggle for "economic development", it may be time to look for safer, saner alternatives. There are simply too many humans on this planet using too many non-renewable resources far too quickly.

About 27% of all energy consumed is used for transportation. Petroleum is getting far less cheap, both at the pump and in terms of the total social and environmental costs. Automobiles cost a bunch to buy, maintain, insure, license, park, drive, house, and dispose of, not to mention the environmental costs involved in mining their raw materials, the energy cost of manufacturing and transporting them, and building and maintaining ever-expanding roadways, parking lots, etc. In the Twenty-First Century they have become a quaint anachronism, and a threat to the planet.

In addition, the roads and streets are far less safe where infrastructure is based solely on large motorized vehicles, most of which are essentially high speed "tanks", luxurious "cocoons", or high performance NASCAR "wannabees". When the morning and evening commutes are clogged with cretins in cars, where's the convenience? And what does "easy" get you besides more time sitting on your stagnant behind, followed by a drive to the fitness center to burn those unused calories?

So what will work to really reduce our vehicular planetary impact?

I doubt that biofuels are the answer. There are simply too many vehicles and people using them. Previous estimates about ethanol indicated that it's 15% "better" (meaning higher octane rating, more oxygenated, etc.) than gasoline. But the January 2008 article in Science magazine by Scharlemann and Laurance indicates that biofuels actually accelarate global warming! There's only so much arable land, sunlight, and water, and removing all of the top growth (cellulosic ethanol) along with the fermentables/oils (corn ethanol or biodiesel) starves the soil of organic matter. How do you feed the cars, trucks, people, and other animals from a dwindling resource? Something's gotta give! Fuels are part of a global economy, so the transportation decisions we make affect all parts of our local economy as well as those around the world. And as "needs" increase exponentially, so will prices.

Hydrocarbon-fueled hybrids, biofuels in general, nuke/oil powered electrics/fuel cells, synfuels from coal/"garbage", even renewably powered electrics/fuel cells are all just stop-gap methods to make up for the fact that we're too soft and lazy to take personal resposibility for all of our transport needs. So how do we realistically chip away at these "needs"?

* Note: An Adobe PDF file from www.greenseal.org/resources/reports.cfm on tire rolling resistance (among other things) is available from their site, or if you Click Here.

Ride the Net, Not the Highways!!

One final note about saving on gas. Larisa recently (Spring, 2008) turned one of her part-time jobs into a home-based business by signing up for satellite Internet access. Her employer now pays half the monthly satellite bill, and she sends completed invoices to the main office printer via "PrinterShare", a free, downloadable program found at PrinterAnywhere.com. The invoices travel up to the Wild Blue satellite, beam down to Cheyenne, Wyoming, soar into a server somewhere, beam back up from Gaithersburg, Maryland to the Hughes satellite, then back to the main office's dish, into a waiting computer, and the printing begins. So she does "virtual printing" in order to eliminate a 10 mile round trip, working in a noisy, crowded office, and all the hassles of timing, preparation, etc. involved in leaving home. Thinking trumps oil again!

Renewable, Self-Fueling Transportation: Our Version

Personally I prefer bicycles, all kinds of bicycles. They're made for smooth roads, potholes, or totally off-road. They're designed for speed or load carrying, short commutes or long distance touring, singly or with others. They burn a fuel you already consume willingly and usually without complaint. They're three times as bio-mechanically efficient as walking, far easier on your joints than running, and can handle much rougher terrain than skating. Even the most pricey are far cheaper than cars in every respect. Maintainence is easy to learn and repairs or modifications aren't beyond the do-it-yourselfers. They're made for any age and ability level, even including electric motor assistance as an off-the-shelf option.

Given our commitment to work occasionally, 12 hilly miles away, rain, shine or snow, we utilize a combination of transport options. Larisa drives a recumbent "tadpole-style" (2 wheels in front that steer, 1 rear drive wheel) tricycle made by Catrike. Bob also drives a recumbent tricycle, also by Catrike, called the "Road". (Technically speaking, they are 3-wheeled bicycles, as the "bi" refers to two legs, not wheels, going through circular cycles of motion). We bought them at the Hostel Shoppe in Steven's Point, Wisconsin, an excellent, fully stocked shop full of knowledgeable cyclists. Both trikes have lightweight aluminum 6061T6 alloy frames, wheels, and components, along with 80-110 psi tires and 27 gear ratios. They're designed for high efficiency, a wide range of slopes, and maximum comfort. A recumbent bike is designed with the rider seated on a comfortable, padded, chair-like "seat", leaned back to a varying degree, and pedaling out in front of the body. This gives both maximum comfort and low aerodynamic drag (and with the low position of the trike, headwinds and sidewinds are nearly unnoticeable).

The upside? Hills are no longer such a big problem, both due to the high power output possible in this back-braced position, and because we can go as slowly as we want - even stop and restart! Trikes may have more rolling resistance because of 3 tires, but that's more than compensated for by putting less concentration on balance and more on power output. And with direct steering connections to the wheels instead of complicated linkages, the steering is like a race car. It's precise, self-centering, powerful, stable even at very high speeds, and easy to U-turn in a narrow roadway. 

The downside? People who are accustomed to upright bikes are concerned that they are less visible to automobile traffic. I've ridden my trike in traffic and I've found that people notice me MORE than if I were riding an upright bike, just because the trike is so unusual. And I ride with an orange flag flipping around 6 feet in the air. Plus I ride at the speed of the traffic flow, taking a lane instead of hugging the curb. Even at low speeds the trike is more predictable to other drivers since you can ride a straighter line. And when you stop at a light you aren't flopping around trying to stay upright, putting your foot down, getting it back on the pedal again, etc.

Our trikes have been modified by adding 1/2-inch thick, foam rubber pipe insulation over the seat webbing rails. Alloy frames normally transmit a fair amount of road shock. This option really smoothes out the bumps, making gravel roads tolerable and rough pavement a pleasure! The other major modification is the addition of 36-volt electric hub motors and DeWalt Lithium Nanophosphate batteries on both trikes.

If you would like to see a more complete explanation of the "Lithium Lounger" project, just Click Here for a free PDF file download of the handout that will be available from me at the Clean Air Car Show at the 2008 Midwest Renewable Energy and Sustainable Living Fair. And if you're interested in doing your own conversion, the complete summary of the conversions I did can be found by Clicking Here for a free PDF file download.

This is Bob's "TrikeTruck", the "Lithium Lounger" after electric motor conversion, with a trailer full of freshly-picked apples weighing around 150 lbs., and a couple of "24-volt", 10-watt solar panels behind the headrest, trickle-charging the batteries. More on this below, just scroll down to the next trike photo. Or choose one of the PDF downloads from the previous paragraph.

This is our recycled 2001 Toyota Prius, discussed further below. If you'd like to see all 8 photos of the rack in details on an Adobe PDF file, Click Here for a free download. It requires Adobe Reader, so if you don't have that, Click Here for a free download of the program.

Our Junkyard Prius:

If we need to be somewhere distant, at a specific time, hauling a large load, or in really foul weather (or some combination of these) we ride in our 2001 recycled Toyota Prius gas-electric hybrid car. In mid-2002, as we were thinking about how to improve our automobile situation (we were using a 1983 BMW 318), we reviewed the currently available electric and gas/electric hybrids. "Think", a company in Norway, was about to market an all-electric car in the U.S. market called the "Think City". But soon after this Ford bought the company and scuttled the program (their better idea!). So we looked again at hybrids and really liked the Toyota Prius. But on our income it didn't seem possible to buy a new one. So we decided just to keep our eyes open for any used ones that might be available (even though we knew how unlikely that was because of high demand and low supply).

While taking a load of rusty steel to the local scrapyard using a neighbor's pickup truck, we just happened to be driving down a street that went past an automotive salvage yard. We found a Prius in front of the building sporting a sign reading "$5500, AS IS". It had been purchased by the junkyard at an insurance car auction. It looked great but it wouldn't start. It had been in an accident. The tires were bald, it hit some ice in a curve, and the entire right side was scraped against a guardrail. Then it spun and mashed the left front end. The insurance company sold it because the dealer's estimate for additional repairs (after doing $7500 in body work) exceeded a reasonable limit. But the dealer's highly trained technicians, and a Master Mechanic flown in from California, misdiagnosed the car's problems. If you'd like the fully detailed story just Click Here for the downloadable Adobe PDF version.

Anyway, instead of requiring a new power controller, or "inverter", to run the electric motors, the existing inverter simply needed 3 skinny wires repaired. They had been bumped out of position during the accident. Toyota's technician, didn't understand that a car's components only communicate when all the connections are complete! Diagnostic computers couldn't solve what I fixed in 15 minutes using a simple continuity checker. We saved nearly $13,000 by recycling this car. And since most of the energy a car will ever use is consumed in its production, that alone is possibly sufficient to justify the car's use. But it does two other things very well. It produces roughly one-tenth of an average car's tailpipe emissions, and it gets great gas mileage.

Since the focus of the Prius is lower pollution, it needs to maintain a hot, very reactive set of catalytic combustion devices in the exhaust system. So when the weather is very cold, the gasoline engine needs to run more than it does in hot weather, just to keep the emissions down. In our case this means an average tank mileage of around 38-40 mpg when it's below zero F., and around 47-50 mpg during the Summer. So even at its worst, the Prius doubles the mileage of a car with the same power output.

Still, if you want one don't buy it new. You'll save more energy by either recycling any fuel efficient vehicle, or by cutting back on riding in your car in favor of driving a bicycle (or trike)! In other words, Don't Cut Butter With A Chainsaw! Use the appropriate vehicle for the trip, in terms of speed required, length of trip, comfort level needed, and the load you're hauling.

And in terms of good news, "Think" is back in business and will soon attempt to market the "Think City" in the U.S. again, this time with better batteries (the A123 Systems lithium-iron-nanophosphate cells that DeWalt uses) and, unfortunately, a higher price ($25,000). If you want something cheaper, the best option is still rebuilding a car with a dead engine, making it an electric conversion. A number of companies offer parts, plans, etc. One of my favorites is Electro Automotive, found at www.electroauto.com .

You don't think that your current car pollutes very much? Care to bet on that? You can calculate it yourself by Clicking Here to reach an online comparison tool, with data from GreenCars.com. You enter your present car (or any other) and engine type alongside one of the modern hybrids (use the Prius if you really want a shock). You enter your yearly mileage, the cost of gas in your area, and even your driving habits. You get a breakdown of yearly cost, along with emissions of carbon monoxide and dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulates (soot) and unburned hydrocarbons (smog). Very revealing!

And if you'd like to see Edmund's review of the specs of the four hybrid cars available new in the U.S. for under $25,000, just Click Here. These include the Honda Civic, Toyota Prius, Chevy Malibu, and the Saturn Aura. You may note that the current baseline Prius is the cheapest of the four, with the best mileage, the longest range, and the smallest fuel tank! Why can't Detroit do this?

Some additional resources:                                                                              * Pleiades-enterprises.bigstep.com - electric scooters                                          * Vectrix-ats.com - electric scooter/motorcycle                                                * Nycewheels.com - a full range of electric add-ons, bikes and scooters                * SunBicycles.com - recumbent bikes and others                                                 * Catrike.com - very lightweight, efficient, responsive, and stable tricycles              * ElectricRider.com - electric add-ons for bicycles and full electric bikes

Our Latest Project (9/01/2005)

We've just begun restoration work on a 1971 G.E. Electrak all-electric garden tractor. It uses six 6-volt deep-cycle batteries for motive power and to power a 3-motor electric mower, a 36-volt, 30-inch rotary tiller, a front blade, and a 1-bottom plow. We plan to charge it using three, 120-watt photovoltaic (solar electric) panels, using the excess capacity that our PV panels supply in the Summer. We'll keep you updated on the progress of this journey to further replace our oil-driven machinery with renewables.

Latest news (10/31/05)

The G.E. Electrak is now up and running. Wiring was repaired where it got damaged from contact with the drive motor pulley. Then the two smallest relays that the previous owner replaced got rewired so they no longer caused a short circuit in the instrument cluster. Overfilling the batteries had caused massive acid spills in the battery compartments, requiring some extensive cleaning, rust conversion, priming, body putty, metal backing plates, and a final double coat of brushed-on truck bed liner. The entire unit was repainted with 2 coats of Sunburst Yellow Rustoleum paint. The mower and roto-tiller also got the yellow paint, plus the mower's underside got 2 coats of epoxy enamel. The old batteries got recycled and replaced with 6 U.S. Battery, T-125 golf cart batteries. We added another Kyocera KC-120 PV panel to our solar electric array and wired three of the closest matching (amp-wise) of the panels with switching that allows us to change their output to "36" volts for tractor charging or "12" volts for home use. So we now have an all-solar means to mow trails, till the garden, plow up additional soil if needed, and grade the gravel driveway, plus it's so quiet and fun to operate! 

At this point (October 2006) we've done mowing and rotary tillage from April until late September. No problems! It's so quiet that our cat walks nearby when I'm mowing. Since battery capacity on the lead-acid cells decreases with temperature, we've retired the Elektrac until next Spring.

The Latest Project (January 2007)

We're currently working to outfit Larisa's Catrike with a Crystalyte Phoenix "Racer", 36-volt DC hub motor (from ElectricRider.com). It will be a wheel replacement for her current 20-inch rear wheel (so she can remove it and swap with her current wheel for normal bike riding). It will use four DeWalt, 36-volt, lithium "Nano-Phosphate" batteries, mounted in a pair of removeable, side-mounted racks attached to the bike. We're modifying the charging procedure so that the batteries can accept either an external 36-volt input from our solar panels (all four batteries charging at once), or use the standard AC charger on individual batteries for occasional "balancing" charges. Using nano-particles, the battery can handle much higher charging and discharge currents since the electrode surface area is so much higher. To see the specs on these cells, Click Here. Full charge on a single battery with the AC charger occurs in 1 hour, but full charge on all four batteries using the solar panels should occur in only (depending on discharge) 2 hours! Top speed will be around 23 mph plus whatever the rider exerts, but Larisa will use it mainly for climbing large hills on a 5 mile commute to a nearby land cooperative. Range will depend on how fast she wants to climb and how much she pedals with it. I'll post photos, along with more performance data, when it's completed.

Latest Electric Trike Update (May 25, 2007)

The trike runs great but we've just gotten the last of the four DeWalt batteries and I haven't done range trials yet. Acceleration is phenomenal! With almost 4 Lance Armstrongs at the rear wheel, each weighing about 8 pounds, pedaling up hills is so easy! Charging on solar is equally flawless. I switch 2 of our Kyocera KC-120 panels to series configuration to achieve around 40 volts, open circuit. When the batteries are discharged the charge rate is around 4 amps or so into a 36-volt load. As the voltage rises to 38 volts (full batteries) the charge rate tapers to less than .25 amps and trickle charges. The next step is finding a couple of 12-volt, thin-film, amorphous silicon solar panels to mount on a lightweight framework above the rider. The idea is to shade the rider while continuously charging the batteries when the sun is shining. This will make it a truly autonomous vehicle! 

Latest Electrike Trike Update (June 16, 2007)

This is an overview of the trike. I don't have the solar panels on it yet, but I found a couple of "24-volt" (about 39 volts, open circuit) half-amp panels at the MREF this year. The panels are made by Innovative Energy Systems, and are model VC-5. They are multi-crystal silicon strips mounted under thick plastic and over a stainless steel sheet. I may just mount them over the battery box.

This is a straight-on front view showing how everything fits nicely behind the seat. Also note the cat paw prints on the Catrike seat! If you'd like to see 4 pages of photos showing more details of the trikes, just Click Here for a free download of the Adobe .pdf file. And if you don't have a copy of Adobe Reader, just Click Here for a free download of the program.

This is Bob's Lithium Lounger hybrid trike after bringing home a trailer nearly full of apples. The old Burley trailer has some heavy-duty 110 psi tires and its hitch is slightly modified to compensate for the weird rear triangle frame angles on the trike. The sun is refueling the batteries and the rider is getting refueled on freshly picked apples!

This is the business side of a DeWalt battery pack with the A123 Systems nano-particle lithium cells. It's a 10-cell pack with a resting voltage of 33 volts. The upright slots near the bottom left and right are the main power contacts, with battery management (BMS) pins in between. The main negative is on the far left. The main positive is the far right. When charging in DeWalt's charger, the BMS pins allow for cell balancing, which should be done occasionally in any series pack if you want maximum output and no cell damage due to voltage reversal. The nano-particle electrodes allow these batteries to charge or discharge at up to 60 amps (each)without overheating, gassing off, or exploding. Don't try this with any other lithium battery! To see an excellent article comparing all of the various lithium battery technologies, from the IEEE, just Click Here.

Update on Sept. 18, 2007:

Both of our Catrikes are now converted to human/electric hybrids, both using four DeWalt iron-nanophosphate lithium batteries, wired in parallel for "36" volts (33 resting volts) with 9.6 amp-hours capacity. Bob's red Catrike has the added cruise control that makes hill climbing just a little bit easier. With cruise, you don't have to hold the throttle position, saving all of your concentration for pedaling and steering. Bob's trike also got the two solar panels previously mentioned mounted behind the headrest, above the batteries, making one of the trikes fully autonomous (riding or parking it in the sun automatically charges the batteries)!

Top speed without pedaling is about 24 mph on the level. For range estimation, picture a top-notch cyclist putting out 300 watts of effort. That's full-blown, flat-out, lungs gasping, legs burning effort. Now do that for an hour, and that's what the batteries can do! Add leg power and you extend the range. Add sunshine and the onboard PV panels can take the batteries from empty to full in about 18 hours, or extend your range while traveling. If/when Nanosolar (www.nanosolar.com) in California has their new nano-particle, thin-sheet, solar panels for sale, you can bet that we'll try them as a much higher output "roof" for at least one of the trikes.

Update Fall 2007:

We'd be doing more biking, but in mid-August of 2007 we received a 500-year rainfall event, giving us over 22 inches of rain in under 24 hours, and over 44 inches in 36 hours (official measurements from a nearby Minnesota Dept. of Transportation rainguage), most of it in a few hours at night. And the rain came after a few previous days of 2-inch rains, fully saturating the soils. This led to massive flooding, even on the ridges, washing out roadways, carrying away bridges, huge mudslides on steep hills, you get the picture. We're fine, with no garden damage and only a badly rutted gravel driveway (that mostly ended up on our porch and flower beds) that took a few days to repair with large rocks from a neighbor's "field rock" stash and lots of regrading with a tractor and blade.

But roads are now improving and we're resuming some commutes and exploratory trips. The hybrid trikes are performing better than expected, are charging quickly and easily, and are more fun to ride now that the weather has cooled.

Update June 2008:

At this year's Midwest Renewable Energy Fair I was displaying and demonstrating the "Lithium Lounger" at the Clean Energy "Car" Show, near the entrance to the fairgrounds. It was a lot of fun to "hot-dog" the trike around the entrance area. And I was interviewed by both newspapers and television reporters. But the real jolt for me was seeing the light bulb snap on over people's heads when they realized that this was serious transportation. I built the first trike conversion so that Larisa would have a local commuting option besides our Toyota Prius. But it had to have the range, battery longevity, hill-climbing ability, and speed to be a serious replacement. We achieved that, and at the Fair you could see women nudging their husbands and commenting, "Why don't we convert our bikes like that?" And people who had injuries/surgeries on their legs, backs, etc. were looking at the electric assist and commenting about how this could put them back on bikes, getting some much-needed exercise that actually takes them somewhere. No fuels but food and sunshine, no license needed in our State, and the ability to get somewhere with relative ease, comfort and efficiency: the human-electric hybrid as a Freedom Machine!

Latest Project; July 22,2008:

This is our latest replacement for a petroleum-powered tool. It's a Makita UC4030A AC electric chainsaw, running on a 36-volt DC-to-AC inverter. The inverter is a Tripp-Lite APS3636VR, and it is plugged into the 36-volt electric tractor via a 50-amp "range outlet" wired directly into the tractor's main DC switch. The full combination is VERY quiet, completely portable. The chainsaw is VERY smooth-cutting and quite fast for an electric saw. Plus there's no more gas to mix and no foul smoke in my lungs or clothing. Now we can hitch on our wood-hauling wagon, drive electrically out to the woods, quietly cut trees into easy-to-carry lengths for loading, and drive home to buck the wood into stove lengths. Another plus: the 60-pound inverter, mounted low and centrally, gives the tractor a lot more traction on wet slopes. It was an expensive addition to the tractor (around $1000 for the saw and inverter) but the tractor was obtained for only $100, with another $400 spent on new batteries, paint, etc. In short, this makes work fun!

To see additional photos of the tractor-inverter-saw combination as an Adobe PDF file, just Click Here for a free download.