Across Mongolia on Solar Charged Bikes

[jkbrigman]

http://electricbikereport.com/tour-de-mongolia-solar-electric-bike-tour/#more-4211

There's also a report on something similar in the current issue of Bill Moore's "EV World". Anyone have any idea if this is the same people or not?

Thanks;
JKB

 

[dogman dan]

Very cool. Looks about as close as it gets to solar bike done right to me. Not trying to ride fast, but bb drive through the gears allowing a nice assist for a slow grind up steeps.

I'm going to guess that looks like about 60w of panel, so able to fill a 350 wh battery daily. It's when you want to ride 30 mph for 50 miles, that the solar panel math doesn't work so good. Carrying 400w of panel is tough, so generating 2000wh daily is not practical.

Fairly likely they pedaled 1000wh a day, but really that's not so hard for a fit cyclist. Though they may have pedaled more than rode the sun, they still reallllly apreciated the assist.

 

[jkbrigman]

Very cool. Looks about as close as it gets to solar bike done right to me. Not trying to ride fast, but bb drive through the gears allowing a nice assist for a slow grind up steeps.

I'm going to guess that looks like about 60w of panel, so able to fill a 350 wh battery daily. It's when you want to ride 30 mph for 50 miles, that the solar panel math doesn't work so good. Carrying 400w of panel is tough, so generating 2000wh daily is not practical.

Fairly likely they pedaled 1000wh a day, but really that's not so hard for a fit cyclist. Though they may have pedaled more than rode the sun, they still reallllly apreciated the assist.

All agreed! They said somewhere in the blog what the watt rating of the panels was, but I can't remember. You are right about the slow riding and pedal assist. This is the kind of riding I'd like to do - where you find the "balance point" for all three energy sources: the human, the panel and the battery.

I've been able to maintain 20mph on 250 watts before - seems like it would be nice to see what could be done with 2 or 3 kwh of LiPo and a 100 watt panel - 200 miles over a 10 hour day would give you pretty good "legs" for a reasonably rapid across-the-US trip with nighttime charging in a campground or hotel room.

I'm not sure what to make of the single-wheeled trailer - I'm seeing more two-wheel trailers out there and they seem to have good carrying capacity in the two-wheel design: at least 200 lbs. What's your thoughts on that single-wheel trailer?

 

[dogman dan]

Replace trailer with full suspension longtail. That's why I built one, for a longer trip someday.

But I've never towed a trailer. For mongolia, they'd need a one wheel to stay in the same rut as the bike. I don't like the look of any trailer, that hitches on one side to the frame. Hitch at both dropouts, or at the saddle is my opinion, formed only by looking at pictures.

 

[jkbrigman]

Replace trailer with full suspension longtail. That's why I built one, for a longer trip someday.

But I've never towed a trailer. For mongolia, they'd need a one wheel to stay in the same rut as the bike. I don't like the look of any trailer, that hitches on one side to the frame. Hitch at both dropouts, or at the saddle is my opinion, formed only by looking at pictures.

Hitching at the skewer seems to be a fragile way to do it - best case you may end up misaligning the rear wheel, worst case you can break a skewer or lose your trailer. There's one scheme I've seen for hitching to one side of the skewer that looks OK, but nothing seems to work anywhere near as well as a seatpost connection or the both-dropouts connection (just like a set of rear wheelstays cut off another bike).

Smack me in the face for not figuring out that the single-wheel trailer goes into the same rut. Hell, I grew up in the country, I ought to know better than that. I must be getting soft.

So, I gotta challenge the notion of replacing a trailer with a full suspension longtail. Two reasons:

- can you REALLY carry as much on a longtail as a trailer can? I want to make a trailer to carry trash to the dump/recycle and I wouldn't want that stuff on the bike with me, falling off when I rounded a turn,
- is a longtail OK for commuting? I'd want the maneuverability of a "regular" bike for commuting...

THoughts?