Electric Century - 100 mile ride on an Electric Bike

Since putting together my Electric Ute http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=13834 I have been toying with the idea of a reaaally big one day ride. 100 miles, or a century ride as roadies call it. I don't know if anyone has done it and posted on it yet. I mean, Dr. Bass goes fast, and Justin went a long way across Canada, but I don't know if they have done that many miles in one day. Even if someone has, I wanted to, too. The idea is not hard. You just need enough batteries. You could load a trailer with batteries on any eBike and go. There is the option of charging and carrying less batteries, but then there are only so many hours in a day.

So I did the math. I have 36V 50Ah (most likely less) of battery capacity at my disposal. If I keep a pace of about 15-20 mph I can usually consume about .5 Ah/mile. Or, since voltage is always changing, it is better to work with watts. That is 1800Wh, so I just need to keep consumption under 18Wh/m, which also means keep my speeds down and add some pedal power, but it should be no problem. BUT...I am pretty sure those battery packs are not at full capacity anymore. And 18Wh/m is boring. And I want to include some hills in my loop, and there will be headwinds. So I brought chargers. There are 4 separate packs. 3 10Ah and 1 20Ah. I have 2 4A chargers and 2 2A chargers. That is 12A of charging power. Assuming less than 100% charging efficiency and some non-linearity in charging, I figure I can get 10Ah pumped into the packs in an hour of charging. Even a 1/2 hour coffee break should give 5Ah. If I can do a couple charge stops I should be ok. I will just measure pack discharge and keep them on a rotation based on the next charging station so that all of them come in partially discharged and all of them can be charging and making the most of the charging ability. Those with more discharge will get the 4A charger, those with less will get the 2A charger.

Next...San Clemente to Cooks Corner. And pics.

I use my Cycle Analyst and Garmin GPS to keep and eye on things as I ride. I don't have the speedo set up on the Cycle Analyst, by the way. By the time I get to Cooks, this is the situation:


The 1500 feet of climbing has kept me from getting the Ah/m that I want, but I will get that back when I descend, it is all climbing to get to Cooks from my house. I have rotated the packs OK, but not probably optimally. One has only 2AH of discharge or so. I proceed to park and charge them all. I have found another outdoor outlet at Cooks, which is really nice. I am afraid of blowing AC fuses since I don't know how much current these chargers draw. But outdoor outlets are all GCFI protected, so that should help if there are any problems.


I don't get to keep my creation out with all the other cool bikes at Cooks. It needs powahhh. And it is very tipsey with all these packs so I prefer that it be out of the way. Besides that, it is not a Harley.


One advantage of running multiple relatively small packs.

So while the bike was charging, I got some breakfast.


Good news for Cooks fans who happen to be geeks: they have free Wifi now. You don't even have to mess with a password or logging in. In other geek news, I discovered the Skyfire browser for my Windows phone. It is faster than IE or Opera mobile, it lets me browse sites as a real browser, not WAP, and it supports Active X pages perfectly so far. Even IE does not do that, ironically. And the food was pretty good too. The outdoor setting is very nice.


You never know what you will encounter at Cooks. Unless you read their schedule, I guess. There were lots of booths being set up from bike clubs and charities, the lot was full early and the weather was perfect.

More in my next post...

I make it through Santiago Canyon and stop at the plaza at Santiago and Jamboree.


No charging available here. But I get some energy fuel for myself.


I managed to avoid the glare in most instrument pics, but not this one. Still you can see my progress. Another 500 feet of climbing. The Garmin measures cumulative climbing, not net. So if you go up and down a 100 foot hill 10 times,it will show 1000ft of climbing.

The next leg of the trip was down Jamboree and the bike trail that leads to the Back Bay...

Dude, watch out for those roughnecks that hang out in those sketchy backwoods places!! :wink: I think this is a very noble cause here, and I hope your trip ends well. However, it doesn't count as an electric century if you charge halfway. But if you need some extra batteries to complete your mission, I have 6 Bosch Fatpacks not in use at the moment. You are welcome to use them, if you want more range. It appears you are posting as you go? You have the perfect setup for this, keep us posted.

So I continued south from there, picking up the bike trail that starts at Portola and ends at Back Bay.


Did I mention is was great weather for a ride?

From Back Bay it is a short trip to Balboa Island, where I took the Ferry.


This big party barge was in our way.


The Balboa fun zone was just that. Still hopping in November.

I passed by the second recharge station, figuring I would use it on the way back. But there was a big animal lovers fair going on, and the police department had a booth. They even had a police motorcycle parked right next to where I wanted to charge. I hoped things would clear out by the time I passed back there again. I followed the coast to Huntington, where I turned around.


The weather was in the upper 60s, not real summer weather. Between that and the time of the year, the beaches were mostly empty. That used to really amaze me when I first moved to California, but I am used to it now.

So I turned around and headed back to Balboa and the usually trusty outdoor quad outlet on a Gazebo there. The pet fair was still going and the police motorcycle was gone. But now the Gazebo was being used for presentations and a sound board was plugged into one of the outlets. That left 3 more outlets for me and I had a power strip. I was still afraid of throwing a circuit breaker. I settled on plugging in the two big 4A chargers. I retrieved some Great Mex cuisine and joined the fair and ate while the bike charged. Sorry, no pics of the food this time.



But I was beginning to add up the hours of daylight left and realized I would be riding in the dark if I wanted to get in 100 miles. So I depart without any more pics and quickly make my way back to San Clemente. I had equipped my lights before I left for just this possibility. As I approach the turn off of coast highway that would take me home, I realize I am coming up short on miles. So I kind of ride back and forth on coast highway until I know I will hit 100 miles as I get home.


Stopping briefly as night fell.


Miles to go before I rest...

Based on my calculations I have a ton of amp hours left. So I don't attempt to conserve any for the final miles. I finish well after dark with my trusty Light and Motion Stella 200 blasting a cone of 200 well focused lumens in front of me. That and the nice evening temps actually make the night ride portion fun, short though it was.

So I finally arrive home.



My stats 2 ways





So my numbers were close. It took a little over 50Ah and I used a little over 18 Wh/m. Riding slower would have increased my range but I don't really want to go any slower than the 15.4mph average. And the 4000ft of cumulative climbing required some capacity as well. I estimate I had 10AH left or so by the time was done.

I may go for it again after the Ute gets a series of changes, like frame mounted batteries and some other small stuff taken care of.

Nice! My personal record is about 60 miles of riding on a 36v 20 ah ping and 48v 8 ah of nicads. That day I rode from Edgewood NM to Santa Fe, on the back road through the mountains. No charging on the way.

etard said:

However, it doesn't count as an electric century if you charge halfway.

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I dunno - the nonpowered equivalent of that would be "it doesn't count as a century if you eat along the way." Maybe someone, somewhere has ridden 100 miles without taking in more energy, but...

It definitely counts, especially, if you post sweet pictures and take a ferry ride I don't think hes trying to set records here just showing the possibilities and I love it! I think that range is an essential part of the e-bikes and I love to see the long range utilized. Ill try to do something similar next summer, uploading pictures along the way. Very cool!

Thanks guys, I am glad you get it. One of the objections people have to the idea of using an eBike is limited range. Now that I think if it, that is true of electric cars and motorcycles, too. So I figured the best way to work on overcoming those objections is to do it, showing it can be done, showing what it takes, and figuring out what could be done to make it easier and more common.

Here is another pic. I downloaded my garmin route into google earth and came up with this map of the route. Click it for a higher res image.

Amazing post, dirtdad. Thanks for taking the time to create and post it!

Looked like it was a fun trip! Deffo counts.

Ok ok, it counts!! [throws arms up in resignation] I just thought he could do it on one charge, even if you have to pedal more. But I am sure you trip was much more enjoyable without having to conserve juice.

What is your name my good man, so I know to whom I am tipping my hat?

Whether you charge along the way or not, your butt knows 100 miles was 100 miles. I found my ass got sore and I wanted off at about mile 35, but by mile 45 it got numb and I didn't care anymore. Road racers go 150-180 miles all the time. I can ride my ebike lots farther than I could ever pedal a bike though. My racing days were 35 years ago. Nowdays 10 miles is about my limit for pedaling only.

Kevin said:

Amazing post, dirtdad. Thanks for taking the time to create and post it!

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Ditto to that...well done mate excellent thread...

KiM

Good on ya Dennis :lol: a century (100 miles) on a bike is a L O N G way even if you do have E-assist. Years ago I did an Amtrack Century on a road bike (no E-assist) so I know what a physical challange it is. I would love to try a long distance run on my scooter. But I would need a trailer full of 4 times the batteries that I have now, and that is just TOO expensive to consider at this point.

LOL, I still have some roadie left in me I guess.

Being diplomatic, maybe there should be distinction between "tank range": distance you can go on a full charge or full tank of gas, and "daily range":the max distance you can cover a day of travel. Lots of people look at the tank range on electric vehicles and think it is too low, so that is important to know. The daily range is more interesting on an electric bike than on a car because refueling is more of a challenge and your physical condition matters more. I call my electric bikes HEHV (pronounced like "heavy") for Human Electric Hybrid Vehicle. But that is just me.

This is a good thread. I am inspired to try something like it, though mine would be a fairly boring trip around the valley (just in case something serious went wrong, I could plan it to be within walking/pushing distance of people I know...something you get used to when riding a bike made of junk, though it breaks far less often than I expected for the 840 miles it's been thru! ).

Thought experiment time:

I am not certain of my power consumption, as I don't yet have a meter to measure it. However, I get around 15+ miles with power to spare and little pedalling, at around 15MPH average cruising speed, with lots of stops and starts. If I could plan it with less of those, I can go further. That's with 3x 12V 17Ah UPS batteries, for 45 pounds, roughly.

So I would need to have at least 5 times that much lead on there, for almost 250 pounds of batteries (the bike is only 150-ish, plus same again for me!). Definitely would have to use a trailer for most of the batteries, probably my four-wheeler if I work the bugs out. Have to find that many, first, though--only have 6 good 17Ah plus 3 31Ah U1s.

That's the equivalent of 3 times what I have on there now, so I'd get pretty far with it, but since hauling that much lead around would reduce the range, even in relatively flat Phoenix and surrounding areas, I doubt that I would get 4x 15+ miles. Probably more like 50 miles, at best. Assuming no recharging, of course.

I'm not totally sure what compensation paralleling all these (in 36V sets) would have for the Peukert effect, but if there was enough compensation for that, then it might give back some of the range the extra weight takes away, and I might get 60 miles out of it.

I'd better not try this just yet.


Perhaps if I fail to blow myself up with Li-Ion packbuilding, I can use those to do most of such a trip, with a little lead on the bike and no trailer, and manage 100. Sometime next year.

amberwolf said:

I am inspired to try something like it, though mine would be a fairly boring trip around the valley (just in case something serious went wrong, I could plan it to be within walking/pushing distance of people I know...something you get used to when riding a bike made of junk

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C'moooon amberwolf don't be a fairy, hook up your mig welder and tow that behind you if something breaks/falls off weld her back on and continue on hehehe...

KiM

It's not that I haven't thought about that. Just that it's too heavy and I'd need an awfully long extension cord.

I just completed my first century today with a 10S10P battery pack.
The 101 Club

Raising a glass in your direction:
Cheers on your success, KF