Range-extender Sidecar for EV motorcycle

[bennelson]

Ryland's example seems to be a good one.

Have an all-electric vehicle for day to day local use, and hitch up a trailer to turn it into a series hybrid if you need to go farther!

[lectruck]

Originally Posted by Coyote X

A broken used Chinese scooter in the 125cc range can usually be had pretty cheap. Usually from what I have seen if the motor makes it a hundred or two miles it will hold up for a while. But the chassis is pretty much always crap so expect to see terrible wiring, bad bearings and broken welds. That just means it will be a good price and still work for what you want it to do

Find one with the motor and all of it built into the rear suspension and it would be easy to cut away all the extra frame junk and make a u-joint hitch for it. I guess a rc car servo could be used for the throttle and connected to your existing electric throttle. I would probably just forget about the scooter brakes since your bike brakes should be ok. If you have a servo system for the throttle a trailer plug could get everything working. Park/brake light, start, throttle, and ignition kill would be all it needs I would guess.

The motor is pretty small so if you do fiberglass or whatever to make it aero it would also give you some storage room. I am not sure how much air it would need for cooling but that can be figured out from how much it gets from the existing scooter body.

So we are back needing a motor to push the motor cycle, but is this 125cc strong enough to push the Metro, or is it better to get a bigger pusher trailer and then is it too strong to push your motor cycle.

[bennelson]

Nah, I am really MUCH more interested in a "series-hybrid" trailer.

If I wanted a small engine to push my motorcycle around, I would just get a gas motor.

I am really interested in a generator set for occasional use range extension. Ideally, it would run on biofuel as well.

Using scooter or motorcycle parts to build it would be slick though.

Mr Sharky's pusher trailer was made from car parts that match his EV car. I always thought that was pretty neat.

[MazdaMatt]

Have you asked on EVDL? I'm really not that sure how you could go about this. Maybe I could run the question by our power electronics guy...Do you really want it to be compatible with both your bike AND car, or is that just a "nice to have" if it is possible?

Step one, Ben... go price out generators of the required kW rating. Presumably, you want to be able to run forever with enough gas, so you need a gen that will produce the same wattage as you are used to driving with.

[bennelson]

It would be NICE to have something that could work with the car AND the motorcycle, but I am more interested on extending the range of the cycle.

The cycle uses less amps to run and has bettery batteries on it.

Since I actually don't know exactly how many amps the cycle pulls, the FIRST thing I would really need to do is put an AMMETER on it!

[Ryland]

Originally Posted by bennelson

Since I actually don't know exactly how many amps the cycle pulls, the FIRST thing I would really need to do is put an AMMETER on it!

I know I've recommended it to you before, but I just have to say that I still really like my PakTrakr gauge, I have the amp pickup for it as well so the gauge can tell me how many amps, or KW the motor is drawing, it also gives me voltage of each battery and some nifty real time visual display of battery voltage, does all that stuff that a scan gauge does, only for electric vehicles, and the few issues that I have had with it have been taken care of without question.

Otherwise if you check on Ebay you should be able find a cheap DC clamp on amp meter, we have one that works great and I think was about $40.

Also figure out your average speed and how many miles you go on a charge and how much energy you use in that time, because unless you are doing alot of highway driving you are going to have stop and go and time to charge while waiting at stops.

[bennelson]

Maybe I will have to start saving for a PakTrakr.
It does look suspiciously like a ScanGauge for EVs

[MazdaMatt]

Ben, maybe I'm crazy, but you could probably get an idea of your power consumption by simply timing how long you are out on the road and checking to see how many kWH your killowatt reads. kWH/H = kW. That gives you a running average, which is fine if your generator will actually charge the batteries.

The only issue iwth that is that you'll be using the bike differently when it has a trailer, and drawing more amps from its weight. So take that kW rating and double it to be safe.

[DonR]

Look up weights on generator sets for your power consumption. Diesel ones are going to be heavy. Make/borrow a small trailer & weigh it down to the approx. weight of the generator & stuff needed. Now measure power consumption. Repeat.

[Geebee]

FLEXIT leaner sidecar
A possible variation on the side car apparently there are other variations out there.