Current production electric motorcycles as Quantya, Brammo, Vectrix or Zero, motorcycles that I love for being pioneers, have in my opnion two recurrent problems.
- They have a poorly developed mechanical platform, I mean all of them have been developed my electric experts without insight on motorcycle development, so they are heavy, or awful or difficult to ride or even worse, not fun to ride.
- On the other side, all the electric components are not developed as a whole, and although all of these companies are ran by experts on batteries, controllers and so on, I think they have lots of problems with all the components talking each other: the controller must talk to the batteries and the motor to tell them what to do and how to do it. And that’s not easy. In fact, generally the controller and the batteries don't talk to each other at all.
So, what any standard motorcycle company has to do is to treat the batteries+motor+controller the same way it treats the engine+airbox+EFI:
a) To develop it internally with lots of effort, money and problems. As big manufacturers of traditional motorcycles do, specially with new models.
b) To let the batteries+motor+controller work to be done by experts as a whole. As medium manufacturers of traditional motorcycles do, specially with smaller motorcycles.
An option b is what we took when developing the GPR EV ,that was presented at this past EICMA show, from scratch in under 3 months: we took our expertise and an existing platform to integrate the batteries+motor+controller from Vema-Vogt-Perm-Sevcon-DPS and show the world what is possible to do.
And what the hell is Vema-Vogt-Perm-Sevcon-DPS? They are a group of companies working together to integrate it’s own world class product into a world class drivetrain. DPS is in charge of the batteries, Sevcon is in charge of the controller, Perm for the motor, Vogt for the engineering and Vema for the integration and coordination. And it proved to be a winning team.
12 comments:
Hello
Can you correct me .Water cooled Perm-motor ?.Then synchronous AC .A long shaft to the gearbox (Belt system ?).Water pump under the seat?Heat exchanger in traditionnal front position ? If it's DPS cells ,do you water cooled it too ?Four cells pack ?two under the bike and one on each side (4x24v 50Ah DPS)?Lot of question i know .I think you have a very good concept.Please market the complet bike or the drive train ASAP.
Best regards. Emilien Chaulet
You hitted the nail. Only two small errors. Definetely you are familiar with this bike.
Some figures of the GPR-EV presented at the EICMA show. For those who do not believe:
14KW / 21KW peak
20,7Nm / 80Nm peak
160 Km/h - 30 min
7,2 KWh
electronic clutch
alluminium frame and swingarm
slick tyres
how far can you go at 160km/h? 21kw peak seems awefully low for 2 motors. It looks great, you guys did a good job building... I think there's more good things to come from Derbi!
how heavy is the bike?
what is the absolute top speed?
What are the gear ratios for the transmission? Why 2 and not 3 speeds?
What kind of electric clutch? Why electric?
How far at 100mph (160mph) can it go?
What kind of batteries are being used?
What kind of motors/model numbers?
How has the bike been integrated?
what kind of display is being used?
Do you use regenerative braking on the rear wheel? if so, how is it controlled?
Does the controller or the BMS control LVC?
Do you do LVC based on the cellular-level?
Does the BMS sense current, or do you depend on the controller for that?
what kind of dc-dc converter is used?
what kind of charger is used?
what size chain? 530? 428? other?
Why the benelli frame and not a Derbi frame?
I see it says there are 2 motors, but are there 2 controllers? If 1 controller, how did you get 1 controller working with 2 motors?
does the BMS talk to the charger?
does the charger talk to the controller?
who controls the contactor? the BMS or the Controller?
Why chose an existing frame and sacrifice the ability to design around batteries and motor?
Wow, that's too many questions. I'll answer some of them on succesive steps. At some of them I can't give you the answer:
The bike weigth about 170Kg and can handle the 160Km/h for about 25-30 minutes. We used two gears beacause we think should be enough for the actual performance of the bike, going gearless won't allow us to use a currante swingarm because of rear sprocket size.
We use 4 DPS UBM5036 batteries for a total of 7,2KWh
Now I have to work ...
Any more answers?
Only one motor. Perm motor.
The electric powertrain was integrated by one of the companies mentioned on the post.
No regenerative braking: too complex, no time, doesn't pay the effort and the risks.
Using an existing platform is basic to develop an economic prototype in a short period of time.
Please, don't comment as anonymous.
Thanks
I tried commenting with my name, but your comment form crashed several times.... so I gave up. It doesn't like the / at the end of the URL I gave.
Thanks for answering, that's good stuff.
Hi Carles. Are the DPS betteries water cooled? Can they work without a cooling system?
I really like your motorcycle and this blog, congratulations.
Pablo, yes, the DPS batteries we used are liquid-cooled, but I think they can run without cooling system
Thanks for the compliments
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