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[machone]

Inspired by the series, I was wondering about how feasible it would be to carry around your own charging method ie windmill, foldable solar panels, petrol generator? Has anybody tried this?

Is it even possible to do a tour on an electric motorcycle unsupported? For example, across Mongolia?

Which bikes are currently available that would be able to handle the terrain?

[Richard230]

I would think that any recharging solution that you could carry on a motorcycle that would not require a connection to a power source would probably take at least a week or two to fully recharge an EV battery pack. The only thing that I can think of that you could carry around would be a portable gasoline generator, for which you would need a supply of gasoline to make it operate. While you can find gasoline just about everywhere, using a gasoline-powered electrical generator to recharge your batteries would pretty much defeat the purpose of riding an EV. It would be more efficient to just ride an ICE bike.

[Crissa]

Typical solar panels are ~>14 watts per square foot, you need 100 square feet operating at 100% to run the L1 charger on a Zero.  (So you would really need alot more than that).

Right now it would be super-awkward to carry.  Not impossible, mind, just super-awkward.

-Crissa

[T.S. Zarathustra]

There are few limitations and challenges to the idea of carrying charging equipment on a bike. Foremost space concerns. Where are you going to put it?
The most technologically advanced solutions would be something like the Australian solar challenge worldsolarchallenge.org. Really fascinating vehicles with smart technical solutions. Following that formula closely would give you pretty nice range but mostly limit you to smooth roads and nice traffic patterns. Not really the best for Latin American traffic situations as in the long way up.
You cannot really deploy standard solar cells or windmills while riding your bike. Solar cells are useless during the night. Windmills are low power considering the weight (and impracticality of carrying a mast for it).
Petrol generator would add lot of weight and defeat the purpose of using electric vehicle.

I looked at this some years ago and did the calculations for a motorcycle and typical small motorhome. If you covered everything on the motorcycle with solar panels you got about 5 mile range per day. For the van, if you covered everything except the windows in solar panels, and drove slowly in sunny climate on clear days I estimated daily range without plugging in to be maximum 20-30 miles. Solar cells are slightly better today but not so much that it would really increase the range very much. With a bit of energy storage though you could travel about 150 miles in the van and then park it for a week while it charged up.

There is a possible solution. Proven to work, but might not fit your purpose. That is to use bicycle with electrical assistance and tow a solar cell behind you on a trailer. This guy claims it works. https://electrek.co/2018/09/27/solar-powered-electric-bicycle-journey/ Use small assist motor and as big as you can solar panel in a bike trailer will propel you at low speeds for whole day as long as you have nice weather. Let me mention again the Latin American traffic patterns. You'd be limited to the back roads, which in itself is not necessarily bad.   

[princec]

Thin film solar panels look promising... you could maybe take a couple of 50ft rolls perhaps, when the technology becomes robust/affordable enough, which might fit on a bike. Obviously you'd probably only get to ride 1 day in 3 or 4 depending on the weather.

Cas

[machone]

Interesting replies, thanks. I was hoping a combination of windmill and solar would enable a day on 2off but your replies and some rough calculations I realise that until technology improves, adventure motorcycle touring in remote areas is best done on a gasoline bike.

[NEW2elec]

May I suggest crossing Mongolia the way Mongolians have for centuries.

On a horse. 

You can recharge them where ever you see grass.

[Richard230]

May I suggest crossing Mongolia the way Mongolians have for centuries.

On a horse. 

You can recharge them where ever you see grass.

That is what I always tell those idiots driving those new-fangled ICE vehicles. Get a horse!   

[Crissa]

Yeah, but that assumes grass is going to be there.

If you bring your own grass with you, you don't have to only stop where there's grass!

9-9;

-Crissa

[Nairb]

Hi everyone,  I've been lurking for a year or so, and just finally found something that might be of interest to post.  Don't have an electric bike or any EV yet and only got my mc license last year with a new to me DRZ400.  Just been doing a lot of reading up on ev's so far and learning with hopes to get something in the next couple years.  Using the bike for fsr access to do photography and would be great to have an FX or DSR, but they're not in the budget and probably don't have the range when carrying me and 30 or 40 lbs of professional camera gear and camping gear over remote mountain passes.

Anyway, I've been wondering for quite some time why Rivian or the Long Way Up team didn't enter the location details of all the level 2 chargers they installed into plugshare, as it was stated in the show and in articles by Car and Driver and Motor Trend that Rivian installed the chargers. Charlie also promoted the use of Plugshare in a recent Fully Charged Plus Show interview. Seems quite a waste of resources to not have made the locations publicly available for future users or for others to plan a similar trip.  Chargers every 110 miles or so, as stated in the Car and Driver article, would probably work great for a DSR black forest set up with either a charge tank or more likely a power tank.

Well after a seriously frustrating email back and forth with Rivian customer support, who only seemed to want to promote their upcoming adventure network, despite repeatedly saying the installed South American chargers are still there and available to use (despite not being on any map), it seems I may have actually found them. I finally did a google image search for "long way up chargers" and found a pic of them standing in front of their bikes while charging. The pic is from the website of Enel-X which is the company that actually installed them.  It seems the locations are available via their Juicepass app. I'm installing it now to see.

UPDATE: app installed and it shows even fewer chargers than plugshare does. 4 in Ecuador, and a bunch in Columbia as per plugshare, but nothing further south than that. I've email Enel-x before finding their pages and app, to see about getting them added to plugshare.  Appears to be an Italian or maybe just European company with an Italian "head of e-mobility", and they're involved with Formula E and Moto E.  Bit of a waste unfortunately.  Bizarre that they installed so many level 2 chargers despite the bikes only doing level 1 or 3 speeds.  I suppose they were for the trucks mainly, to be able overnight charge.  I think I recall seeing also, that they eventually got a big bulky adapter (ie external charger) to be able to get level 2 charge rates.

Maybe if Enel-X hears from other electric motorcycle users inquiring about the charger locations, they'll actually put the details out in the world. Here's their general inquiries email:

info_enelx@enel.com

Here's the link to the page describing them and where they state that they can be found by installing the "Enel-X Juicepass" app, along with an animated map vaguely showing locations through Argentina, Chile, etc:

https://www.enelx.com/en/e-mobility/electric-mobility-infrastructures-latin-america

Here's the article about the app:

https://www.enelx.com/en/e-mobility/charging-station-app-juicepass

and about their relationship with the series:

https://www.enelx.com/en/e-mobility/electric-mobility-infrastructures-latin-america/long-way-up-movie-electric-mobility

Car and Driver article where it states they're about every 110 miles apart:

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a33548089/rivian-r1t-electric-pickup-long-way-up-tv/

[MVetter]

Could have asked me. EnelX installed the chargers but, of course, the LiveWire's onboard is only 1kW so they're as useful as a wall outlet. They reached out to me and my business partner because we offered a portable DC fast charger that could use the J1772 input from the level 2 station and charge the LiveWire in a couple hours. We sent 2 units. Either the Rivian or H-D engineers broke them. Not sure. We were supposed to fly down but that's right when Charlie crashed and everything went sideways. For whatever reason they didn't use them. Not my problem anymore. Company is dead. They used the wrong bike. The series was a flop.

[Nairb]

I recall now reading some time ago that you had done those things.  I agree that the series was bad and the bikes were the wrong ones to use.  Just thought I'd do some digging to see if the location of the 120 or so charge locations could be found for other people that might want to make use of them.  Are you saying that I could have asked you for the locations of the chargers?  What company is dead? Enel-X? or are you refering to HD?

After reading the reviews on the Enel-X app, it seems they have another one that's more regularly updated and is north america focused.   It's called "EV Juicenet", but it does not seem to allow one to use it as a guest so I can't see if the location might show up there.

UPDATE:
Well, now that I'm trying the Juicepass app again it seems to be showing locations all along the route in South America.  Not sure why it's working now. There's now a "scan" button nearly in the middle of the screen that wasn't there the first time I used it.  I turned on GPS when it was loading so maybe that has something to do with it.  Anyway, it seems to be working and one can now find chargers right to the tip of Patagonia.  It shows very little info on them though, and shows them as "type 1".  Might have to log in to get more info.

UPDATE 2:  seems there is a bit more info in the app if you tap on the dashed line at the top of site info, but it's a pretty terrible app.  Most locations I've looked at in the southern tip area, show as "type 1" with max output of 2kW, so pretty much just a wall outlet output.  That might even be 2kW split between 2 chargers, as most locations have 2 (I wondered if they were just wired into regular wall outlets, when I first saw the pic of them charging on the Enel-X site actually, and especially given the livewire's charging limitations).  There's one site on an "unnamed road" either in Chile or Argentina at the S end of a lake SW of Torres del Paine that says it's a type 1 with max 6kW.  In Punta Arenas there's one labelled as type 2 S, but also with a max of only 2kW.  So they're out there, but with big caveats it would seem, and potentially not much use.  Most seem to be type 1 J1772 though.  Probably EU type 2's would be in Argentina I'd guess...

[umrath]

They used the wrong bike. The series was a flop.

I have a very different opinion.
The bikes worked quite fine, considering they were prototypes.
And I very much enjoyed to watch it. The only series I binged last 12 months.

What makes you think that this is a flop?

[Nairb]

I gather he thinks it was a flop regarding the actual journey of an "electric motorcycle" trip.  They used gas support vehicles behind the scenes and a huge diesel generator on a truck ( According to this article, along with the Rivian's and the truck with the diesel generator, they also had two 4x4 sprinter vans:  https://www.advpulse.com/adv-news/ewan-and-charleys-new-long-way-up-series-going-electric/ ).  Ewan's bike died and needed a new battery around the time they reached Columbia if I recall.  And then they spent most of the time in central America messing around with and throwing a lot of money at converting a school bus to transport the bikes, which is when I really lost interest.  The prototypes had to be heavily modified to work as "adventure bikes", and kind of had inappropriate charging abilities since there is almost no DC fast charging available outside some of the biggest cities.  Although, I've now looked at most of the chargers they had installed through South America on the app, and almost all of them show as providing only 2kW.  So Zero's with 6kW a charger tank might not have been too much better, but at least they wouldn't have had to carry anything more than Zero's computer cable charge cords.  The Livewire's use a wall plug with big inverter to a J1772 plug to get level 1 charge speeds if I recall.  Columbia appears to have mostly chargers with EU type 2S cables btw, just something of note, as I realize they didn't spend much time there.

It might be a financial success since it was picked up and promoted by Apple TV and has hollywood star power.  But it wasn't much more than a very well funded light entertainment travel show. Not much in the way of a hard core or arduous "adventure", other than the fact that they were using protoype vehicles in cold weather.

They could have probably had a smoother experience with more range per day if they'd used DSR's with a power tank, chain conversion, and rackless bags.  Maybe swap out the tubeless alloy wheels for spoked tube ones, but even that might have been unnecessary and I don't know for sure if the alloys are tubeless actually.

[Nairb]

So I was able to find a few of the Enel-X stations in Panama and Costa Rica that show both on the terrible Juicepass app (showing as a single plug being available at max 2kW) and also on Plugshare.  Only one location on plugshare I've found so far has a significant number of checkins where people have actually reported getting speeds of 6kW and 7kW, not the 2kW the app says.  So perhaps all the ones along the route in the app are actually 6kW capable.

At least one location I found on the app, as usual for most of it's locations, first shows 2 plugs, then upon zooming in becomes a single location that says only one plug is available, but on plugshare, pics show 2 plugs available.

Here's the site with the 6 and 7 kW charge speed reports.  One Hyundai Ioniq owner reported getting 28kW which I presume is a mistake.  Maybe 28 amps?

https://www.plugshare.com/location/214910