ElectricMotorcycleForum.com

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.

It's a really interesting possibility. I wonder if there would actually be a redistribution of fluid over time ie people 'moving' the fluid away from the garage of origin, or whether something like the banking system of account settling could be used. Each garage would have to have some sort of coding in the fluid itself to identify where it came from.

Can't you assume the tires, wheels, brakes, frame, etc. have the same environmental impact as a gas bike?  

If you were doing a general or averaged production comparison then yes, that would be true but there seems little point in that, yet, until electric bike production grows. The difference between two ICE bikes production cost can be huge.

For example, take the Aluminium. Recycled Al takes about 5% the energy that primary Al takes to produce. If the Zero Chinese made frame is recycled Al that's great but a comparable Yamaha or Kawasaki might have a primary Al frame which would make a huge difference to the production energy usage. I think the only way to go is to cover all the components in the zero and get at least an idea of where the sustainability effort is going in and then compare. If the brakes or tyres are then the same for a comparison bike it will eventually make the task easier.  

http://www.world-aluminium.org/media/filer/2012/06/12/fl0000181.pdf

Thanks for the link noiseboy. With batteries is it not the same as the frame - it depends entirely on which batteries and how they were made and where the metals used come from?

I got a reply from Zero after enquiring about their green credentials. They said they would keep me updated when they update their website with regard to sustainability. One thing I found interesting was their mention of the scheme for taking back used batteries where possible. They also sent me some links, one of which, from the Guardian Newspaper, is here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/oct/05/electric-cars-emissions-bad-environment

Full marks to them for responding to me as it wasn't a 'stock' reply. Good points have been made on this forum and as is so often the case, for a whole raft of reasons, fact is very difficult to come by in this emerging industry.

One thing is clear, in the long term, if coupled with policy changes in energy generation, EV usage can dramatically reduce the impact personal transport has on the environment. At the moment, due to the small scale of EV production, the comparative time a Zero takes to 'pay for itself' in terms of production cost(financial AND energy/pollution) with an ICE bike is longer than I expected. However, the fact that it will eventually 'pay for itself' in terms of energy emission and finance should be enough for the entire commuting motorbike community to make the leap to electric.

Not disputing the pros - I believe in EVs for at least our short term personal transport, enough to already put some money where my mouth is followed next Feb by a whole lot more.

What I'd like to do, is have solid answers to the environment question. There are plenty of misconceptions over range, speed, acceleration, practicality which are easy to put right but the environmental question, if not tackled in an overly simplistic way - 'I have no exhaust pipe therefore I don't pollute', is complicated.

You can't just right off environmental and social concerns because you don't fill up at a gas station. Yes, it's great that you don't. It's great there's low maintenance, it's great that the power delivery is constant and linear but I'm convinced, I'm trying to sway others. I can't help thinking if I would have some sort of grasp on where the parts were made, how the labour is treated and paid well by western standards, how the carbon in transport is offset, how delivery to my Zero branch is carbon offset, how the water used in production is recycled I'd have an easier time of arguing the environmental case. I'm sure all the bases are covered but where are the facts and why aren't they highlighted, surely it's a selling point?

The Clarkson video like most TopGear set pieces, is cooked up bollox, I posted it to illustrate the general direction people approach EVs and the Environmental benefit of buying them - the cradle to grave argument. I thought the data might be out there but it doesn't seem to be readily available.

It's a hot topic in the UK at the moment. Although I'm sure there are cases of kickbacks and bribes I can't think of any offhand. There has been inaccurate reporting and the reason the topic is hot is because a very well known BBC celeb named Jimmy Saville now deceased has been thought(not yet proven, but loads of accusations) to have been a serial child abuser and worse. Many people were thought to have, at the least, suspected this but a BBC investigation was shelved because, in part, of the amount of money he raised for charity. It was thought he used this as leverage many times.

At the same time The http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/ has just concluded an independant press complaints commission should oversee the press in the UK for reasons mentioned above. Comparing with Sky, RTL or Al Jezeera I'll take the BBC every time, thanks!

Back to the topic :

I don't agree with the Cradle to grave Prius vs Range Rover argument either but it would be nice to know a little more fact. Every consumer product has an impact of some sort but you can't ignore production environmental cost any more than you can ignore running environmental cost. A friend has a convincing argument that I should buy a second hand Kawasaki 1000 at less than 1/3 the price and it will still produce less CO2 than my car and will pay for itself compared to the car in less time and also prolong the life of that kawasaki saving the world that way. It's all about relative cost with vehicles isn't it?

I've never been in a position to change a vehicle every 2 years and this seems normal to some people, is there a higher environmental cost in doing this than keeping an inefficient 'old knacker' running for 20 years? Where's the break even point?

I've emailed Zero requesting more information on their energy usage and production impact, purely so I can give as close approximation to factual answers as I can manage and not just join the partisan flag flying game. I cannot believe that buying a new zero is less 'green' than buying an old Kawasaki 1000 but I really don't know - how costly was the kawasaki to build in the first place, how do the mining practices of the metals in the kawa compare to those in the zero? How bad are the conditions in the Kawa factory to those in the Zero parts producers.

The bottom line for me is it would be nice to know fact which only Zero can provide and I am pretty confident that the facts would be strongly in favour of Zero, as they are 'environmentally aware', probably more so than the ICE bike competition. Without the fact the argument I can give is almost as lame as the Clarkson camp.  

I'm expecting the delivery of my S and I have already started fielding questions/attacks on why?!!...

One of the difficult questions to answer is the one that everybody first thinks of as a reason to buy an electric bike and it's this:

How green is your bike, actually?


Ignoring the running costs, many people quote the many Toyota Prius comparisons made by Jeremy Clarkson:

3m35sec in


They say that because of the Lithium or nickel processing and parts/product transportation costs, these bikes are having a much bigger impact on the environment than a locally produced gas bike would. At minimum my S is part of a container load on a high carbon use vessel across the Atlantic but I suspect the transportation impact is even higher than that.

My argument is that gas bikes are nearly all produced at least in part, in countries where labour can be exploited to reduce cost and so there is very little difference in green production cost.  This doesn't always hold true, and is a little weak.

Has anybody done a green impact study on the production of a Zero? Is it just the 'investment in future tech' that will eventually lead to green production and running costs or are there better green arguments out there?

 

I never upgraded my 9 year old iPod that looks like a 1950s hearing aid with a dial on it until I bought a iPhone last year after struggling with a google Android phone for a year. What a piece of crap, the Soviet version of an iPhone.

'Soviet' ended in 1991. Russian technology is the only thing able to cost effectively(a Western pioneered concept) keep us traveling to and from the space station just now.

I applied the same philosophy to Zero. Waited two years before buying my first Zero in 2011 to give Zero time to iron out the bugs. I'll skip a year or two and maybe buy a 2014 or 2015. The 2012 is rock solid.

Not sure I follow ZeroSinMA? 3 year cycles for reliable tech?