Originally Posted by
ricortes
Don't get me wrong, I love E-bikes: They will always be a niche market. Just my opinion, let's say a miracle happened and all the problems were solved. Some kind of fuel cell battery that ran on sugar and only produced drinking water as a byproduct. So cheap to produce they give them away and so small and light they fit in a shirt pocket. Add in new room temperature super conductors and 10 hp electric motors the size and weight of a hair dryer.
You now have an E-bike that goes 200 miles on a 5 lb sack of sugar at freeway speeds. Who is going to use it?
Everybody. Except that it'll be in the form of an electric car rather than an electric bike for most of them.
(Not that sugar is a very good power source -- pound for pound, it costs more than gasoline and only has 1700 kcal of energy vs. 4900 kcal for gasoline. A fuel cell that gets well over the 20% or so that a car engine gets in efficiency from gasoline would be considerably better.)
Add in new room temperature super conductors and 10 hp electric motors the size and weight of a hair dryer.
We don't really need superconductors for that, as that pretty much already exists.
For example, this motor is rated at about 9 hp and is pretty close to the size of a hair dryer as it is. Or if you need a little less,
this motor does 4 hp for only $100 and only 2 lbs.
There isn't too much room for improvement in motors left -- room temperature superconductor could certainly help make things smaller and even more efficient, but they're already pretty small and pretty efficient. The biggest issue keeping electric cars from taking off is the battery -- the motors are already ready. Once there's more of them, the electrical grid will become more of an issue, but that can be worked out when the time comes.
As for electric bikes, batteries are the big limitation there too, though there's also the drag caused by the motor when it's not being used (when the person is pedalling instead.) That's no an issue for a car, since the motor is always being used.