Here, I am talking about going under 10mph or 16km/h on battery electric micro-mobility devices like a Segway self balancing scooter, E-bike or electric kick scooter, electric unicycle, other wearable vehicles that let users glide, roll, fly; the idea un-car or alternatives to automobiles, cars, trucks, SUV's & other heavy expensive & overkill for typical single occupancy commuting purposes, to get people where they are going & back home again!
Ask yourself, where are you going? Why?
Are you living to work for money or working to live?
Do you spend money on vehicles just so that you can spend money buying vehicles, paying for their long term costs of operation, depression & end of life recycling or scrapping out the old automobile? Sure walking, riding a bicycle, these very old ways of getting around also net exercise movement or health activity. Today electrified 2-wheel vehicles are trending, even some that you can rent on demand using an App on your smartphone, like LIME scooters. Let us consider my favorite mega city, Tokyo Japan.
Excellent Public Trains in Tokyo Metro Aera
In places like Tokyo, with excellent foot traffic to train transfers, normal working people do not need a car, they can get around cheap & fast using bicycles & the exceptional public transportation system in the Tokyo metro-area. When you get out to rural locations in Japan, near Twin Ring Motegi, where the Honda Collection Hall is located, to see Asimo in first person, like I did in 2010, you will see that solar rooftop energy systems are common on typical single family houses in rural Japan, but the local trains out there are not electric, they are powered by stinky diesel motors that give out foul smelling exhaust that riders can experience while riding out to the country side, like I did to go hiking & to see the local F1 track near Tokyo, where I had been dreaming of going for years.
Industrial Japan
How can a tiny island nation like Japan crank out such high quality long lasting durable automobiles like Toyota? I wondered. How did a tiny shack with 12 guys mounting 500 watt generator engines to bicycles turn into the worlds largest motorcycle maker, Honda? Many questions had been ruminating in my mind since middle school when I learned about Japan & Japanese culture of exceptionalism, precision & perfection, the samurai warrior work ethic & an excellence focused culture where everyone tries the best when doing anything, even recycling!
High Stress Japan
This makes for a stressful society, with high bar expectations that people are ashamed not to achieve. Its not perfect, even men in Japan wear makeup to high cosmetic blemishes because the standard expectation level of conduct & honor extends even into aesthetic fashion & personal clothing & appearance choices. Japan has a society that embraced technology & materialism to rebuild a strong developmental focused economy after social, infrastructure, monetary & cultural losses from being defeated during WWII.
Hauling Loads
I get it, that some jobs, some heavy shopping trips to the grocery or Costco, not everything you haul will fit into backpack or saddlebags. Sometimes people, going on road trips, need the utility carry space in their vehicle, typically a passenger car or larger, mostly made of iron, with glass windows & 4 large wheels & tires, of which the rear are trailing & front articulated for steering, a typical automobile.
Cars for 10 billion people not a good idea
I think automobiles a bad idea as a transportation solution for each of 10 billion people alive at the same time. I think a combination of good public transportation like the lite rail between Seattle & Seatac airport are a good ideas, along with urban commuter microbility devices like my upcoming Hiboy S2 Pro electric kick scooter or 6.5 year old OG Segway MiniPro that I have ridden 766 miles at less than 10 mph, a lot of that just recently, with its old faded battery, I carry the charger in my backpack to charge up at random electrical outlets I find along my journeys or while touring longer distances!
What about "Time"
If you do not ever take time, how can you have time? Time an interesting subject, just like clocks, wrist watches & other timekeeping technologies. I really like the cesium ion fountain atomic clocks at NIST or theNational Institute of Standards & Technology.
Passenger Drone Technology
I really want a backpack wearable battery electric helicopter hopper, but those cost more than my motorcycle, a 2020 Yamaha MT-03 new. They also have bad range & are technically illegal to operate, even though they weigh less than 75lbs & wear like a typical hiking backpack. Probably also wise to ask one's self, where are you going anyway? Are you spending a ton of money on a vehicle, just so that you can commute to a job, to make money to pay for the vehicle? If you have more vehicles that operators, what purpose do the idle vehicles serve you? Are you working for them or are your vehicles working for you?
Doing Your Best
I usually like doing everything as well as I can, aiming for excellence in operation like a boss when cleaning in the kitchen for example, so that I get the stuff as clean as reasonably possible. I used the dishwasher like an autoclave to take away anything I left behind after hot water & dish soap hand was hinging silverware utensils, glasses, dishes. I apply the same principles when cleaning flooring, carpet, my vehicles, I try to aim to do much better than adequate or mediocre, I usually aim to do it the best I am able, willing to sign my name to the job or task with honor, even if its not perfect, able to say I tried my hardest & worked smart with what I knew to do the best job possible!
Overkill Obsession Focus
But being OCD like me, hyperactive & obsessive, can be really taxing, stressful or produce anxiety, frustration, anger. Stuff like cheese stuck to plates or oven pans really piss me off when trying to remove it, reminding me that there is "no rest of sinners, money doesn't grow on trees" and "There is no free lunch in physics, you have to grab life by the horns & make it happen, and you can make life as nice or as terrible as you want, its all about how you apply your beliefs, philosophies & ideologies, how you apply your personal to whatever it is you choose to do!
Motivational Writing Goal
I really try to encourage others on this Blog & Twitter @cosmicinglewood, to be the best version of themselves, when working out training or exercising, at work doing their tasks or managing other employees or as a company founder or owner, leading by example, showing by demonstration the right way of making something happen to any employee of any level, a real leader leads by example, showing others the right way to do something to the best of their ability as a leader! Sadly, there is a distinctive lack of real leaders by this definition, in the world today.
Corrupt Political Leadership
We see more selfish arrogant hypocrite liars like Donald Trump & Vladimir Putin; sickos like the administration of the CCP in the PRC etc. While it is factually true that the overwhelming majority of people are decent, honorable, fair, reasonable, honest & kind, for some reason people who lust after power, going into public office, tend to as a percentage, exhibit more unethical & immoral actions & choices, saying inaccurate & factually untrue things for political reasons because of corruption bribery from corporate special interests who engage with the bribed position in crony capitalism, which is ruinous to real free market functionality & innovation that creates applied technological advances that make more energy available at lower costs for everyone, since energy generation is the base mechanics of creating wealth and prosperity.
Smart Thinking Applied with Energy to Manipulate Matter
There is only matter & energy & even matter made of energy, so wise intelligence made of electrochemical energy in human brains must be applied such that energy utilized to manipulate matter to make the world a better place for all people, protecting nature, not polluting, recycling, nuclear energy paired with renewables & energy storage to phase out carbon combustion & other polluting energy generation technologies.
Micro-Mobility Scooter
I recently purchased a HiBoy S2 Pro 500w electric kick scooter with uptown 25 miles of range at 12 mph on flat or level ground with a 150lb rider wearing sleek clothing in windless clear sunny weather / i.e. best case. I have no ambition to climb mountains with it. I purchased it as a local transportation toy for just over $600 USD2022, significantly less expensive than my 2002 Go Motorboard 2000 Gel PbA battery aluminum kick scooter that was $440 out the door with sales tax back then, over $737.43 in todays money when adjusted for inflation. That unit did have 750w of peak power, but the 16vdc hawker cyclone based 8S battery pack only gave a few miles of range. It did feature regenerative breaking, but no suspension & solid polyurethane wheels that made a very rough ride on anything but the smoothest road or path surfaces, like freshly laid asphalt, smoothly applied to an improved subsurface & then steam rolled with excellency to supreme smooth surface features.
Hills Sap Battery Range
Driving or riding up mounters or hills saps battery charge in electric vehicles. Hills drain batteries faster because it takes a lot of electric motor energy to propel vehicle & passenger & cargo mass up a hill or slope. The 500w peak brushless motor in the Hiboy S2 Pro I recently ordered on Amazon, for example cannot tackle the hills nearby to where I live, but I purchased one anyway as a fun toy & throwback to the Go Motherboard 2000 I previously used to circumvent college parking fee's, that more than paid for it :) Driving up hills in gasoline & diesel vehicles wastes fuel too & lowers the vehicles fuel economy. Many vehicles only get 10-30% of their highway fuel economy when they are utilized to ascended mountain ranges or steep hills.
Liftable Safely
I bring this up because I live in a hilly area, near the cascade mountain range foot hills, that have had burning forest fires for 5 weeks & no rain for a similar interval. I would have probably been better off with a much more powerful scooter, but I also wanted something light enough, so under 40lbs or about 18kg, so that Meg can safely lift it into the back of her car or my car, if needed, to sell it in the future for example. My 2016 Segway MiniPro still working & I even rode it this morning. Going 7.5 mph, a good cruising speed, means I can glide perhaps 18 miles on the faded 348 WH lithium ion battery pack that's 6.5 years old, incredibly. I have ridden it 766 miles as of this morning. I went on two longer rides, 12 miles & 24 miles respectively, yesterday & the day before.
Car Alternatives for Personal Transport In-City
I mention the new scooter, which has not arrived from Amazon yet, & my old Segway MiniPro because they are not car replacements. They cannot go fast enough to operate on any roads legally nearby, except in the bicycle lane. Its not even legal to ride them on the sidewalk with pedestrians present, but thankfully where I live in Issaquah, most of the local paved roads have wide bike paths on the road shoulders, outside the lane delineating white painted lines that cars are not legally allowed to cross, even though I regularly observe unskilled drivers crossing the lane boundary lines.
Bad & Dangerous Drivers
These distracted, cell phone using, drunk, tired, high people or low skilled or inexperiences or new drivers do all sorts of things that do not make sense while out driving in traffic, that I observe and wonder WTF is this person doing & similar! I am just being completely honesty. Some of the worst drivers I have ever seen, live near Seattle in Washington State, USA. Many of these bad drivers did not start driving until they were older than me, I am 39 years old. I started driving at 15.5 years old with a learners permit, a cheap 1985 Nissan 200SX coupe, that became my first car when I obtained a drivers license at 16 years of age.
Love Affair with Motorcycles
I started riding motorcycle at 17 when my cousin Scott loaned me his 1989 Honda Hurricane sport bike, then purchased a used 1999 Honda 600F4 600 CC liquid cooled sport bike in 2001. I have been riding motorcycles street for over 20 years now. So the Segway & Hiboy S2 Pro cannot replace even our 2013 Honda PCX150 motorscooter, with its 70 mph top speed & range over over 100 miles on 1.2 gallons of gasoline. Our 2020 Yamaha MT-03, 2001 Audi A4 2.8 Quattro, 2005 & 2010 Toyota Prius's, all of these gasoline powered vehicles have amazing range per fuel tank before refueling, very good fuel economy, good performance.
Mass / Performance Balance - Similar to the Fuel Mass Paradox with common chemical rockets!
These electric micro mobility vehicles or toys have to strike a mass balance of being under 40lbs with electric motor drive technology, so they cannot keep up with gasoline fueled vehicles for speed or range, but they also do not emit tail pipe pollution. All the pollution associated with most micromobility vehicles produced & emitted during their manufacturing & upstream mining of the materials they are made of. Tiny amounts of grid power, similar to that used by a business desktop, give 10 miles of total daily range or so, thus are appropriate to use at low speed, within a city, or city use case.
Highway Electric Vehicles
I think an electric kick scooter would need 5kWh of battery & 5600 watts of motor, to replace a suburban commuter car, in routes that do not require going faster than 50 mph. To go highway speeds, I would suggest an 6+ kWh battery & 8kw motor setup, enabling 70+ mph top speeds so that causing at 60 or 55mph not full blast. This is what most electric motorcycles at the cheapest lowest entry point have, highway top speed & similar range to be 2X the US average daily commute distance when the batteries are new. E-bike with 1000 watts or better motor assist are trending. High power electric micro mobility devices are too heavy for most normal people to carry up a flight or more of stairs, by hand. I am talking about 70-130lbs or 30-60kg, something that could cause a skeletal or muscle injury to a normal average person trying to lift something like that into the back of the automobile trunk or rear cargo area.
High Speeds Kill
I woke today up thinking about all the deadly accidents in motorsports history! It made me sad & made my eyes water up with tears of sadness upon waking at 5am. Go 80mph on a kick scooter, sounds crazy, even if it has front & rear coil-over hydraulic suspension, front & rear hydraulic disc brakes, stability assist, anti-lock breaking, & every other technology to make the machine safer to operate at high speed.
Think about the RPM of 10 inch wheels & tires going 80mph, they are humming along at turbo-charger or turbine speeds, so the wheels & axels need super high quality bearings, like those use on motorcycles, to withstand corresponding amounts of energy pressures created. Most roads are not perfectly smooth & feature pot-holes & other surface irregularities, dangerous rocks & other debris from previous motor vehicle accidents, that flew out of the back of another vehicle hauling cargo not secured correctly, for example. This is why nearly all popular vehicles feature suspension, to reduce NVH or noise vibration & harshness from road surface irregularities or poor road surface quality.
Low Mass Electric Personal Transportation
Smaller, lighter, highly efficient, those are what sold me on the Segway MiniPro & Hiboy S2 Pro. I like the low mass, electric motor drive, battery energy storage system, regenerative braking, smart technology applied in new emerging ways, so that people can utilities old roads with newly emerging vehicle technologies, new types of personal conveyances, personal mobility or micro-mobility vehicles!
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