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As a whole, I don't know if ebikes will be better in all aspects of the sport, for sure in some. The pure fact of riding with out neighbor problems/disturbance is awesome. The stealth factor is very appealing. What isn't appealing is the cost. A lot of people complain about maintenance, I happen to love working on my bikes. So the lack of consumable maintenance I could care less.
Look forward to the future of Alta, very interesting.
2-3x longer battery life in a couple years will not happen. That would be a massive gain in battery technology. Again, I have no internal knowledge of Alta's plans, but if I was to guess the next generation battery they release will probably give you 15-30mins additional ride time and be capable of more charging cycles. They may also be able to shorten the recharge time. The changes will be incremental in this manner. Doubling battery life from one generation to another would be quite amazing.
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Also, is there any way you could use a lithium jump pack (or two) to give it a little more range?
I'm not in a position to be an early adopter, but I've been, and will continue to watch the development of electric dirt bikes. I really want an electric trail bike!
And to the Alta guys, here's a broken record summary of what we want (I know you know this but lets beat this dead horse some more, just because interweb bytes are cheap). In no particular order:
1. Lighter! 250 lbs would be great. 225 or so would be ideal! (and I know it "rides" lighter then it is, but still...).
2. Increased range: 100 miles of mixed mountain single track would be ideal. (If you need a development rider let me know, we have 100's of miles of killer mountain riding out here and I know where all the best of it is, Lol).
3. Affordable, hot swap, quick charging batteries.
4. And the big one, a more affordable sticker price.
In the meantime, great job Alta, I think you're well on your way to big success in this very competitive space. -Eddie
But be prepared, for trail riding, and possibly for tracks too, the anti-access crowd will still fight this bike tooth and nail, mark my words. I do think the e bikes being quieter is huge, and don't forget, no toxic gasoline to spill, and no hot exhaust system to potentially cause a forest fire (chances are low in the real world, but it is a concern, just talk to any forest ranger).
The electric dirt bikes will help us keep our existing riding areas and they may help us gain additional riding areas, but don't think for a minute the "fun police" won't be against them. They will turn their focus to something like "land degradation" in order to keep dirt bikes out of whatever area they are associated with.
This doesn't change anything, just something to keep in mind. -Eddie
I got home from work last night, threw on my gear (yuck, still wet from Sunday's rain race), and headed to my practice track. I had my son (13) take a couple pictures, and he wants to know when the minibike version will be available!
The track was super greasy from all of the rain, and was pretty tough to navigate, as there are a lot of hills and off-camber sections. I put the map setting on 1 (Honda XR200 mode?) and it helped! It reduced wheel spin and it made me feel more hooked up.
And the best thing about it was that my neighbor was in the front of his house doing yard work, and I am pretty sure he didn't even know I was out behind my house busting out a 30 minute moto. If he heard anything at all, he might have thought that my son was using an RC car in the driveway.
Red circles are neighbors, green circle is me, green thing that looks like a track is a track.
A quiet man is a thinking man. A quiet woman is usually mad.
More ride reports coming soon; I am riding tonight, and tomorrow I am going to compare my 2016 Yamaha YZ450F versus my 2017 Alta Redshift MX shootout, hopefully with some lap times.
Pit Row
Scroll down to THE ALTA PACK heading.
1000 charge cycles.
The battery can be swapped but they say it takes about 10 minutes and is heavy to maneuver/transport.
From a battery pack weight standpoint I did some quick hand calculations and concluded the following:
Reverse engineering the cell architecture I figure the pack is made from 5 parallel strings of 100 Li 18650 cells. If 2 of these strings could be eliminated the savings in weight would be around 20lbs, probably a bit more as there are associated savings. The resulting pack would be around 3.5kw/h, plenty for a 15 min +/- 5min moto and result in a competitive bike weight of around 245 lbs. Although the range is reduced by some 40% the charging time is reduced as well making between motos charge ups pretty quick.
However, it’s never that easy. The remaining 300 cells now need to do 40% more work to maintain the same performance. Rough estimating says they need to provide about 33 amps at peak power while the stock pack cells are more like 20 amps. Consulting some current high power 18650 cell performance charts it appears that thermal control may be the limiting factor in this trade study. While there are cells that can supply 30 amps on a semi-continuous basis, the temperature of the cell really starts to climb and this has serious implications on cell reliability. Alta claims to have a good passive thermal control system incorporated into the battery pack, but it’s probably already close to being maxed out as even 20 amps is pushing things pretty hard. The whole situation is compounded by the additional voltage sag associated with 30 or so amps.
What can be done? Alta already has a water cooled motor and inverter, so it could be used to cool the battery cells as well. With the extra space opened up it would be relatively easy to add some water flow paths (ala Tesla battery packs) without adding too much weight. Of course, the current system uses the mass and exposed surface area of the main frame to dissipate the heat without a conventional radiator. If one needs to be added to keep everything cool it would probably add enough weight to negate the loss of cells.
Increase the bus voltage 40% from 350v to 500v. Increasing the system voltage would reduce the parallel per string amperage requirements but you need more individual cells in series to increase the voltage. The additional series cells cancels any weight savings and Alta has already invested tons of R&D getting their current speed control algorithms dialed in at 350v. Again, it's never easy.
Conclusion, maybe today’s and future advances in Li-ion cell capacity aren’t as beneficial as I once thought (weight wise) unless they improve the discharge ability as well.
HOWEVER !
Bottom line, I think a 3.5kw/h pack is possible using CURRENT pack production parts, manufacturing processes, and battery management system (with some software changes), but it probably wouldn’t last the advertised 1000 charge/discharge cycles and might fail unexpectedly. However, I’d be happy with only 500 or less cycles on a “track day only” pack and would accept the possibility of a complete failure!
I’m curious how many others feel the same way? A twenty plus pound savings is significant to us moto guys. If we can get enough interest (assuming my analysis is in the ballpark) maybe we can convince Alta to offer such a pack as an option?
And what kind of pack was Josh Hill running at the Straight Rhythm event last year? If it was a stocker that guy has nuts the size of bowling balls!
As for sound... there is no sound in Downhill MTBiking and yet most of us on this board also MTB but don't complain about no sound. As for sound and pro racing: there is something to this, have you tried to watch formula E race? It's brutal and I can watch almost any type of race but can't bear to watch the Eprix
I'd be interested in a dual sport, only because my surgeon said "Don't fuck this shoulder up again, I can't repair it."
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