01-03-2007, 01:33 PM
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#22 (permalink)
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| Guest | Re: About six times as expensive....
Ron Ruff wrote:
> Good comparison... but what about a scooter with cheap lead-acid
> batteries? That would be much more economical, since as you pointed
> out, the battery cost is the biggest expense.
>
> $155 for batteries for the Ego2... which costs $1200 new.
>
> http://www.egovehicles.com/mm5/merch...gory_Code=ELEC
>
> They say it will last ~10k miles, but even if it is replaced at 5k
> miles, it is only 3.1 cents/mile. Since these are standard batteries,
> they could probably be purchased more cheaply elsewhere.
>
Looking around--the figures I get for the eGo scooter are 23 mile range,
300 discharge cycles on a battery that costs about $150, so that's a bit
over two cents per mile. Not as low as the 4-stroke, but pretty close.
The eGo website claims that if you use it for trips of 10 miles or less,
you can get as much as 600-800 discharge cycles on a battery, a figure
which seems comically high in actual use. The mos5t common question you
tend to see posted about ev-bikes is how to get more power & range out
of them, so it would appear that most people are running off the end of
their batteries in actual use.
The eGo has at least two /drastic/ disadvantages however (compared to
both ev-bicycles and gas-engine bicycles) that are somewhat
inter-related: one is that it is HEAVY, 130 lbs. The other is that it
has no means of pedal-propulsion, so you are dependent upon electric
power for it to move at all--and that drastically cuts down on how
useful it is. It's practical range is quite a bit less than 23 miles,
because most people wouldn't want to risk running the thing until its dead.
~
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