Party Vibe

to be fair it seems like one of the better things the Mau5 has done – as impressive as this motor car is it will depreciate in value very quickly as the accus for the electric bit degrade after 3-5 years (they are exactly the same as in your laptop but much larger), and there are very few places you could drive it at full power legally and safely, and presumably like most sports cars it only seats two people at any one time whereas his AV setup would entertain many more…

I don’t have a driving license so if I had that sort of money would have spent most of it on audio visual equipment anyway (although I might be tempted to buy a top of the range German e-bike, which incidentally has a longer range per charge than the P1 if used only in electric mode!)

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Ukko Merimaa wrote:

No, no I wouldn’t. I’d sell the Mclaren and buy a Nissan GTR and a Ducati Panigale R, the gtr is pure practicality, has a huge boot, 4 seats and is suprisingly economical. The Ducati is just because I dislike sharing space with people.

I got my first car when i was 17 for motivation to go ahead and pass my drivers test. I got a sky blue Ford KA on finance, It was around £3000 at the time, I had it sitting in the drive for about three years before selling it to my dad for £500. I never ended up taking my test or hardly ever practiced. I can safely say that Ford KA was my first and last car.

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and for some reason I had mistakenly thought EPICLULZ was a bit of a petrol-head 😀

I have nothing against motor cars per se; but think there are way too many of them on the roads in small European countries that do not really need to be there.

Then again I am lucky enough to have both relatively flexible working hours and only need to visit sites for certain jobs as I can do a lot of work remotely, and no kids so I don’t really have a need for a car.

I think that McLaren is a step in the right direction tech wise, but was disappointed to see the battery range is less than my e-bike!

Would hope the Mau5 decides to buy an even better e-car from the proceeds of the tour, or even an e-bike.

Prince (RIP) could have done with an e-bike, he wouldn’t have hurt his knees riding the one he was last seen on which was also wrongly set up an a frame size too big and thus had to cane all those painkillers..

[quote quote=1129587]E bikes are shite, the battery tech is still years off, the power delivery is piss poor, it either all or nothing, so just like a 500cc 2 stroke gp bike. Honda Mugen have made a pretty good electric bike but at around a million pounds its somewhat unaffordable.
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Admittedly I look upon wheeled vehicles more as a means of useful transportation, rather than to win races with or to look cool. I think we might be looking at different kinds of machines here – i.e a replacement for a racing motorcycle as opposed to supplementing a human powered bicycle,

There are races for e-bikes which are similar to those for human powered bicycles; although covertly converting a racer into an e-bike (which has been done) for a traditional race is rightly judged as cheating (riding a legal e-bike to work is not!)

A road legal e-bike in Europe is normally limited to a 250W average motor with 25 km/h max (if the rider is not supplying any extra power), apart from some models popular in DE and NL which can do 45 km/h but those need reg plates, helmet etc. (at least they do not create a fraction of the pollution of a cheap petrol scooter or moped!). You do need to still pedal as the motor won’t move unless the pedals are turning (this is an EU rule)

Even so my latest one (which has a really clever system that monitors your pedal cadence and matches the power from the motor) easily reaches 30km/h when I wish to “go for it” (OK I did slightly tweak the controller settings shortly after I got it, but I am still within UK law (I don’t ride like an idiot and intimidate pedestrians etc, there is also no need run red lights when I can make up the lost time waiting for the light very quickly).

Although in 2003 I was able to ride from Caversham (north of Reading) to High Wycombe to get to a rave on an unpowered Dawes touring bike (e-bikes then were too expensive and were designed more for seniors) there this involved also consuming a considerable part of a 3,5g bag of amfetamine and its not something I would try today on an unpowered machine.

Riding an e-bike is no different to riding a standard bicycle; but you travel at twice the speed with half the effort even if you have 16 kilos load in the panniers. These machines are turning up everywhere in NL and DE especially with delivery companies and local trades workers, replacing many motor vans…

A 250W motor usually tops out at around 30 km/h anyway – also the UK has only part implemented the EU laws leaving some confusion over the point at which an e-bike officially gets classed as a small moped.

The 45 km/h e-bikes will attract attention in Blighty, apparently some posh Londoners (the only folk who can afford them here) have been hauled up for riding them without the correct licensing, but 30 km/h shouldn’t attract excessive attention unless you are scattering pedestrians in the middle of the town centre.

I did have a link to a site with all sorts of e-bike parts and controllers (for building your own); I will try and find that again. From what I remember the controllers (which link the to the throttle) aren’t that expensive, its the motor wheel and batteries which make up most of the price of an e-bike..