Hybrid2 public bike concept promises to help power city buses

Hybrid bikes are one thing, but designer Chiyi Chen looks to have something far grander in mind for his Hybrid2 bike concept, which he says could one day help power fleets of city buses. To do that, the hybrid part of the bike (a regenerative braking system) wouldn't be used to help power the bike itself at all, but would instead store the energy in an ultracapacitor that'd then feed the energy back into the grid when its parked at a special bike stand, which would in turn be used to help charge the hybrid electric buses. Not one to overlook an ingenious little detail, Chen has also devised a special card RFID card that would not only be used to unlock the bike, but keep track of the energy that each rider generates -- build up enough credits and you can ride the bus for free. Intrigued? Head on past the break for a video overview from the man himself.

[Via Inhabitat]

[Mike V @ Jul 16th 2009 1:50AM]

Every time I go past a gym and see all those treadmills and stationary bikes going, I think of this.

Also...


First!

[Erb @ Jul 16th 2009 2:02AM]

And I was just about to give you a +1 too....

[Darwin @ Jul 16th 2009 2:08AM]

Would that be because that technology not only already exists, but has already been implemented?

[Seth @ Jul 16th 2009 8:54AM]

We have all thought about generating electricity from a health club, but when you look into it, it doesn't make much sense.

You cannot generate electricity from a treadmill - a treadmill *requires* electricity.

The amount of electricity you can generate from a stationary bike (probably the optimum device you could generate electricity from in the entire gym) is trivial - less than $.01/hour.

Its not even enough to power the computer and display on the bike, never mind the personal LCD television (if it has one). If they had neither a computer nor LCD, in an average sized gym 10 bikes would probably generate less than $20/mo in electricity.

[GingerFox @ Jul 16th 2009 9:49AM]

Seth, of course its enough to power the small display on the bike. Have you never seen those odd demonstrations where they light up a light bulb with a stationary bike?

[Noah @ Jul 16th 2009 2:00AM]

Wow. See, when we watch movies set in the future/read books about the future, this is the sort of absurdly practical yet cool thing that you see. Yet, I know that this has such a slim chance of ever being created. Please, major cities, consider this! It's awesome!

[Charles Melbye @ Jul 16th 2009 2:17AM]

The city of Sevilla, Spain already does this: http://www.trackchanges.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/seville.jpg

[William Woody @ Jul 16th 2009 4:01AM]

Charles: the image you supplied is for a bike rental service: Two more cities offering public bike rental services. While cool, these bikes are not storing up potential energy to power a bus.

[William Woody @ Jul 16th 2009 4:04AM]

Meh. Link lost in my reply. Link here: "Two more cities offering public bike rental services" http://www.autobloggreen.com/2007/07/26/two-more-cities-offering-public-bike-rental-services-sevilla-an/

[Benson @ Jul 16th 2009 6:29AM]

I must have missed the absurdly practical bit. The useful energy levels in a bike and a bus differ by at least 3 orders of magnitude; how is adding a conversion, storage, and distribution system just to make that tiny dent in the buses' power practical?

And if that weren't bad enough, you either put a big enough battery of ultracaps to store the longest rides people might take (~50 miles), and have that much cost and deadweight adding nothing for the 5-mile trips, or you cut it back and rip hard riders off on their bus fare.

The practical thing is to use a smaller ultracap on the bike (since you only need to store energy from one downhill or stop, for the next uphill / start, not the entire ride) and use the power on the bike, where the power levels are nicely matched. Since this bike will be easier to ride than a standard bike, you can rent them a bit higher, and use the difference to slightly help buy electricity/LPG/whatever to run your buses

[TentosToys @ Jul 16th 2009 2:00AM]

Awesome - until kids learn how to hack out the ultracapacitors, and fuse the bikes to the charging stations for kicks.

[Funke, Tobias Dr. @ Jul 16th 2009 2:11AM]

Or turn them into steerable stun guns!

[dsteve303 @ Jul 16th 2009 2:02AM]

Too high maintenance.

[the4thheat @ Jul 17th 2009 12:04AM]

More like the bikes will be ridiculously hard to ride. I don't know if anybody's ever even ridden a bike with a rider-powered headlight, but the amount of drag it generates makes it like 50% harder to pedal. Trying to power buses is gonna make every bike feel like molasses.

[meikaat @ Jul 17th 2009 11:43AM]

Read the article: "To do that, the hybrid part of the bike (a regenerative braking system). "

It only puts resistance on when you are braking. That's how regenerative braking works. This is just like any normal bike pedaling wise, it just weighs a bit more.

[Agentbolt @ Jul 16th 2009 2:03AM]

This is friggin' BRILLIANT. The card identifies you, so you can build up credits (and they can track you down if you don't return what is a pretty nice looking bike) and you've now got a reliable method of transportation around town with a free bus as a backup for rainy days, being tired, whatever.

Too bad it'll never get realized. Americans don't like bikes in their cities. :(

[iMike @ Jul 16th 2009 2:30AM]

Like Americans are the centre of everything?

Read the comment of Charles Melbye again... it already exists in Sevilla!
I believe it is also tested in Paris now... but hey at least you can enter Engadget's recession antidote

[JJ @ Jul 16th 2009 3:05AM]

This would probably work in Portland, I just spent a few days there and they love their bikes and public transit out there.

--JJ
http://www.PostcardFilms.com

[Jonathan @ Jul 16th 2009 3:32AM]

Why doesn't it just power the bike?

[Funke, Tobias Dr. @ Jul 16th 2009 2:10AM]

The small amounts of energy saved, even after the lossy transfers would never make up for the infrastructure/maintenance costs.

So many things would be feasible, yet, then so worthless if materials/manufacturing cost was zero.

[jamesshuang @ Jul 16th 2009 2:10AM]

This is ridiculous... my bike's rim will get hot as I'm coming off a 1500 foot mountain, but it's cool to the touch within 30 seconds. The amount of energy generated by a bike's braking is about as useful as a 9V battery in a car. Heck, the reverse should occur - a single braking in something as large as a bus would easily power 10 bikes...

[Funke, Tobias Dr. @ Jul 16th 2009 2:13AM]

It's true. Of course, it's a lot simpler for the bus to keep the power and use it itself.

[tim g @ Jul 16th 2009 2:12AM]

Uh. The weight of extra components will make them pretty un-ridable. Unless someone develops a really light way of storing power, this is unlikely to catch on.

[darklighter @ Jul 16th 2009 2:32AM]

Hence, ultracapacitor.

[max andrews @ Jul 17th 2009 9:35PM]

@ darklighter,
the best ultracapacitors have a power density of 30wh/kg, which is four times worse than simple Lion cells (a 0.5kg laptop battery stores about 60wh).

So let's say you put a 2kg (4.5 pound) ultracapacitor on a bike. That's 60Wh - the same energy capacity as the aforementioned laptop battery. A typical bus will use about 60kw of power on average for ~30mph city use. For one hour that's 60Kwh, or 60,000 watt-hours. Divided by the ultracapacitor capacity of 60wh, a fully charged bike can provide the bus with 1/1000th of an hour of power, or precisely 3.6 seconds. To fully power one city bus for one hour, you would need 1000 fully charged bicycles, which would save you a grand total of four gallons of gas (assuming a 45% efficient diesel drivetrain). Given the expense of producing bicycles with this capacity, and factoring in the weight penalty to riders, this idea is completely invalid.

[Nastro @ Jul 16th 2009 2:14AM]

Enviro gimmick doom to failure # 12444444222 and counting.

[something clever @ Jul 16th 2009 8:49AM]

Evil neocon faux news viewer! Spreading your misinformed doom and gloom everywhere!!!!

If it's for the planet and green, clean energy, it's a brilliant idea! No matter what you deniers say! Everything that has a claimed green angle is good, pure, and required to save the planet!

And don't anyone try to tell me whenever they have these shared bicycle programs, the bikes end up damaged or stolen! This time it's different! Because it's green!!!!!

[Eric @ Jul 16th 2009 12:02PM]

[to above] HAHAHA!

[James Pennington @ Jul 16th 2009 2:19AM]

The problem with all these kinetic energy ideas is that people don't realize just how little energy they can actually produce. Here's my calculations...

Average size person using moderate effort cycling for 30 minutes = about 300 calories burned
100 calories = 1.1897 BTUs
One gallon of gasoline contains approximately 12000 BTUs of energy

Therefore, the cyclist will produce the energy equivalent of 0.0099147% of 1 gallon of gasoline.

Then factor in all the energy used to make and maintain all those ultra capacitors and the infrastructure and it just doesn't work out.

Sorry to burst bubbles. I think it's a great concept too but I've just never seen anyone prove how this stuff could actually generate any significant net energy gain.

[James Pennington @ Jul 16th 2009 2:24AM]

Typo... Should have read "300 calories = 1.1897 BTUs"

[The Walrus @ Jul 16th 2009 3:03AM]

What I was thinking of exactly. This will only lead to stolen or damaged bikes and a loss to the city.

[tekn76 @ Jul 16th 2009 5:14AM]

Agreed... it seems like such an overly complicated way to use up such little energy. Why not just use the power on the bike itself? OR... why not actually just build in a battery to make the bike more, you know, usable? In China they have electric powered bikes for under $100... why not just build tons of those and spread those around cities?

[Eric @ Jul 16th 2009 6:26AM]

Not only that, but amazingly the cost to society and the environment per mile for riding a bike is about the same as driving a car (and more than taking a bus). In the US it takes on average 10 calories to produce each calorie of food. Only at low speeds does a bike beat a car's efficiency by a factor of more than 10. So using food energy to power transportation is not on its face such a wonderful thing, and yet the first assumption is that an idea like this is pure genius.

[Mikey @ Jul 16th 2009 9:30AM]

I think most of the energy they are talking about collecting isn't the energy of effort of the rider (which goes mostly into propelling the bike forward), but rather trying to collect the energy to stop and slow down the bike, which usually just turns into wasted heat. So your calculations are irrelevant because they are comparing apples to oranges.

Granted, that dissipation energy also isn't that much, but it is still more than you think. Remember, hybrid cars reclaim a lot of energy when you brake and store it in the battery (that is the only energy source to recharge the batter in most hybrids). If you get millions of people using these bikes in a major city, just by shear volume it could add up to a lot of energy that is presently being wasted.

Don't forget, this technology is probably in its infancy, so the performance isn't that impressive, but if we give it a shot and keep innovating in the space, we could really get moving. Arguments like your make me glad that Henry Ford didn't listen to naysayers who said "Why do we need this automobile thing? It goes slower than my horse-drawn carriage!"

[James Pennington @ Jul 16th 2009 11:21AM]

@ Mikey...

I think you are correct that, according to the article, the plan is only to harness the braking power. Therefore simple physics would mean that the power you get out of the braking is going to have to be less than the power you put into the pedaling. And obviously it would be significantly less because most of the energy of riding is dissipated as friction.

My point is not that there aren't ways of reclaiming power generated by humans. The point is how small of an amount it is. No matter how efficient you can make the technology you can't violate the laws of physics. Even at 100% efficiency, the human body is no match for other energy sources.

The other point is that most ideas like these are implying a net energy gain but they rarely talk about how much energy is used to produce the bikes, deliver them their locations, maintain their systems (including more travel by vehicles to where the bikes are), etc. To me this makes these plans more about politics and giving people "warm fuzzies" than actually making a difference for our energy needs.

Let's keep up the innovation like Henry Ford, but let's make sure that we are actually having an impact.

[Robert Abramson @ Jul 17th 2009 10:38AM]

Eric,
that's a really shallow analysis. For starters, the food a cyclist consumes is not necessarily any more than what another human would consume-- Most people work out; someone driving a car is likely to go burn a bunch of food calories on a treadmill or playing field elsewhere, so your assumption that cycling inherently means more food consumption is off-base.

Further, food is a renewable resource. Fossil fuel is not.

I also think that when you talk about the "social cost" of driving, you're leaving out a lot of externalities. Fuel consumption and carbon dioxide production are only two of the issues cars bring up. Air and noise pollution, traffic fatalities, roadway building and maintenance costs, obesity (and subsequent healthcare costs), and a myriad of other problems all constitute social costs of driving that everyone has to bear, and that non-drivers bear disproportionately.

Finally, I'm not sure where you get the idea that a bike is only 10 times more efficient than a car. A fit person on a bike (not an enthusiast or racer) generally puts out in the neighborhood of 100 watts, or 1/7th a horsepower. Even with a more underpowered new car car today, let's say 100 horsepower, that's at most 1/700th of the power required to move the car around.

True, it takes longer to ride a bike somewhere than a car, so the power comparison isn't completely straightforward. But ignoring the case of cities (where bikes are often quicker than cars), let's assume the bike takes 3 times as long (i.e. the bike averages 15mph while the car averages 45mpg)-- even then, we're talking about 1/200th the total energy for the bike to get somewhere versus the car.

Are you sure you're not an auto lobbyist?

[maveric101 @ Jul 17th 2009 1:14AM]

@ Eric:

that may be true, but people get exercise biking.

[xP1GxB3N1Sx @ Jul 16th 2009 2:45AM]

great idea
until someone decides to steal the bikes!

[SiXiam @ Jul 16th 2009 2:48AM]

This story is proof that alternative energy is still just a joke...

[Mikey @ Jul 16th 2009 9:33AM]

So why even bother trying to improve the technology? Is that what you're saying? Pretty much ALL technology starts out as an idea that looks like a joke... but over time it turns into something amazing. Think how horrible the world would be if we cut off all potentially great technology in its infancy just because it wasn't practical at the time: no cars, no airplanes, no computers, definitely no internet, no plastics, I hope you like growing your own food because there would be no mass farming or refrigeration, no drugs to keep you alive past the age of 20, in fact very little of that new fangled "medicine" all the kids are talking about, no telephones... I think you get the idea.

I think your attitude is the joke.

[Tyranor @ Jul 16th 2009 3:44AM]

This sounds incredibly inefficient...but I guess I could be wrong!

[William Woody @ Jul 16th 2009 3:55AM]

What happened to our society, that we give serious air time to a "solution" to the energy crisis that has absolutely no possibility of working, proffered by a designer who clearly has no working knowledge of physics or mechanical engineering?

With all due respect to what is an interesting design concept (and by "design" I mean "artsy-fartsy, blue sky, imagination building exercise"), there is absolutely no possibility that this could work at all, as other comments more clearly illustrate than I. Yet we're offered this solution--which is only slightly better than perpetual motion--as if it were a realistic and practical solution.

What irritates me greatly is that eventually a bunch of people will be saying "so why don't we implement this guy's solution? It's perfect!" And instead of accepting the idea that the Laws of Thermodynamics and energy transfer make it an impossible solution, instead we'll get screams of "Big Oil Conspiracy!"

We've become a world of people engaged in magical thinking, who believe if we just wrap it in a cool design and sell it to people, we'll get to a tipping point where people will naturally gravitate to solutions like this, and we'll all live happily ever after--regardless of physical reality.

Newsflash: Science is a harsh bitch. Magical thinking will not change the fact that the amount of energy required to accelerate a bus to speed is several orders of magnitude greater than the amount of energy needed for a bike rider to peddle around the corner.

[B3astofthe3ast @ Jul 16th 2009 4:05AM]

Why don't you run some number's and see if its feasible yourself? I didn't, but I'm sure whoever thought of this did, and at least made sure it's possible.

[William Woody @ Jul 16th 2009 4:20AM]

Bottom line: they didn't.

If a bike rider and bike weighs 200 pounds and tops out at 10mph, a fully loaded bus 42000 pounds and tops out at 70mph, E=(MV**2)/2 tells us the energy difference is well over 10,000 times: it takes 10,000 times more energy to accelerate a bus to highway speed than it takes to accelerate a bike rider to average traveling speed.

Science is a harsh bitch. Sorry.

(And sorry for duplicate comments; I'm still getting used to the comment system here.)

[B3astofthe3ast @ Jul 16th 2009 4:35AM]

I completely agree with you...its just that I can't believe such a story would get this much attention if there's such a huge discrepancy like that. In fact,. I'm not sure why Engadget posted it if its impossible.

[TomKun @ Jul 16th 2009 8:41AM]

so, all you need is 10,000 riders. I think there will be more than 10,000 riders riding those bikes every day.
the thing is that like what you said about "magical thinking" is also apply about that "physical thinking" you just single out every option that come to mind.
there were time when people thought about doing things and just did them.
all those ancients buildings and constructions would have never happen if they would have thought about it with your approach.

[ioannisnousias @ Jul 16th 2009 6:37AM]

it's the 'ant' effect. Each of them are tiny, but as a collective they are powerful (well, ants are extremely powerful for their size, but that's besides the point).

Also, a cyclist can easily reach 30mph and buses in cities are probably limited to 50mph. Using your logic, that is a difference of about 600x. Assuming the hybrid buses have all the energy saving features you can throw at them (regenerative braking and all), this could offload a measurable amount of energy in bike friendly cities (say where 10% of the population prefers cycling when possible). The credit system promotes an energy conserving thinking.

Having said all that, I do agree with most people here, that the system will fail due to theft and abuse/hacking. It happened in London (bike rental service got abused). However, I disagree with those that bring the infrastructure cost and maintenance into consideration. It's negligible in the grant scale of things, if you consider the value of the service it provides to citizens, the savings it offer, the relative cost compared to building and maintaining other public transport systems.

[Funke, Tobias Dr. @ Jul 16th 2009 11:06AM]

It's scary that this many people on a tech blog can be fooled into thinking something like this could actually have a benefit.

[William Woody @ Jul 16th 2009 12:48PM]

TomKun: There are a couple of complications that make things worse than my original comments.

First, a bus will probably be in service for 12 hours. Which means you need 10,000 bike riders riding 12 hours a day, or 120,000 bike rider hours per bus. Assuming each person actively rides the bike 30 minutes per session, you'll need a quarter million bike rider sessions. (When I used to ride my bike to work when it was 6 miles away, it took me 35 minutes to get to work.)

And this assumes perfect recapture of energy from the bike rider. With that logic we could run a bus on a gallon of gasoline: the bus could just recapture all of its energy during breaking and reuse that energy starting back up. All the gallon of gasoline would be used for is to start the bus rolling in the morning.

The laws of thermodynamics essentially say you can't break even: there will be losses due to friction and resistance of all sorts. At best using some magical technique you probably could only recapture perhaps 30% of the total energy--which immediately triples all of the estimates above.

Meaning you'll need nearly three quarters of a million bike rider sessions of 30 minutes each per day to power a bus using regenerative breaking.

Feudal societies supported their feudal lords with a smaller ratio of peons to elite people.

Or, put it another way: if you want a free bus pass to ride the bus all day, assuming 50 people are in a bus (which is high, since a bus won't be near capacity for most of the day), you'll need to ride your bike around 72,000 miles first. (Though the transit authority reserves the right to increase this to match average rider capacity and to compensate for the fact that we also need to pay for the bus and the bikes: thus far, I'm assuming your ticket just pays for the energy used to move the bus.)

[ToyChicken @ Jul 16th 2009 4:25AM]

OK, I'll bite, I think the ratio of bike power compared to bus requirements is probably (certainly) too steep to mean that this is a practical solution... but what about powering (backup) lighting for the bus shelter that the stand is next to?