Hybrid2 public bike concept promises to help power city buses
By Donald Melanson 
posted July 16th 2009 1:38AM
posted July 16th 2009 1:38AM
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]
[Via Inhabitat]
everything about this is completely believable. now whether its practical is another issue, but that's not what you seem to be trying to say. Instead you insult anyone who supports this. perhaps you should read your own comment.
While this is indeed unlikely to be even remotely efficient, it isnt quite as bad as some people above are painting.
Its NOT the equivalent of one person raming into a bus and having an effect on its speed; Its the equivalent of, say, 25-50 people raming into the bus and having an effect on its speed.
A single person isnt expected to pay of the energy consumption of the bus with this scheme, its merely they are expected to pay-of the extra electricity used by -them- riding the bus. Its like buying carbon-displacement when traveling by air, your not covering the whole aircraft, just (supposedly) your contribution by being on that flight.
We are also, of course, talking about an electric bus here, using an electric moter which is vastely more efficient in terms of energy conversion then a combustion engine. (and, of course, human muscles powered by food are also hugely efficient....and, ultimately, solar-powered, energy source. ).
Dont get me wrong, its still not going to cover infrastructure costs, and those capacitors will lose a lot of energy too.
Not to mention storing it before reaching the bus.
If your going to generate power from people, just feeding it back into the grid directly would be the better way to do it. At least then it would power some energy-efficient light bulbs easily enough.
And, actually, yes, daft as it sounds, using people in Gyms to generate power is sensible too....exercise machines are supposed to provide resistance, and dont have to move, and dont need to carry the weight of the capaciters so should be able to generate a lot more energy per-person.
The fact that this was posted is a testament to the poor quality of science education in the United States, or wherever the blogger is from. If you looked at this design and didn't think "this will never work," you have been cheated out of the quality of science education that you deserve.
The way I see it, his vision falls into the same trap of many:
* making things 10x more complex and expensive than they need to be (bikes, special stands, solar cells...)
* neglecting maintenance and vandalism in all of this, plus energy and cost of creating them
* negating one of the main pluses of bikes and stands and parts (low cost, simplicity)
* all for incremental gains (I think it's fair to call them very incremental if they are gains at all, at the end of the day)
most people here are missing the point.
the designer of this conception doesn't claim that cyclists will generate all the required energy to operate the hybrid buses. If you think about it, it's all about the credit system. It promotes the use of bikes in cities. It's an insensitive, which will offload the public transport system (mostly due to less people taking the bus). If it was for energy generation, installing solar panels on the roofs of those hybrid buses would be more effective (which is something they should do anyway)
Something that makes this even more impossible is that the concept is dependent on the recovery of power through regenerative braking. Many of the calculations have used the total amount of energy generated by the cyclist. The amount to be captured is but a tiny fraction of that.
An efficient cyclist typically avoids braking wherever possible which nullifies any potential energy recovery. Once you have scaled a hill you will carefully time your descent so that you go through the intersection at the bottom of the hill at 30mph rather than turn that potential energy into a hot rim.
Any attempts to have the cyclist actually generate and save power will result in a very noticeable increase in effort to which I expect few would volunteer.
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!!!!!
I don't get it. Why would they design this bike to create power from regenerative breaking instead of just generating power from the actual cycling?
Because the cyclist would have to provide enough energy to not only propel the bike, but also enough to drive the additional energy creation (energy isn't free... if you use all the cyclists effort that normally goes into moving the bike and store it for some other use, the bike isn't going anywhere). How would you like to ride a bike that takes twice as much effort to go half as fast?
Regenerative braking energy is "free" in that it is energy that is normally just lost as heat dissipation. It requires no extra effort by the cyclist to gather.
This seems like an interesting idea. I hope to see it become viable someday.
Forget the bus ... it takes way too much energy. I can't think I or many other people would generate enough for a bus ride. Also, how far would I be able to travel on the bus?
Just put my an iPod, mobile phone, or laptop connector on the bike to allow me to charge those, and i'll be happy enough.
Batteries are heavy.
"ultracapacitor", is reading heavy too?
Wwhat: An ultracapacitor is heavier than a battery storing the same charge. So the comment about batteries being heavy doubly applies to ultracapacitors.
Apparently, knowledge is even heavier than reading ability.
It's stupid and amounts to nothing, if you bike you slow down beforehand and don't jump into the brakes, and the power you gather in a year from one bike would not even start a bus engine, let alone move it a foot, and what about that 'credit' you save and you get punished by getting to use freaking public transport? Yeah there's a motivator.
Still, you could give a fake name and steal the capacitor from the thing (note that I normally I would not even suggest stealing/damaging parts of public infrastructure because it's lame), and create your own project that does make more sense, a simple bicycle wheel with some slanted cardboard stuck in it in the wind will give you more output already than this after all.
Sorry for the negativity, but sometimes I calls em as I sees em.
Special bike docking stations... Sigh... Nice idea, but not very practical given the fact that human beings are involved who tend to like to have a choice in the bicycles they buy, pretty much don't like paying taxes for things like bike docking stations and frequently break things.
[to above] HAHAHA!
Stupid ideas like this are why designers go to art school and not engineering school. The basic laws of physics will argue with this system on every level. First off, humans do not generate very much power, we rely on systems of motion that conserve just about as much energy as they can. Secondly, the conversion of mechanical energy to electrical energy will negate just about any gains one would make in this system, then converting this energy back into mechanical force, well you are in the hole now and have lost quite a bit of energy, you would be better off just filling a bus with spinner bikes with generators on them.
They tried something similar to this in Charleston, SC. I think they just had bikes available for anyone downtown to use. They ALL were stolen within the first day.
an electric bus is powered by a 240 hp (~180 kW) electric motor while a bicycle is powered by a human generating 200 W (i'm being generous). [let's assume they are operated at similar duty cycles, stopping and going at the same times.] that's already factor of ~1000 and that's assuming in braking you can recover all the energy that you put in at 200 W. there's losses in pedaling (depends on cadence, chain, cleanliness of drivetrain... but it's usually >10%), in the generator (say ~10-20%), charging the capacitor (say 50%), converting back to grid AC (no idea but probably substantial)... what i'm saying is you'd be hard pressed to recover 40% of the original energy put in...
so to power your average electric trolley, you'd need at least 2222 cyclists on hybrid2s per bus. did i mention they also have to be dedicated bus powerers?
Wow, thats the coolest thing I ever seen!
RT
Cattle Kid pups
That actually makes pretty good sense dude!
R
love this concept. should be in many more cities around the country.
Keep the World Green!
http://www.friendlydogstore.com
How many people regularly ride both buses and bicycles? Is there a correlation with number of DUI convictions?
Stop thinking about gas cars/electric bicycles and immediately assume that it can never happen.
Think about a city like Beijing for a second
mass produce capacitors
mass produce the front wheels/brake systems.
install them on all bikes in Beijing
create a simply power upload grid all over city, not necesarily a special rack, just somewhere someone can plug in the bike, upload the power and receive credits
now imagine somewhere on the magnitude of a million riders using the system for 30 mins (probably much more ) a day.
I read complaints about how one would need "10,000 users" to power a city bus. I dont have time to do that math, but it seems like in magnitude, 1 million users would greatly increase that capacity.
don't fotget
http://www.jb-electricbikes.com/
there bikes is sundry