Oh, I think it's a great idea and wholeheartedly support your effort to build an efficient drive system that will do 100 miles at a good pace; I just didn't want to see you pinning your hopes on running the NCC with it if the WaterTribe folks have moved away from encouraging electric boat participation (let me know if Chief says otherwise!).
And I really WOULD like to see a race set up that's longer then the Wye Island race, to encourage development of practical electric boat solutions that are portable and capable of distance running. I like the Watertribe idea of requiring boats to be launched off the beach - this tends to keep weights and therefore costs down so that participating boats are typically light and relatively cheap, and thus accessible to the most under-funded among us.
One of the attractions of my electric bike is cheap, fast transport that I can use to get around town, while generating about 1/20 to 1/40th the CO2 per mile that running my VW automobile would. I cruise the bike at 30mph (1000W 48v hub motor, 1 kWh LiFePO4 battery pack weighing ~10 kilograms). Range is 25 miles at 30mph (with no pedaling), 50 miles at 20 mph with easy pedaling.
These ebike solutions with Lithium batteries are available for around $1000 to convert an existing bike, less for lead acid versions. It would be really great if such relatively cheap solutions could be extended to small boats, and I hope it's just a matter of time before such systems become ubiquitous.
It will help a lot if Lithium battery technology can achieve the 3 to 10 times cost-and-weight-per-kWh reduction everyone is promising in the near future (I'm not holding my breath). A $1000 10kWh bank weighing 10 kilos would truly revolutionize every form of transport on the planet. It beats me why we aren't plowing every dollar we can into development of such a solution...
Neil
--- In electricboats@yahoogroups.com, "tom_the_rower" <ibiubu99@...> wrote:
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> I have spoken to Steve before and will again about this. In either case, I believe that this is the path that I am going to take, race or not. Why should bicycles get all the inovation, as far as adding high end electric. I have added electric via a trolling motor to my expedition ready boat, and have found that it is so much to my liking that I am willing to spend money to upgrade to a higher level of both battery, motor (24volt) and propeller size and pitch. This is one of the few places around for me to learn how to do that . There are bike shops all over the world that can tweak your bike. There appears to almost none to tell you about adding high end electrics to your boat.
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> Tom the rower
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