Biaggi rides Moto E bike at Mugello

[duke63]

[video]https://www.facebook.com/MotoGP/videos/ ... 401930769/[/video]

[StMarks]

I assume there's little (or none ? ) engine braking effect ????
If so I imagine that's going to take someone like Biaggi a while to acclimatise to, after a lifetime of using it.

[Deegee]

I’m not so sure about no engine braking as such StM, it looked from the dash as if there was a brake symbol light on the dash from time to time, I don’t know, but I’d guess some form of re-gen braking is used for better battery life, I’d imagine that doesn’t feel so different to engine braking?

[StMarks]

That would seem logical Deegee. Fwiw I've long felt that electric vehicles should be slowed by reversing the effect of the driving motors so that they become generators feeding back into the power supply. I didn't realise that that system had been achieved yet.

[Deegee]

I’m not a follower, but F1 has both used and discarded re-gen (aka KERS), as have KTM 10 years back in 125 MotoGP. It seems to have been left behind by the hydrocarbon racers, but I’d imagine is a valuable necessary for E racing brigade.

[kiwikrasher]

That would seem logical Deegee. Fwiw I've long felt that electric vehicles should be slowed by reversing the effect of the driving motors so that they become generators feeding back into the power supply. I didn't realise that that system had been achieved yet.

It’s actually used quite widely in electric and hybrid cars these days. But a quick google and the first use was back in 1890’s!!

[D41]

I seem to remember reading that when electric vehicles generate their own electricity it's from the wheel housing/axle assemblies.....it's not from the motor itself.

[duke63]

I'm sure i have read somewhere that strictly speaking electric vehicles do not need conventional brakes as it can be built within the drive systems and the electric motors.

[Deegee]

The most commonly used electrical braking device is an Eddy Current Retarder, which as D says is normally located on the axle housing, however that uses vehicle electrics (read alternator/battery) and doesn’t put anything back into the drivetrain, just wastes it off as heat.

The best ones are as Duke says built into the electric motor, I’d guess it’s fairly common knowledge that a motor and a generator are almost identical in architecture, so it should be some clever use of electronics and buffer batteries that can allow most of the kinetic energy to be reclaimed.

I say most, because if it takes 15-30 seconds to get up to speed it should take the same to come back down to a standstill and reclaim most of that, but drivers are poor at reading ahead and will want to stop in 5-10 seconds, so it’s inevitable that a large chunk of that will still be lost as heat. Fwiw mechanical losses (friction) are another area that significant research has been looking at for decades, on a long journey the frictionals will make braking losses look a lot better.