So the first couple years i was here i saw various electric cars (made and done). they looked mor eor less like thos elittle march crs. small compact anyway. they told me 3-4 years before market. well i have been waiting and waiting, and that time frame is past.
These were taiwan made.
Did they get bought out and shut down? whats the scoop, can we buy electric cars here yet?
There is not going to be strong support for electric plugins in Taiwan for quite a long time to come. It requires a change in infrastructure or a change in technology first. Presently cars in Taiwan would take too long to charge from a 110voltage point, and would require parking spaces which offer free electricity, or is metered.
Other options are a standardized interchangeable battery pack for the vehicle itself and which can easily be swapped.
Toujours la change…Check the flares and hairs. 30 years ago
yes, i understand that quite well. But everyone has juice at home, and i think most electric cars will be using 220 at first anyway, maybe high once the infrastructure happens.
for now, taiwan is dense and compact and you can buy almost anything within a 50km radius, this makes electric cars incredibly suitable, and exactly why im interested. charge at home and use it for doing stuff around the house. use a gas tank for travelling.
all that said and done, still wondering when they will be for sale here as they were planned for a few years ago…
Well I might suggest that if only travelling short distances then even an electric bike might suffice for some people. An electric car for short distances and a petrol powered car for longer distances would require two parking spaces instead of one, and a socket for the electricity with either free or metered electricity available.
This won’t work for most people and so the car companies are not going to provide these cars willingly.
I expect moves like Toyota with it’s small hybrid will become increasingly more common in Taiwan until the infrastructure catches up, and these are cars which I might recommend to those interested in saving fuel. These purchases must be calculated carefully however if its money, not fuel that one is interested in saving as saving money with one of these cars will only be done after accounting for the additional cost of the car to begin with.
Savings in emissions (not that I care) must offset the production and transportation of the car and its service components . Toyota has made great improvements in this area recently.
What Sulavaca said. Electric cars are really not that environmentally friendly, and you’re unlikely to save any money given the high initial cost. If you really want one, just buy a Prius. Taiwanese car companies are not good at making cars or new technology, so cars with new technology is a recipe for disaster.
OTOH I was at the cycle show the other day and came across this:
90% of the electric scooters on show were utter garbage, except this one. They had all the components out on display and it was top-quality, well-engineered stuff. The battery is LiFePO4, which is good for about 1000-2000 recharges, depending on how much abuse it gets. The bigger model has a nice powerful motor in it (1.6kW, I think) which is also quite unusual. I’m planning to try one myself when I have the time/money.
But you are quite right of course - Taiwan has ideal geography and demographics for advanced electric-powered transport. The economic impact (apart from anything else) would be phenomenal. Now, if only we could convince all the politicians to undergo a brain transplant …
Start with promoting electric scooters properly , that would help people get familiar with driving electric vehicles and give electric cars and infrastructure time to mature. There are incentives (or were) for purchasing electric scooters but it seems that Taiwanese are not convinced , probably due to the cheap and reliable options they already have.
I would agree that this would be good promotion to encourage lower city polluting vehicles. Shanghai’s scooters I’m estimating from what I see day to day, must be around 90% electric and although they don’t use them as safely as they could, a big improvement in Taiwan when building new roads, would be to widen them where possible, such as in Shanghai, and provide light scooter/motorcycle lanes, specifically for these vehicles, keeping them away from cars and thus making the roads a little more predictable for everyone. This of course won’t be at all easy in Taiwan sadly, as you can’t easily raze an entire block at a time, in order to improve the infrastructure in one swoop.
One thing I am concerned about with battery technology is the pollution and production side of it however. This has still some way to go too yet.
for sure, batteries are dirty little buggers. and electricity in Taiwan isnt all that clean either.
They were giving away free electric scooters a little while ago her eif you turne din your blue smokers.
We went shopping a while ago, cash in hand, to get 2 electric scooters. But damn, i kid you not the sales people thought we were some kind of spy. we asked far too complicated questions like how far on a charge? how many KWh per charge roughly? all they wanted to tell us is you can go xx km per xx$ which really told us nothing and here we are still driving a gas scooter.
You guys know of a good scooter shop, preferably down south, that have people who actually know something about the things? or have at least browsed the manual?
For me though, the scooters just don’t quite go far enough. the best one was 50km per charge roughly. if i want to go to the nearest city, its 45+. so i wanted to ask them about buying additional batteries so i can swap them out if i run dead while out, the looks i got were priceless. but before i think they are dumb, is that idea dumb? 
and about the cars. i saw them at a car show at taipei 101 maybe 4-6 years ago? they were outside and the size of a March. all cute and pretty for everyone cellphone to get a shot. they had built them, these cars were done and they were telling me they are just getting production taken care of and in a few years they will hit the market. My dumb ass forgot the name of the company though.
I’d be interested in a stripped down cheap electric car that fits in between a scooter and a regular road worthy car. Thats because with kids I need a car but also most of driving is around the city. I would need to own two cars though in this situation and then we would ditch the scooter. But what I an envisioning is a type of souped up scooter that you are not permitted to drive on the highways.
A super electric buggy!
Actually Taichung is well laid out for introducing electric scooters as the roads are pretty wide and straight in many parts. I have seen a lot of electric scooters in Guilin also. I know the commies have started regulating them as most are classified as electric bikes but much more powerful and ridden badly, buts let’s hope the commies don’t make yet another mistake in trying to emulate the West in the wrong way.
that link isnt htem, but i guess the ones i saw most looked like this one: alibaba.com/product/jiangjin … ar_EV.html
similar size and that though.
[quote]I’d be interested in a stripped down cheap electric car that fits in between a scooter and a regular road worthy car. Thats because with kids I need a car but also most of driving is around the city. I would need to own two cars though in this situation and then we would ditch the scooter. But what I an envisioning is a type of souped up scooter that you are not permitted to drive on the highways.
A super electric buggy!
Actually Taichung is well laid out for introducing electric scooters as the roads are pretty wide and straight in many parts. I have seen a lot of electric scooters in Guilin also. I know the commies have started regulating them as most are classified as electric bikes but much more powerful and ridden badly, buts let’s hope the commies don’t make yet another mistake in trying to emulate the West in the wrong way.[/quote]
ya man, thats about how im looking at things as well. We sould keep our car for travel, but want something more than a scooter for around town.
I have seen some of the electric cars being made in China now, and am not sure I would want to risk my life in them. Because of the weight of the batteries, the car is made of super thin tin foil, doors are really thin, side panels thin, etc. Yes, practically speaking, they only go 40 mph or so but trees don’t move at all, and, if you wrapped one around a tree it would probably be left there (with your dead or maimed body in it) as a warning to others or as a Christmas tree ornament, depending on the season. They would not pass the safety laws for either the U.S. or Taiwan, far worse than a Yugo or Xiali made in Tianjin.
Electric cycles work well on flat terrain. I live in Miaoli county so have ruled them out for now. Most electric cycles have a calculated range as opposed to “let’s put a 200 pound foreigner on it riding full throttle and see how far it goes” range. A stated 50 km range will probably yield a 40 km or less range at full throttle, which is how people usually ride them 
If I were to try to ride the average ebike to my school, on the other side of a mountain, I would only get 10-12 km out of a 40-50km battery because of the climb. Also, with the SLA (sealed lead acid) batteries, after a hundred charges or so your maximum range will start to diminish…the batteries are heavy - I had an ebike that would cruise at 20 mph for about 40 miles and it weighed about 150 pounds. 80 pounds was for the battery alone. It might not sound like much until you have an accident and you find the bike falling on you - it happened to me 
FWIT, the most useful ebikes I have seen (in terms of range and speed, without spending your life savings) are bicycle conversions with some kind of lithium batteries. You can buy a kit that contains a real wheel with motor mounted, the controller, battery, etc and swap the parts out in less than a couple of hours. The advantage to these is that you can also pedal, as you would a normal bicycle, run on human power only, pedal assisted mode, or completely electric. They don’t have the storage that you get with a scooter but you can always buy saddlebags,etc to make it work. Some kind of Lithium-ion battery is a must to reduce weight and improve range and lifecycle. They are expensive up front, but if you calculate the per charge and per mile cost they can actually be cheaper than a sealed lead acide battery. They usually will outlast 3 sets of SLA batteries, and each charge will usually take you 50% farther, given the same battery parameters.
I’d agree with pengyou’s post. There are ebikes and there are ebikes … or, more specifically, there are ebikes made in China, and there are the others. Likewise with cars, of course.
However … “some kind of” lithium battery is often no better than SLA. They’re usually consumer-grade lithium-manganese or lithium-cobalt types, which degrade noticeably after 200 charges or so. I think I mentioned elsewhere the E-Moving bike, which is the only one I’ve seen that uses lithium iron phosphate and has a proper, chunky motor in it instead of a 300-500W waste of space. SLA’s are also much more frequently recycled than lithium types.
As for lack of grunt … bike manufacturers have painted themselves into a corner by insisting on low-voltage motors, which means you’re restricted to low power levels unless you use ridiculously expensive power components and huge cables. A respectable DC bus voltage would be >200V. In theory an electric scooter should have loads more torque, especially at the low end, compared to a petrol engine, so climbing hills shouldn’t be a problem. In theory. It’s just pure bad design that produces the travesties currently on the market.
Yes, the motors have lots of torque to climb hills…but the batteries will not keep up with them. Most of the bikes sold in China have poor quality motors, whether 300 watts, 600 watts, etc because the laws say no faster than about 20 mph. My bike had a 500 watt, 48 v motor and yet my bike easy only slightly faster than a 250 watt, 36 volt bike…go figure! Since lithium iron, etc have become popular, a lot of manufactureres try to skimp on the concentrations of chemicals in the electrolyte. They still may be true lithium iron (or whatever) but weaker concentrations, so yes, they do not have the miles or number of recharges that a quality lithium battery will have. There are also ways to skimp making batteries so that they do not recharge as well (though I don’t understand how)…it is amazing how competent companies are at finding ways to cut corners and make a piece of trash that looks good in the shop but doesn’t do much when it is rolled out the door! 48 volts is too low, but 72 volts, a far cry from 200, makes a very respectable power source for a motorcycle. Beyond that and you need to buy a hecka long extension cord to keep the motor juiced up.
Indeed. I get the feeling that the problem - as usual with stuff like this - is government subsidy. Established manufacturers who have greased the right palms can effectively get free money from the government for selling something that looks vaguely like an electric scooter, but is in fact a pile of useless scrap metal and electronics which will be at the bottom of a landfill heap within 12 months. Worse, the government does not have any real standards for petrol-engined scooters, and doesn’t enforce the ones that do exist. So petrol scooters are much cheaper than they ought to be. And then there’s the problem of charging points, which have been talked about for the last five years or so but still haven’t materialized.
The upshot is that very few people are attempting to design top-notch electric scooters, because there is no economic incentive to do so.
Yes, 72V is not too bad, but that still limits you to (roughly) 1000W motor power if you want to keep the cost of the power electronics reasonable. The charging (mains supply) voltage is unrelated to the DC bus voltage. If the required charging voltage is higher than the mains supply, the charger simply incorporates a boost converter. You have to have a switcher on the front-end anyway; it doesn’t make any difference to the cost whether it’s a boost or a buck. 115VAC would charge a battery pack with a nominal terminal voltage of 150V, without boost.
Ford was nearing bankruptcy when it turned itself around in 2006. The car maker responded to wishes for additional fuel-efficient vehicles, and that has become the focal point of its climb back to success. Now, Ford will now be dedicating its red-brick 285,000 square foot research facilities in Dearborn, Mich., to developing more affordable fuel-saving technologies. Ford zooms to the lead in fuel economy.
Always thought it was a pity there wasn’t some way one could use the starter motor independently of the engine, for inching along in traffic jams.
Seems like it’d be a fairly trivial modification, though idiot-proofing it to stop people stranding themselves with a flat battery/burned-out starter might be tricky.
[quote=“Ducked”]Always thought it was a pity there wasn’t some way one could use the starter motor independently of the engine, for inching along in traffic jams.
Seems like it’d be a fairly trivial modification, though idiot-proofing it to stop people stranding themselves with a flat battery/burned-out starter might be tricky.[/quote]
The starter motors, wiring, and batteries which are presently fitted the the majority of road cars are not up to the task of actually providing enough power, to propel a vehicle. The starter motor itself cannot handle enough current for an extended period, and isn’t fitted with the correct type of gearing to perform such a task. The flywheel is also only designed to handle, basic starting requirements. Most automatic gearbox designs can’t transmit torque, through such a low cranking rev range to the wheels.
It is sometimes possible to get a manual car going, from stationary, whilst in gear through the starter motor, but it causes severe wear and tear to the electrical and mechanical starting system, and can only be used as an emergency method, if for example the clutch mechanism fails and the clutch becomes permanently engaged.
There are plenty of stop/start systems on modern cars, which kill the engine at the lights to conserve fuel.
A system which actually powers the wheels and relies on electrical power only though is a dramatically different type of system, and is generally only found on hybrids and electric vehicles.
These various technologies are all quite different, and so it isn’t quite as simple as hooking a starter motor up to a stop-start electrical signal, and expecting this to work well. It won’t work well at all I’m afraid.
At some point in the future however, as electrical vehicles become more cost effective, more common, and more convenient to use, we might see the present old tech systems begin to diminish in popularity. That is, unless there becomes a more effective, easy to fit HHO system, which can be installed on present old tech cars. This latter system is the one which is sparking the greatest interest from shed-inventors right now.
There are a number of mega hub motors out there that would power almost anything on the road - some 10K watts each. There are some kits that come with an entirely new wheel with the hub motor installed in it, including regenerative braking. That is one of the easiest conversions I have seen. The down side of that is that without a transmission, power powerful (and heavy) motors have to be purchased than would be necessary with some kind of transmission. There is a performance car - I think it is a Porsche - that comes with one mega hub motor in each wheel…so people are looking into this option. Each motor puts out a ridiculous amount of horsepower, like 400 hp each.