Category Archives: Energy

Energy, Food, History, Security

Armies Around the World Testing Electric Bikes (Yet Again)

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A nod to military bike history can be found in a new article about the British military called “Charge of the light brigade: Army Parachute Regiment trial electric bikes”

Eighty years ago, wartime necessitated the introduction of the Royal Enfield WD/RE ‘Flying Flea’ and the Welbike, which were parachuted into occupied Europe, providing a means for airborne and assault troops to transmit messages. […] “Motorcycles have been in military use ever since they were invented. So, what we’re doing is nothing new – what’s new is the electrification side of it and the opportunities that presents…they can be used in a way where a petrol engine would just give your position away.”

Electric bikes have many obvious advantages, already getting a lot of attention from special forces in America: given low sound and heat profiles they are much safer, faster, lighter and easier to maneuver than liquid fuel bikes, not to mention an easier and safer supply chain.

What’s not to like about electric bikes?

Even more broadly, the bike in most cases is a far better tool for modern military application than any automobile including trucks. It’s not really any kind of news or secret.

Without a Motorcycle in Kandahar, ‘You Are Like a Prisoner’. A foreshadowing of how the Afghan war would be won and lost by distributed / localization networks, hit & run tactics, and terrain advantages.

See also:

In terms of the US Army, consider how they rode mountain-bike field tests way back in 1896, as I’ve written here before, so the Ogden Bolton electric bike from 1895 might be a better “nothing new” reference than a smelly, greasy 1939 Royal Enfield.

Source: ElectricBike

Speaking of references, in 1991 there was even a book published that detailed a century of bikes used in war. It’s kind of amazing to think how many better references there may be versus that WWII Enfield.

Swiss book that gets far less attention than it should

In WWI soldiers allegedly even were pulling heavy gear into battle using bicycles as if some kind of direct replacement for horse power. You’d think electricity would be on their mind.

Source: Leeds Bikes

Journalists in 1914 indeed mention that a bike has a major advantage because it can be dropped flat to the ground and completely hidden from enemy fire, which seems an odd point to make today yet it was an innovation in military thinking at the time.

Being completely hidden, of course, is again why the electric motor signature has been so compelling for 100 years versus oil burners.

And from there, the 1938 McDonald seems even more relevant, especially because by this time Japan was using bicycles in major offensive campaigns (1937 invasion of China).

Source: ElectricBike

Given the superiority of electric, it’s a wonder anyone bothered with gasoline bikes at all.

It seems all too easy to find evidence of electric bikes in military projects throughout history that are far more relevant to today’s British paratrooper than an Enfield of WWII. Here’s a good one:

In 1997, [US Government was] seeking a way to move military troops and equipment without the heat or noise signatures of a combustion engine and due to Montague’s experience in the field, they won the grant to develop the Tactical Electric No Signature (TENS) Mountain Bike. Montague worked closely with Currie Technologies on their earliest electric systems to equip these military models with the best electric motor technology of the time. Currie is still making electric drive systems used on many e-bikes today.

US military Tactical Electric No Signature (TENS) Mountain Bike. Source: Montague bikes

Someone in the US military surely thought TENS would be an hilarious acronym for an 18-speed electric bicycle.

So what really is new? The oil industry seems to be losing its death grip. In retrospect, bikes never should have been anything but electric this whole time.

I mean I know it’s fashionable to say electric bikes have short range, have trouble keeping a charge in extreme weather… but let’s be honest about such nonsense.

You can’t pull gasoline out of thin air or water like you can electricity. Even diesel has potential to be created from local sources that gasoline clearly does not. I’ve always found electricity available in even the most remote locations, places oil was nowhere to be found.

In fact, WWII motorcyclists reminisce about their leaky and wasteful fuel cans, which could never serve modern operations.

“We had flimsy cans of petrol, so you cut them in half, pierced it with a lot of holes, three-quarter fill it with earth, pour petrol and put a match on it and it would burn for a long while. That’s how we used to brew up [tea] while we’re on the road!”

With an electric bike he would have just heated water using a simple pad or pole plugged into the battery, having none of the signature/footprint issues of a setting that petrol can on fire.

Energy, Food, History, Security

The 1947 Electric Car That Even Today Looks Modern: Nissan Tama

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I’ve mentioned on this blog before the 1947 Nissan Tama.

It has several important historical characteristics that make it look like something very modern even today.

  • Designed for the switch to a peacetime economy
  • Designed by 200 Tachikawa Aircraft employees
  • Extreme shortage of gasoline
  • Top speed of 35 km/h (22 mph) and a cruising range of 65 km (40 miles) on a single charge
  • Passenger car and truck models
  • Battery compartment in the cabin floor, with two “bomb bay” doors on either side
  • Battery cases on rollers so used batteries could be quickly exchanged with fresh ones

I bring it up again as people lately have been saying they wish they had a quick way to replace their electric car batteries instead of using a gasoline-pump like attachment for slow (complicated and dangerous) charging.

That is what Tama offered in its “bomb bay” like doors and energy swap cases:

Tama power swap used cases of batteries on rollers

Well I guess that means look at 1947 for the answers from war-time aircraft engineers who understood the significance of rapid replacement, refuel turnaround and similar efficiencies.

Of course it wouldn’t happen today for cars without someone over-hyping automation. The Japanese in fact tried outsourcing battery swap to a 2009 Silicon Valley startup, but it arguably died due to massive fraud (*cough* Tesla *cough*) polluting the market.

The Japanese Ministry of Environment has invited Better Place to build a battery exchange station in Japan and engage with the country’s carmakers.

The Chinese notably refer to the brilliant 1940s Japanese model of drive-through EV battery-swapping as being “killed by Tesla years ago”.

That makes it even more tempting to get excited by a Taiwanese company GoGoro as they have slick marketing calling their products “reimagined”.

It’s basically the most distributed and modern take yet on what came so long before the ill-conceived centralized (and often fraudulent — Tesla chargers were dirty diesel engines) “plug-in” market that’s slow, dangerous and bad for batteries.

Source: GoGoro

We’re essentially going back to the beginning, which is good for modern electric vehicles. What would a Tama look like today? Here’s the latest Nissan concept.

Nissan “Hang Out” concept EV, which could be mistaken for having 1947-era battery swap doors.

The most exciting thing about Japanese innovation in stop-and-swap transit models is that any home anywhere could be a supplier. It’s much more attractive and sensible to have someone grab a power pack to go than to hook up to any charger.

If I really think outside the box, literally, then the Nissan car full of batteries can be the swappable battery for a house (like Russian nesting doll batteries). Roll your battery tray into the car and power your car off plugin. Then roll the battery car into the garage and power your house off grid.

Fun fact, since 2013 the Nissan LEAF was engineered to send power (Bidirectional EV as specified in UL 9741), like a giant house battery on wheels.

And even that model goes back centuries.

Imagine hanging a small sign outside your home that says “power cell available”, like the hanging red lamp of the Japanese Izakaya.

…many opted to simply make rice at home and purchase side dishes from outside vendors called niuriya (“simmered foods shops.”).  Around the year 1750, “seated sake shops” and “simmered foods shops” combined into a new business model, the “simmered foods seated sake shop” (niuri izakaya). The cumbersome term would soon be shortened to “izakaya.”

That’s a hint at the universal services and interoperability/pluggable sharing markets that have led everyone for centuries towards putting trust in any modern transport (car), storage (hotel), or processing (restaurant).

Interesting to historians may be how battery replacement goes back even further to an ancient system of caravanserais spaced 20 miles apart on Persian highways, where a tired horse or camel could be quickly refueled or exchanged with a fresh one.

…Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa would have been much more difficult if not for the caravanserais… centers for the exchange of goods and culture…

Thinking of transit engineering problems as new just because some minor aspect of it is new, prevents us from seeing the millennia of knowledge right in front of our eyes. And on that note, information security concepts all are basically derived from transit technology safety practices (transport, store, process).

Energy, History, Security

New Special Forces eBikes are Really Just Motorcycles

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Special Forces are orienting around the amazing performance characteristics of light bicycles with electric motors — motor-cycles, also known as eBikes.

One of the curious problems with gasoline motorcycles is they grew too big and unwieldy at several hundred pounds, not to mention they ran on gasoline (not ideal for a military running on diesel). And since light-weight diesel motorcycles (as I wrote about here 15 years ago) never really seemed to take off, electric makes perfect sense.

Now iNews claims an exclusive story by reporting that Colorado is supplying commercial-sector mountain bicycles with electric motors to the military for testing.

In a reverse of the convention of defence technology finding its way to the civilian market, the vogue for military bicycles follows the global boom in e-bikes used by commuters and leisure cyclists. The value of the this market is predicted to reach £34bn by 2026.

But the new breed of special forces bike is a different beast.

With five-inch-wide tyres more likely to be found on a motorbike, a range of nearly 60 miles and silent 1,000w motors, the Jeep/QuietKat bike, made in Colorado, has been tailored for the needs of cycling special forces.

There are multiple problems with this story, although I have to commend it for making history front and center to the narrative.

First, it’s not a one-way convention. The civilian market also has a convention of making its way into defense technology. Special Forces often pull civilian companies like Patagonia, North Face, and Arcteryx into their equipment kits (as I’ve written about here before).

Second, the boom in e-bikes has been very pronounced in mountain bike racing, where training now is pedal-assist power to improve range in order to improve handling. In other words if you ride a technical pump track 50 times on an electric motor for training, then you likely get 40 times more experience in a session to prepare for non-electric racing than if you didn’t have the motor.

In other words, the “new breed of special forces bike” is NOT different from civilian bikes. A range of 60 miles on silent 1,000w motors is par for course, as well as extra fat tires commonly used for snow and sand trails.

Here’s a typical tweet from me in 2015.

Source: Twitter

And here’s another tweet from me in 2016.

Source: Twitter. Click to enlarge.

Third, the history in this story has a GIANT gaping omission. This is not fair retelling.

Ever since the advent of the mass-produced bicycle in the late 1800s, armies have looked to harness the potential of soldiers on two wheels.

By the end of the 19th century most European militaries had formed bicycle units to replace horses for the delivery of messages and scouting and surveillance missions.

During the First World War, the British Army had two Cyclist Divisions, largely devoted to home guard duties. Prior to the war becoming bogged down in trenches, all sides sought to use fast-moving cyclist units, with the Belgian military using early folding bikes.

However, it was the Japanese who became most closely identified with the mass deployment of cycling soldiers. When Tokyo invaded China in 1937, it did so with a 50,000-strong “bicycle infantry”.

The ability to rapidly move large numbers of troops through jungle terrain without motorised transport proved vital to Japan’s early victories in the Second World War. During the invasion of Malaya in 1941, Japan was able to repeatedly outflank and overrun a retreating British Army by using bicycles along minor routes, ultimately resulting in the humiliating loss of Singapore.

During the Vietnam War the Viet Cong used bicycles to ferry supplies along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

The Swiss Army maintained its Bicycle Regiment until 2001.

That covers a few bases, obviously (no pun intended). What is missing? Lots. In fact by the late 1800s Black Americans in the US Army invented mountain biking. The Buffalo Soldiers deserve credit, as I’ve written about here before, for riding bikes from the Rocky Mountains all the way to Missouri.

A story about mountain bikes being developed in the Rocky Mountains for military use, which makes no mention of 1896 bikes in the Rocky Mountains for military use… begs the question why leave out the most obvious comparison of all?

And the article claims the Japanese “became most closely identified with mass deployment of cycling soldiers” in 1937, based on a usual retelling about bicycles of WWI being primarily messengers and home guard.

Bicycles were lighter, quieter and logistically easier to manage than horses making them ideal for reconnaissance and communications work and had first been used in this way during the Second Boer War (1899-1902). The Haldane Reforms of 1908 reorganised the Volunteers, Yeomanry and the Militia Regiments into a Territorial Force following the Territorial and Reserve Forces Act 1907. As part of this nine initial Cyclist Battalions were formed… on the eve of the First World War, the Territorial Force had a strength of fourteen cyclist battalions.

Yet historians also make note of two-wheeled soldiers being in WWI fighting units, as I will write about more in a future post; for example, in the Canadian archives:

May 1916, the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Canadian Divisional Cyclist Companies were amalgamated to form the Canadian Corps Cyclist Battalion. The newly formed Canadian Corps Cyclist Battalion began performing tunneling duties and operating rail lines, with their most famous tunnels being those near Neuville-Saint-Vaast. Integral to the assault on Vimy ridge in April 1917, the Battalion came together for the first time as a proper fighting force.

Also, as I suggested at the start, a bicycle with a motor is in fact a motorcycle so this history really should include motorcycles when considering usage and modifications to carry heavy loads.

Just look at how comfort for passengers has evolved over time, for example.

Energy, History, Security

As Legged Mobility Improves Efficiency, Automobiles Look Toxic to Environment

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An oft-cited reason to stop riding horses in cities was their prodigious output of excrement as a by-product, not to mention disposal of dead and rotting horse carcasses.

Source: Project MUSE

Both of these could have been easily solved problems (Golden Gate Park owes its lush environment to train carloads of manure being dumped on sandy dunes — fertilizer being in high demand for urban better quality of life).

Though no reliable estimate of the amount of horse-excrement collected for park fertilizer exists, the total undoubtedly ran into tens, even hundreds of thousands of tons.

Instead the legged mobility of horses was scrapped in favor of augmentation (legs pushing wheels) with bicycles. A cost model being so much better meant it was more equitable transit, and this opened up markets to more people working in more places… bicycles were en route to a greater future.

Then the “wheelmen” got a bright idea of putting paved roads everywhere to ease legwork (again a problem to be better solved, probably by improving bicycle technology instead) and suddenly giant automated carriages (cars) started taking over and demanding both legged and augmented legs get off the roads.

But instead of composting natural manure and carcasses, automobiles spread toxic disease-inducing chemicals and piles of dangerous waste.

Today we’re back to asking if legs can perform long distance travel, perhaps making the obvious point that cars were a bad idea from the start.

Instead of dumping manure after eating loads of grass, however, these legs drain an unbelievable amount of robotic electricity (which could end up as emissions if we’re not careful).

As energy cost comes down through engineering (like how manure could have been engineered into fertilizer, from a cost to a profit) legs may return as the obvious better way of transit by removing any requirements for nasty roads.

Running 60 miles to work on beaches, through a forest and over mountains sounds a LOT better than sitting in a boring stuffed cage on a boring flat road full of other boring boxes. Here’s a video showing some progress towards that augmented future.