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Has anybody Heard of this?


DeadFly

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It looks like we may have the privilege to witness the future of future transportation right now. GIven the video evidence, we can at least be confident that it is no vaporware. If the specs are close to the promises, that is a big quantum leap (and I stand corrected).

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On 14/09/2017 at 3:59 AM, DeadFly said:

 

I am irritated by the arm movements at around 3 seconds. If the wheel has plenty of power and the rider confidence in it, I don't understand why he would do these arm movements to release weight when going up this little ramp.

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4 hours ago, Asylsteirer said:

Why should it not be possible to charge with 3 KW via one phase, if you put the wheel in a refrigerator ? :)

All the numbers in the spec for this wheel do not seem to be adding up with what we know about current technology. If it REALLY is pushing the boundaries then I really applaud it, it sounds wonderful absolute brilliant, in fact too good to be true ?

 It is the charger that would need to go in the refrigerator- not the wheel, LiPo and LiIon batteries do not get really hot charging unless really pushed.

3KW is 12.5 Amps at 240 volts (27 Amps on a 110v supply) so yes it is every bit as possible to plug in a 3KW charger as it is a 3KW kettle or electric fire but it would be a damn good idea to have a dedicated spur for it, not just a standard 13 Amp socket!

It is more the 1600Wh in a wheel with a total weight of 9Kg I'm having trouble with. Current power densities are pretty much around the point we have with say a 3500mAh,18650 cell from someone like LG. They weigh around 50 grams each and are 3.5Ah x 3.6V = 12.6Wh. To get 1600Wh out of them requires 1600/12.6 = 127 cells, total weight 127x50grams = 6350g or 14lb just for the batteries. leaving 2.65Kg for a stinking great 4000W continuous motor and everything else. So this has got to have significantly lighter batteries than this which would be a huge leap forward in themselves. 

Then we come to a 4000W continuous, 8000W peak motor. On even 20 cells that would be 55 Amps sustained, 110Amps peak. Go up to 40 cells and a, getting on for lethal, 168 Volts D.C. and those figures would halve but a 1600 Wh battery then becomes 40 off 11 Amp hour cells or 20 off 22 Amp hour cells running in either case at 2.5C continuous and 5C peak. Again all numbers that are the right side of possible (just)

It is then running something like 55 Amps continuous 110 Amps peak through the motor in a 12" wheel that then gets worrying. Having a low enough kV to actually have any torque means lots of turns of wire, carrying 55 Amps continuous means damn great big thick wires, the two become mutually exclusive in a space the size of a 12" wheel's motor. Doubling the voltage would halve that current but would also need twice as many winds on the motor to also halve the  kV so the problem doesn't really get any easier by doing that as far as I can see?

As I say, I'm every bit as keen as the next person to see this sort of breakthrough actually happen. I'll be the first to applaud it when it does, but boy is it pushing the boundaries of what we can currently do - and then some ?.

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17 minutes ago, Keith said:

It is more the 1600Wh in a wheel with a total weight of 9Kg I'm having trouble with.

I was also wondering, but the specification is 9-12kg. So I guess 9kg is for a 800Wh version of the wheel and 12kg for 1600Wh, which leaves almost 6kg for everything else than the battery, which may be on the edge but doable. IIRC, the Solowheel orbit was specified with 7kg, the IPS i5 weighs 8kg, so it wouldn't even beat the lightest wheel on the market, but of course with otherwise incomparable specs.

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I'll believe it when I see it in someone else's video. 

 

ETA - I will say this  to the doubters in here, you better study up on his design process and be ready to eat your words, because this guy is on another level when it comes to space aged futuristic solutions available now. 

"Core of my skill is an internal process of 3d problem solving where I create the shapes my mind before I 3d model them." more info here: http://portfolioaustinmarhold.weebly.com/

 

While all these other behind the times Uni companies in China are wasting time testing components and drawing designs, Austin has ushered in a brave new future where shapes can be imagined in the head rather than harvested from Shape-Trees as people have done since antiquity. You can't fight innovation like this, so I think it's safe to say that we are all strapped in tight for Austin's wild ride. 

 

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7 hours ago, Asylsteirer said:

When I plugin a Tesla model S at home, it charges with 11 KW (via 3 phases on a red IEC60309 plug, 32 Amp circuit breaker), no supercharger necessary.

Why should it not be possible to charge with 3 KW via one phase, if you put the wheel in a refrigerator ? :)

Sure, battery technology is a question and must be quite different :), but from a charging point of view it would not be a problem, if you keep your children away.

A typical household circut is 15A, 110-120V you are going to get typically about 1680 watts on a isolated cuircuit 1800 max that would fail in many households. 

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7 hours ago, Asylsteirer said:

When I plugin a Tesla model S at home, it charges with 11 KW (via 3 phases on a red IEC60309 plug, 32 Amp circuit breaker), no supercharger necessary.

Why should it not be possible to charge with 3 KW via one phase, if you put the wheel in a refrigerator ? :)

Sure, battery technology is a question and must be quite different :), but from a charging point of view it would not be a problem, if you keep your children away.

That does NOT work if you only have 1600wh...what is about 120 cells!

charging them at 2800Watt is WAY over the specs and does damage to the cells....

a Tesla has about 60.000-100.000wh.....that's a bit of a difference loading THAT with a high amp/watts ;-)

 

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I want to believe.

But I don't.

Too many pretty much unphysical bullshit numbers:efeed51798:

Yes, there seems to be a working prototype (which does not prove the important parts, like custom motor and the specs), but everything else sounds like the typical promise-the-sky-and-then-vaporware shtick/gullible investor or kickstarter fleecing/wait-that-guy-actually-believes-he-can-do-this overestimation of one's capabilities. May I be proven wrong on this, but it would need a lot more before that Kickstarter would see any of my money.

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Assuming those triangular modules are battery packs, I wonder if he has some sort of smart circuit setup that breaks the 1600Wh down to say 400 Wh packs to charge them in parallel as if you had four separate battery packs and four fast chargers working on them?  I'm no batteryologist so I don't know if that's possible?  I remember seeing some GT16's and I think a prototype Gotway that had two charger ports on the wheel to reduce charging times.  I've always wondered why this isn't standard as having two fast chargers going could shorten the time waiting for the batteries to get juiced up on these larger capacity wheels.  Maybe Austin has a four fast charger system that can tackle the battery packs separately?

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All individual cells must be at the same voltage, the battery pack configuration does not matter for this. It's just a bunch of cells (the entire capacity) in a wheel, and charging always charges all of them equally.

Those multiple charging ports always charge all battery packs (no matter if you only use one or multiple ports), they are just there to circumvent the current limit on the charge port wires because otherwise the wires melt (Gotway quality;)).

So you can add multiple ports (all necessarily charging the entire battery assembly) and tons of chargers, or just better wires and one really fat charger, but the real problem is with the discharge side (aka using the wheel, motor power) where the numbers are simply unrealistic (and that's an understatement) if you look at @Keith's post.

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6 hours ago, kasenutty said:

You can't fight innovation like this, so I think it's safe to say that we are all strapped in tight for Austin's wild ride. 

Naturally we all wish him the best and hope to enjoy the wild ride to come. Experiences like that of Uniwheel unfortunately tend to reduce my expectations.

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I appreciate the narrow shape and foot stand - that offers more sideways lean and maneuverability. 

Improved motor, controller board, and control firmware? Each of which quite a challenging project. Doesn't sound overly realistic.

But I like the enthusiasm and the driving skills of this guy.

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10 hours ago, KingSong69 said:

That does NOT work if you only have 1600wh...what is about 120 cells!

charging them at 2800Watt is WAY over the specs and does damage to the cells....

Guys, KS69, Hunka, Meep, Linus Torvalds and so on, I See you need a lot more trust !

Maybe he has access to THE New Battery Technology,  where you don't know the specs. At some time in the future all our dreams will come true. -_-

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1 hour ago, Asylsteirer said:

Guys, KS69, Hunka, Meep, Linus Torvalds and so on, I See you need a lot more trust !

Maybe he has access to THE New Battery Technology,  where you don't know the specs. At some time in the future all our dreams will come true. -_-

Yeh, it is possible, the new 21700 cell was what popped into my mind when reading this but I'm not even sure that meets the weight and power statements for this wheel? https://electrek.co/2017/01/09/samsung-2170-battery-cell-tesla-panasonic/

 

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7 hours ago, MaxLinux said:

Sadly, Uniwheel proved that videos do not necessarily mean a real product.

Yes, unfortunately that was the other picture that popped into my head as well, along with: "If the product is as far developed as the videos are showing why is kickstarter needed?"

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Kickstarters are often the proof-of-public-interest that gets investors on board. So it can make sense to do one.

The real question is, would people support the Kickstarter with only a lot of bullshit (-sounding;)) claims and only a working prototype that (theoretically) could be an mten motor or so and a generic board in a custom shell (aka nothing special)?

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11 hours ago, MaxLinux said:

Sadly, Uniwheel proved that videos do not necessarily mean a real product.

It proved that not every prototype does make it into a product to be sold. That wasn't really news though.

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4 hours ago, Keith said:

Yes, unfortunately that was the other picture that popped into my head as well, along with: "If the product is as far developed as the videos are showing why is kickstarter needed?"

To finance mass production, where "mass" could mean a few hundred or a few thousand?

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5 hours ago, Keith said:

Yes, unfortunately that was the other picture that popped into my head as well, along with: "If the product is as far developed as the videos are showing why is kickstarter needed?"

Kickstarter is needed because he's probably poor or isn't very well networked. Otherwise he would be able to access enough money to start making these himself. In his defense he's a young guy, so I wouldn't expect him to have much money.

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4 hours ago, meepmeepmayer said:

The real question is, would people support the Kickstarter with only a lot of bullshit (-sounding;)) claims

Easy: before joining this forum you could also tell me anything you wanted about euc specs. Battery size, charge time, engine power. If you don't have a clue you don't know where the problems/limits are. 

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I guess there's just a few pieces of the puzzle missing here.  We got a cool website, specifications, some videos, concept renderings, and word of mouth, but if someone is expecting hundreds of thousands or millions in investment money, people need to see credentials.  Take for example this guy, Shane Colton:

http://scolton.blogspot.ca/

He's got some papers he's written, specific projects he's worked on with the nth degree of detail, lots of evidence that he knows his stuff mathematically and from an engineering standpoint.  There is a thesis paper for his degree at MIT.

When it comes down to getting a bank loan to garnering venture capitalist interest, you need to show your goods and have some tangible proof of concept evidence more than just a couple of videos to get that rubber stamp of approval.  If I asked 100 people who they would invest $5 million dollars with whether it be Shane or Austin just going by a website of information, who do you think they would tend to put their money towards?  

http://portfolioaustinmarhold.weebly.com/

Don't get me wrong - Austin may be the EUC designer savant we all are looking for, but to get solid backing in the numbers realistically needed to make this wheel a reality I think you need more than a couple of rider videos, a prototype and 3D renderings.  I believe it is probably possible to do this without giving too many secrets away?  Is there a supplemental team of hardware and software engineers, control board and motor designers, business and legal advisors we're not seeing perhaps? 

 

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@Hunka Hunka Burning Love it seems you forgot about crowdfunding. No credentials are needed there and you even don't need to pay it back. No credit, no credentials, just free money for an idea which appears to be cool. 

On the other side, if I were to spent a few 100k, I would certainly require more information, but I maybe wouldn't want this information to be available in this forum. 

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