How long before we have an electric Rocky Mountain King?

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We built a hybrid-electric snowmobile for Jackson in 2017. It showed some promise but we just weren't the right guys to take it all the way. Everyone with that capability is already justifiably swamped working toward full electric vehicles.

I think there is a ton of electric vehicles we will see in the next five years in the market place. Volkswagen and audi will be the leaders and will dwarf Tesla very quickly. Alta motorcycles makes some pretty amazing electric dirt bikes. The only drawback is battery life. Nikola all electric utv’s, how about a utv with 590 hp and over 700 ft lbs of torque. Drawback is weight, the high end model with over 500hp weighs close to 3000lbs, that’s pretty dam heavy for a utv. Kikola is also working on a personal water craft all electric.
I think we will see all electric sleds in the near future. Probably will start out as trail sleds and when weight and battery life are better we will see a mountain sled.

I hate to be the pessimist here, but I don't think we'll ever see all electric/coal burning sleds on a grand scale. The power density of gas is 500 times that of lead-acid batteries and 100 times more than the best lithium batteries. Yes, electric is more efficient, but only by about a factor of 5. Sled weight is so critical that by the time they might get the battery power density even close to gas, we'll likely have discovered something completely different.

Gasoline is just an amazing fuel and, for all we know, it appears we'll never run out. Let's stick with that power source and figure out ways to really boost the power to weight ratio and optimize the efficiency and torque.

tuneman said:

figure out ways to really boost the power to weight ratio and optimize the efficiency and torque.

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Alpha Cat! Hahahahaha........

tuneman said:

I hate to be the pessimist here, but I don't think we'll ever see all electric/coal burning sleds on a grand scale. The power density of gas is 500 times that of lead-acid batteries and 100 times more than the best lithium batteries. Yes, electric is more efficient, but only by about a factor of 5. Sled weight is so critical that by the time they might get the battery power density even close to gas, we'll likely have discovered something completely different.

Gasoline is just an amazing fuel and, for all we know, it appears we'll never run out. Let's stick with that power source and figure out ways to really boost the power to weight ratio and optimize the efficiency and torque.

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You are correct and that is why I mentioned the fuel cell. Maybe we need to store the energy in a fuel but convert it to electricity for the torque and less moving parts.

Prayn4snow said:

There are some very good points on here. Yes battery technology has advanced very quickly in the public world. Before I retired from the military, they were using some pretty cool tech long before it hit the consumer market. One of my friends just retired from the battery world (ex military). He helped design batteries for future cruise missiles, torpedos, and other stuff he couldn't talk about. He said "10 years" and you will be amazed where we (consumers) could be.
He said the other thing a battery powered sled could have a "very small" light weight inverter gas powered generator with a 1 gal gas tank that could keep a charge on it while riding, resting (lunch), getting cats and Doo's unstuck and would keep the battery pack warm.
Time will tell.
DC motors power trains carrying iron ore pellets here in the U.P. Crazy how much power they can make.
Something about a 2 stroke though....

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Just read this about the "other" brands design team (10-15 years):
Matt Tandrup, Director of Design for Ski-Doo and Can-Am ORV. He is tasked with overseeing the future of Ski-Doo snowmobile design, as he explains both in the short and long term.

“The future is right here,” said Tandrup upon welcoming Jenkins inside, “We work in two different frames of mind around here. There’s product that’s 3-5 years away, and there’s other product we’re working on that are more like 10-15 years away.

It's been discussed how the technology for this is coming. Look how far the electric products have come in just the past few years. Electric cars could only go 100 miles, now their range is up to 300 miles. So, it's not hard to believe that an electric mountain sled will eventually be made that can go out all day long. The weak link has always been the battery. With Tesla building Mega battery manufacturing plants here, and in China, I'm sure rapid progress will be made in battery technology. There is definite momentum in the electric product movement. Cars, motorcycles, tools, etc. First came electric lawn trimmers, then walk-behind mowers, now electric lawn tractors. I talked with a snowmobile guy about a month ago. His opinion is that "electrics are coming, and they will assuredly take over". Great topic, Mountainhorse! Great input from everyone!

I think they are coming for sure. Take over? Not for a couple of decades I would bet. Lots of us raised on internal combustion do not care much for electrics no matter how good they get. The sound and fury of petrol being burned is a big part of the allure for many of us. My V8 Raptor is more entertaining to drive than a Tesla if for nothing else than the song it sings when you are on the pedal. Same with a sled. What is the first mod most sledders make? Lighter louder exhaust. Electrics can not compete with this. The next generation may embrace quiet smooth and powerful but I doubt most of mine will.

The future is coming (duh!). How long before it can compete, no clue. But I am on board With how fast Things have progressed and we will be impressed over and over.

However long Our fossil fuel rsources last, the energy race is on, and great Things will come. New super light, super strong materials combined With 3D printing will di Wonders to weight of vehicles.

On a e-sled you will also do without coolant, cooling system, waterpump, oil+oiltank, chaincase (believe it could be just a "drum-motor" With drivers on the outside in the tunnel), clutches, shafts and probably more.

My Axe With Electric s charge time. I have wondered if they could agree on a battey design (size/shape) and instead of charging it in the vehicle, you take it out and replace it. With cars it could be done at "gas-stations", With an Automatic system collecting Your battety from underneath the vehicle and stuffing in a New one. Practical issues, i know, and not really helping way up in the Mountains.

But anything to get Things started. Then the market will propel Things forward.

Some thoughts.

Norway said:

However long Our fossil fuel rsources last, the energy race is on, and great Things will come. New super light, super strong materials combined With 3D printing will di Wonders to weight of vehicles.


But anything to get Things started. Then the market will propel Things forward.

Some thoughts.

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Ummmm, you are not saving fossil fuels by generating electricity. Over 85% of the worlds electricity is generated by burning gas, oil and coal. If we run out of fossil fuels we will also be out of electricity. It takes 2 tons of coal to fuel one electric car for a year on average. Electricity is anything but the clean resource it is purported to be. It is a MORE efficient use of fossil fuels to just burn them directly in the current internal combustion engines than it is to use them to create electricity.


If electricity is the future, the future is based on lies...

Big10inch said:

Ummmm, you are not saving fossil fuels by generating electricity. Over 85% of the worlds electricity is generated by burning gas, oil and coal. If we run out of fossil fuels we will also be out of electricity. It takes 2 tons of coal to fuel one electric car for a year on average. Electricity is anything but the clean resource it is purported to be. It is a MORE efficient use of fossil fuels to just burn them directly in the current internal combustion engines than it is to use them to create electricity.


If electricity is the future, the future is based on lies...

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Well, however we get Our electricity… Fossil fuels take millions of years to produce, and from what I read we've already seen peak oil Production.
Wind/solar/waterfall and/or whatever WILL have to take over, but that is for another discussion. Good Points tho.

It'd be interesting to see what an all-out effort at an electric, or hybrid sled, would produce with current technology. I'd be surprised if the major manufacturers haven't experimented, but I'd bet they've either concluded there's simply no market, or that it's too small to be worth it. You could probably make a sled matching or even beating the performance of current sleds, but you'd have to make the battery so small that it'd have virtually no range. Like a few long WOT runs and it's dead kind of range. Would still be fun as a demonstration of what electric could do. On the other end of the spectrum, you have a sled with enough batteries to have a useful range, but that would be much too heavy for mountain riding. A hybrid setup could be interesting under certain conditions, but in hard riding you'd quickly drain the batteries; then the electrical components would just be dead weight.

Obviously the limitation is batteries, and I don't see any development in battery technology changing that (by which I mean conventionally charged/discharged batteries). Maybe fuel cell technology will be the next big thing, but that's difficult as long as it requires hydrogen. For better or worse, it seems fossil fuels are here to stay a while longer. It's a finite resource, true, but there are so many untapped sources that if the supply does begin to run low before other technologies emerge, we'll still have a long time to figure things out. In many ways, I think the transition away will be much more subtle and seamless than we think: fossil fuels gradually become more expensive, which makes alternatives more economically viable and provides growing incentive to develop new technology. I feel the rush to battery power everything is kind of like the rush to steam power in the late 1800s – for every good application there was at least one dead-end application, yet all tended to be thought of as the next great thing simply because it was "new."

Norway said:

Well, however we get Our electricity… Fossil fuels take millions of years to produce, and from what I read we've already seen peak oil Production.
Wind/solar/waterfall and/or whatever WILL have to take over, but that is for another discussion. Good Points tho.

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I think the US has surpassed the middle east in oil production and we have not even begun to tap our resources. The only people that see an end to fossil fuels are the ones that want to. We have hundreds of years of resources left by any honest accounting.

I ride an electric mountain bike by Specialized. It is a blast. It is e-assist so I am working too. Still the weight is close to double the lightest full suspension bikes out there. The assist more than makes up for that. I think that I could do a 40 or 50 mike ride on a full charge but I haven’t tested that limit yet. An electric mountain sled is definitely intriguing but a few years out probably. Battery technology is moving forward fast. That is the limiting factor. The power would be ridiculous. Instant torque. It would put turbos to shame. My riding career will probably end before it happens but I will read about it on the beach on Kauai!

Prayn4snow said:

There are some very good points on here. Yes battery technology has advanced very quickly in the public world. Before I retired from the military, they were using some pretty cool tech long before it hit the consumer market. One of my friends just retired from the battery world (ex military). He helped design batteries for future cruise missiles, torpedos, and other stuff he couldn't talk about. He said "10 years" and you will be amazed where we (consumers) could be.
He said the other thing a battery powered sled could have a "very small" light weight inverter gas powered generator with a 1 gal gas tank that could keep a charge on it while riding, resting (lunch), getting cats and Doo's unstuck and would keep the battery pack warm.
Time will tell.
DC motors power trains carrying iron ore pellets here in the U.P. Crazy how much power they can make.
Something about a 2 stroke though....

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Interesting some of the military stuff is making its way to the news now. Check out this article about future power sources and how small they are: https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielc...rld-with-its-new-fusion-reactor/#5287a2ed4c49

On a side note, the Bad Boy Buggy (electric 4x4 side by side) I was working on yesterday had tons of torque from these drive motors. The buggy is heavy with the lead acid batteries however.