Build Fuel-free Vehicles, and move forward to Nature! . . .
f.a.q.'s
Why do I need a fuel-less electronic vehicle? - Fuel costs pyrimid, restrict development, and improverish the land; even more telling, ALL centralized power sources are becoming increasingly precarious and conditional. In the event of unforseen breakdowns, ALL their users will become very vunerable. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Why is LIGHT chosen to run these vehicles, rather than wind or water? - Light is the "lightest" and most dependable ambient power source. No practical way has been found to date to utilize wind or water for practical land propulsion, though several are trying, the chances of success remain slim, the costs much higher. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Why not use solar racers for daily use? - Solar racers do not carry batteries as part of their racing rules (designed by the fuel companies), they are very light and unstable under street and road conditions (several have been killed by wind gusts on the road), besides that, solar racers have no provision or ability to haul loads other than the driver - and even he needs assistance to enter and be sealed in - rather like a jet fighter. Plus costs are again much higher, because Voltage is higher - requiering many more panels to carry much less weight. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Why have practical Light-Driven Vehicles not been built before? - Until VERY recent advances in flexible, unbreakable solar modules; light solid-state batteries (really variable storage capacitors), more efficient (and inexpensive) magnetic drives, and similar improvements to their control boxes, such vehicles were not possible, or much too low in performance. Present "shoppers", wheelchairs, and golf carts, are built using these older, now obsolete technologies. All are too heavy, and need too much current, for solar panels to propel them; at WHATEVER cost - since there is no room for all the extra panels needed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How fast do the Light-Driven Vees' go? - First ask yourself how fast you now go? And how fast you NEED to go? And how fast does the community around you WANT you to go? - Light-Driven Vehicles go at different speeds, which are fairly easy to change by choosing different models. In general they go between 25 and 40km/p/h, usually involving tradeoffs with hill-climbing and load-carrying capabilities. This places them between bicycles/scooters and motor cars (far faster than shoppers, wheelchairs, or golf carts of course). Because they are both totally non-polluting and silent, drivers prefer to AVOID motor car roads whenever possible - new natural roadways are being built many places as part of the effort to save earth species, and these vehicles are very welcome there, because they are in keeping with these goals. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How far can you go before needing to re-charge the batteries? - A bit of thought will tell you that this is a question for ELECTRIC vehicles - not for Light-Driven Vehicles. Electric vehicles would have to carry a wire many miles long to stay plugged in on the route: this is impossible! Light-Driven vehicles are plugged into the sun, or any strong surrounding light BOTH at rest and while MOVING. Depending on how many storage batteries are carried, the figure you ask for can vary between 20 and 500km (approximately). Great efforts have been made to keep any stopping recharges much shorter than those of electric cars. By carrying six small bat-pacs, instead of one large one, time was cut to 1/6. By varying SIZE of the bat-pacs, this was reduced still further, until stop times matched those of the organic processes of the driver (need to eat, urinate, etc.). This makes for much healthier, more natural travel. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Why aren't these Light-Driven Vees bigger, and why won't they carry more people and weight? - Every vehicle is limited in scope, you don't choose to carry construction tools and scrap in a sub-compact? Generally, load is a function of TIRE-RATING, SPRING and FRAME-STRENGTH. To these criteria, Light-Driven Vehicles must add energy-flow while in motion. That is why the vehicles are rated so finely, as to change size with the weight of the driver, the load, and the usual distance covered. While pushing to bring these mechanical and electronic qualities into alignment, with much success, in practice they are not so rigid, but much like other vehicles except with the plus feature of Light-Drive. For example, an electric scooter might be rated at 100k load, and 40k "range", but if you really weigh 220lbs, you probably will find the "range" shortened to 25 or 30 kilometers. It is much the same with Light-Driven Vehicles, greater weight translates into a slower speed with more (and usually longer) stops - but so it does with every OTHER kind of vehicle: the difference being that you KNOW (and have adjusted to) the limitations of other vehicles (even "electrics"), but have not yet done so with Light-Driven Vehicles. So what we are really talking about here is the UNKNOWN, and FEARS associated with the unknown. It is true however, that when approaching the unknown, we should make every effort to find out everything we can about it. That is how I invented the Practical Light-Driven Vehicles, and how you will come to the decision to build or buy one and drive it - eventually exclusively as you master it's unique and advantageous characteristics. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- F.O.Q. (frequently OMITTED questions) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Why aren't any of your solar vehicles big enough for a whole family? - While we think it is more reasonable with todays' conditions to have two vehicles, each carrying two people for the average family - one for the female and one for the male, it is barely possible to design and build four and six passenger solar vehicles today. The problems are two-fold (to simplify); first, no body frame yet exists which is light enough, yet strong enough - since all historical development experience has been with fuel or heavy electric (lead battery) vehicles. Second, the number of solar modules will be much greater, which means more costs. Our small company cannot afford to build even prototypes of such vehicles at present. For the consumer, prices in excess of $10,000, would mean a bank loan in most cases - and conservative banks would not issue such loans, because most of their debt notes are for fuel-connected businesses. If however, after many struggles we could succeed in building such a prototype and still further offering it commercially, most of you asking this question, would have thought up some OTHER excuse for inaction! Fortunately, some questioners are prepared to take the risk of building and riding these far less expensive vehicles we have designed, built, and driven already. We were not put on this Earth to satisfy the defensive whims of repressed, guilt-ridden pre-freudian industrial fuel-slaves. Happy is our lot and we are very sorry so many of our MOTOR-CAR conditioned-mind questioner's lots' are so miserable! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Why aren't your vehicles enclosed for cold weather? - Small enclosed vehicles haven't had too many successful histories - even in the case of civilian aircraft. But many such vehicles have been built - generally near the beginning phase of their invention due to limited initial resources. In ALL cases, a propulsion system's development begins by doing what it is possible for it to do well FIRST! In the case of Light-Driven Vehicles, for instance, it was possible to erect a light roof-frame to carry the solar arrays, and that meant protection from rain - a feature that is not found in other small vehicles such as bicycles or electric scooters (or MOTOR scooters & cycles). Also, very soon in the test program, natural forest, far from electric lines and fuel stations, were explored. This is territory not possible to enter (or at least to sustain travel in)with most other vehicles (but note the rise of "off-road" vehicles), thus, this capability is rarely considered by most of the public. Because the Light-Driven Vehicles enter natural territory PEACEABLY - rather than in the aggressive, noisy, exploitive, and destructive manner of fuel-driven "off-road" vehicles to date, many people associate them with a "romantic" or "historical" pleasantness, but "impractibility"? Yet there is now no reason why this should be so - on the contrary, as fuel supplies run low (and become more and more impossibly expensive); as natural resource exploitation and pollution become more and more life-threatening: Fuel-Less Light-Driven Vehicles will become increasingly, not only attractive from a financial viewpoint, but increasingly mandatory from a life-saving point of view. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- F.U.Q. (frequently UNASKED questions) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm interesting in, and wish to buy a solar vehicle, why are all the answers to my questions so complicated and political? - No person is an Island: to use a Light-Driven Vehicle, one must go out into a human landscape, and beyond that a natural landscape, with the mental and physical skills the individual happens to possess - at that particular historical point: both individual, social, and natural. - The recent past has witnessed an increasing world civil conflict between ANTI-TECHNOLOGISTS, who feel every scientific advance threatens life extinction more and more, and CONVENTIONAL FUELIST TECHNOLOGISTS who rationalize that the evils of increasing technological application are outweighed by the dangers of failing to do so. They feel that any "mistakes" (such as oil spills) can be "cleaned up later" and that more technology is the only available key to making people "better off". - Thus we have the World's traditional farmers, "native peoples", and many religions, trying to STOP the introduction of "Western Technology" into their environments. These groups attribute both evil intents, methods, and results to attempts at such fuelist, and "Mad" science, "Western" introductions. On the other hand, we have the believers in "technological progress" arguing that traditional ways of life become more and more destructive AS THEIR PRACTIONERS MULTIPLY, and therefore aggressively push their technologies (and birth control proceedures) everywhere around the world. - It is upon this background that Light-Driven Fuel-Less Vehicles are being introduced. For the first time, we have a new technology that is non-destructive, inexpensive enough for wide application, de-centralized, and relieves the central energy complexes that are becoming increasingly unstable. In addition, by Lightening the ecological "footprint", this new technology refutes the assumption of overpopulations' fixed relation to environmental degradation. - This helps to explain the Light-Driven Vehicles extreme popularity in many places when they emerge on the streets and roads. The local populance SENSES that here they are seeing a way out of an otherwise insoluable condition of pervasive unending conflict. - Unfortunately, the extreme, unavoidable, delicacy and refinement needed to use these vehicles in both natural and artificial man-made conditions - which may be likened to the sense of touch of a highly experienced and gentle lover, make it impossible for me to sell or build one for the general public or any but the most knowledgable and experienced individual. That is why we highly recommend that you build your OWN vehicle - and have offered links and plans to that end. - However, in an additional effort to familiarize and facilitate both the building of, and demonstrate the driving methods, in order to qualify others for individual sales, we are founding a SolarRiders Club, which all bicyclists and "electric-assist" drivers, as well as fledgling solar vehicle builders, are welcome to join.......(link to BioMod: http://groups.msn.com/biomod) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What are your future plans? - This year we wish to use the newly developed Chinese light 4-wheel frames to build vehicles that help break the stranglehood of lead batteries on Chinese advances - by getting their factories to begin using solid-state batteries and solar arrays on a mass-production basis. As part of this strategy we have an upcoming article in February '05 Wired magazine, which hopefully will attain wide-spread exposure in California, where investment capital from electronic firms, may go to China for their mechanical component bases - and even speed the enlargement and development of such bases. - On the local scene, we would like to use the newly-founded SolarRiders Club as a focus for organizing nature tours for guest-members from all over the world, and shorter tours of the avant-guarde wall murals and public graffitti art which abounds in our city. - This is in furtherance of our theory that avant-guarde art of all kinds, has historically provided the incubus of the class-less society, and that the Light-Driven Vehicles are a breakthrough which will finally universalize and ground this historic unfoldment of the class-less society world-wide. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
