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Mastodon instance focused on the Triangle region of North Carolina. Keeping out jerks since 2019. Anti-racist, anti-fascist, and anti-TERF.

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T Strömberg 🚲🌳🛵

I made the 96km (59mi) ride home, so meet Celeste - my new

Temps got down to 3'C (37'F), so I had the seat warmer and seat grips at full blast. I could have certainly used real motorcycle pants instead of jeans and maybe even a heated vest.

Being cautious on my first ride, I made two charging stops adding 9% each time. I reached home with 21% so I could have just barely made it home without stops.

I estimate the range on rural highways at this temp as 60-65mi (eco mode)

Also:

- I felt rusty after 12yrs away.

- 55mph felt really fast. It's either due to the seating position or being a cyclist for so long, but why the hell are the roads so fast?

- Having a reverse gear is awesome!

- The headlight is rubbish on country roads, but the brights are good. This may be an issue of adjustment.

- I don't enjoy riding at night. It didn't have any "Jesus take the wheel" moments, but there were times that I didn't feel far from it. I was cold, nervous, and vulnerable.

While the range seems short, it appears to be just enough for my use case of getting from Chapel Hill to Apex/Garner/Raleigh and back without having to recharge.

- Green is my effective one-way range without a charge

- Purple is my effective there-and-back range without a charge

I miss Tesla Superchargers already: One of the two-stall chargers I stopped at in Graham had one broken stall and one occupied stall, so I went elsewhere (1 mile away)

Always have a backup plan.

@thomrstrom
I think the bike is engineered in a way that will push you to not go too fast as this has a big impact on range.
But yeah, 55 is plenty fast.

@thomrstrom And for the 'riding at night' thing, I'm afraid age of the driver has an impact 🤣

@plopli One thing I was surprised to learn when we got our first EV is that energy consumption in any vehicle has a cubic relationship to velocity.

Increasing speed from 100km/h to 110km/h can increase energy consumption by 33%.🤯

power = 0.5 * density_of_air * velocity^3 * drag coefficient * surface area

I'd be willing to bet the CE 04 drag coefficient is not stellar.

aptera.nu/?p=67 has a pretty good overview.

aptera.nuEfficiency – a calculation – Aptera enthusiast blog

@plopli Note that formula is the power necessary to overcome wind resistance - gas vehicles keep consuming energy even a standstill or low speeds where there is little to no wind resistance to overcome.

That's why this relationship is more evident in on an EV: they only spend energy to propel, so the energy consumption curve feels significantly steeper as it scales from 0 rather than a higher baseline.