How to Calculate Range on an Electric Motorcycle
Aug 20, 2021
If you've ever wondered how manufacturers calculate and estimate range, read on to find out how.
Part 1 of 3.
Range estimations on the sticker of the new Tesla or other electric vehicle seem to baffle a lot of people, and with a bit of basic math, you'll see how close, or how far, manufacturers can push their range estimations to "look good" on marketing.
There are a few different ways to estimate your range:
On this post, we'll talk about how to utilize the MPGe statistic on most electric vehicles to understand its efficiency and use that to estimate off of theorical battery pack capacities provided from the manufacturer.
MPGe The first metric you'll need to understand how range is calculated is your electric vehicle's efficiency. Efficiency is measured in watt-hours per km, or more commonly written as wh/km. This means that for each kilometer traveled, your electric vehicle will, on average, consume xx watt hours of the battery pack. You will also see all manufactures listing the total capacity of the battery pack, measured in watt hours, and due to their large sizes, mostly listed in kilowatt hours, or kwh.
Most 4 wheel electric cars will see efficiency numbers of 130 wh/km to 250 wh/km, while most full speed electric motorcycles like the Urban Classic will see 30 wh/km to 60 wh/km. From this metric alone, you can see that 2 wheeled electric motorcycles will consume less battery capacity for each km traveled, meaning they're more efficient that electric cars. You can easily convert this metric to miles by multiplying by 1.6 to get wh/mile, which will be required to get your eMPG. Now it's a simple conversion to calcuate your efficiency numbers to an equivalent MPG format.
Bluegrassauto.com quotes:
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) uses an established energy standard of 115,000 BTUs (British thermal units) per gallon of gasoline. Simplified, this means that if you ignited 1 U.S. gallon of unleaded gasoline, it would generate that much heat. To create that same amount of heat, 33.7 kilowatt-hours of electricity would be required. Thus, 1 gallon of gasoline generates the same ‘heat energy’ as 33.7 kilowatt-hours of electricity.
If an electric vehicle is able to travel 100 miles on 33.7 kWh of electricity (the energy equivalent of 1 gallon of gasoline), it would be rated with an MPG equivalency of 100 MPGe. Let’s say a different electric car can travel that same 100 miles while using 32 kWh, slightly less than the previous example. This second electric car would receive a rating of 105 MPGe since it’s more efficient. Just like traditional MPG ratings for a gasoline-powered vehicle, the EPA rates MPGe across city, highway, and combined fuel economy.
So with your efficiency estimate of, for example, 30 wh/km, you will need to convert that to wh/mile by multiplying by 1.6 and get 48wh/mile. To convert to eMPG, you'll need to calcuate your consumption of 100 miles, so multiply by 100, to get 4800 wh per 100 miles, or 4.8 kwh per 100 miles. The EPA rates 100 miles of travel utilizing 33.7 kwh as 100 MPGe, so the 30 wh/km electric motorcycles would be 7.02x more efficient, giving an MPG equivalent of 702 MPGe.
The above exercise is mainly working backwards, and if a manufacturer gives you the MPGe, you can calculate efficiency. Then to get estimated range, you would need to take the total capacity of the vehicle and divide by the efficiency to get an estimated total range of the vehicle.
For e.g. if the electric motorcycle has a 10 kwh battery, or 10,000 wh, divided by 30 wh/km gives you a total of 333.3 km of total range, or 208 miles.
Follow along with our upcoming blog posts to see how to calculate and estimate range using the wall to wheel method and utilizing historical "on-the-fly" calcuations.
There are a few different ways to estimate your range:
- MPGe
- Wall to wheels
- Historical "on-the-fly" algorithm
On this post, we'll talk about how to utilize the MPGe statistic on most electric vehicles to understand its efficiency and use that to estimate off of theorical battery pack capacities provided from the manufacturer.
MPGe The first metric you'll need to understand how range is calculated is your electric vehicle's efficiency. Efficiency is measured in watt-hours per km, or more commonly written as wh/km. This means that for each kilometer traveled, your electric vehicle will, on average, consume xx watt hours of the battery pack. You will also see all manufactures listing the total capacity of the battery pack, measured in watt hours, and due to their large sizes, mostly listed in kilowatt hours, or kwh.
Most 4 wheel electric cars will see efficiency numbers of 130 wh/km to 250 wh/km, while most full speed electric motorcycles like the Urban Classic will see 30 wh/km to 60 wh/km. From this metric alone, you can see that 2 wheeled electric motorcycles will consume less battery capacity for each km traveled, meaning they're more efficient that electric cars. You can easily convert this metric to miles by multiplying by 1.6 to get wh/mile, which will be required to get your eMPG. Now it's a simple conversion to calcuate your efficiency numbers to an equivalent MPG format.
Bluegrassauto.com quotes:
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) uses an established energy standard of 115,000 BTUs (British thermal units) per gallon of gasoline. Simplified, this means that if you ignited 1 U.S. gallon of unleaded gasoline, it would generate that much heat. To create that same amount of heat, 33.7 kilowatt-hours of electricity would be required. Thus, 1 gallon of gasoline generates the same ‘heat energy’ as 33.7 kilowatt-hours of electricity.
If an electric vehicle is able to travel 100 miles on 33.7 kWh of electricity (the energy equivalent of 1 gallon of gasoline), it would be rated with an MPG equivalency of 100 MPGe. Let’s say a different electric car can travel that same 100 miles while using 32 kWh, slightly less than the previous example. This second electric car would receive a rating of 105 MPGe since it’s more efficient. Just like traditional MPG ratings for a gasoline-powered vehicle, the EPA rates MPGe across city, highway, and combined fuel economy.
So with your efficiency estimate of, for example, 30 wh/km, you will need to convert that to wh/mile by multiplying by 1.6 and get 48wh/mile. To convert to eMPG, you'll need to calcuate your consumption of 100 miles, so multiply by 100, to get 4800 wh per 100 miles, or 4.8 kwh per 100 miles. The EPA rates 100 miles of travel utilizing 33.7 kwh as 100 MPGe, so the 30 wh/km electric motorcycles would be 7.02x more efficient, giving an MPG equivalent of 702 MPGe.
The above exercise is mainly working backwards, and if a manufacturer gives you the MPGe, you can calculate efficiency. Then to get estimated range, you would need to take the total capacity of the vehicle and divide by the efficiency to get an estimated total range of the vehicle.
For e.g. if the electric motorcycle has a 10 kwh battery, or 10,000 wh, divided by 30 wh/km gives you a total of 333.3 km of total range, or 208 miles.
Follow along with our upcoming blog posts to see how to calculate and estimate range using the wall to wheel method and utilizing historical "on-the-fly" calcuations.
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