Electric Speedway

[SPEEDY69]

1 hour ago, iris123 said:

Interesting football development

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/58463458

Nothing about football is interesting - not to me anyway 

So the players and foreign sponsors with their oversized Range Rovers, massive mansions for two people, helicopter and other aircraft frequent use don't come into it, just those on match day itself. Sounds like a gimmick to me but if it can carry some momentum then good.  Society as a whole and Governments need to act.

[chunky]

1 hour ago, Humphrey Appleby said:

There's probably going to be a market for old London Underground trains in future.. 

I wish they still used the 1938 stock; I miss them... 

[Humphrey Appleby]

23 minutes ago, chunky said:

I wish they still used the 1938 stock; I miss them... 

I think I saw that they're trying to re-open the old Central Line extension to Ongar as a 'heritage' electric railway. 

[Vince]

I've seen electric bikes racing on an oval, including one who would have finished on the rostrum in the pro class with the lap times he was doing. 

Speedway with a few 1 minute races is made for electric bikes if any racing is, current battery capabilities can very easily cope with that.

The spectacle was almost exactly the same as normal flat track but the lack of noise definitely made it feel less exciting, whether you would get used to it and feel the same about the racing in the long term I'm not sure. However the prospect of motorcycle racing including Speedway taking place in inner city areas does appeal a great deal. As does the idea of being able to practice and train without complaints from neighbours. So much so that I am currently looking into the idea of getting an electric trials bike purely for the ability to ride at pretty much any time I want very locally.

[iris123]

Smolinski and Tobi Kroner almost 10 years ago with the Egon Müller developed bikes. Think they are making it look good though .Seem to remember Robert Lambert having a go with Smoli at Norden I think

 

[Humphrey Appleby]

42 minutes ago, Vince said:

The spectacle was almost exactly the same as normal flat track but the lack of noise definitely made it feel less exciting, whether you would get used to it and feel the same about the racing in the long term I'm not sure. 

Just add a speaker connected to an iPod with speedway exhaust sounds, as well as a smell generator that drips Castrol R into some sort of heated pipe. 

[truthsayer]

8 hours ago, SPEEDY69 said:

E-speedway, no thanks.  Battery vehicles will soon disappear anyway once people realise that the batteries are much more environmentally bad than they'd have you believe at present.  Hydrogen engines may be one possibility for vehicles but piles of batteries dumped at sea/in the third world does not fill me with hope for e-vehicles.

Crikey all those companies like Volkswagen, Renault and Land Rover investing billions in EV technology, but a bloke on the internet is telling them they're doing it all wrong....

Speedway is perfect for electrification. Six minutes of running a night, no problem. If you want motorsports in the cities, you have to make it quiet.

[Ray Stadia]

12 hours ago, truthsayer said:

Crikey all those companies like Volkswagen, Renault and Land Rover investing billions in EV technology, but a bloke on the internet is telling them they're doing it all wrong....

Speedway is perfect for electrification. Six minutes of running a night, no problem. If you want motorsports in the cities, you have to make it quiet.

It took a little boy to say 'the emperor's wearing no clothes!'. 

Edited September 7, 2021 by Ray Stadia

[IainB]

15 hours ago, SPEEDY69 said:

Sounds like a gimmick to me but if it can carry some momentum then good.  Society as a whole and Governments need to act.

If Sky are involved you can be absolutely 100% sure it's a gimmick

14 hours ago, Vince said:

but the lack of noise definitely made it feel less exciting, whether you would get used to it and feel the same about the racing in the long term I'm not sure. 

You only have to look at F1 to see the impact that sound has on Sport, the high revving V12,V10 & V8 engines were their trademark, so much so that they used the same sounds in their promotional videos long after the hybrid engines were introduced... If it doesn't sound fast it doesn't look fast to me. Although during the lockdown the TV companies overdubbed crowd noise at the Football matches to generate some atmosphere, perhaps that's what's needed in Speedway not just engine noise... but crowd noise as well 

[SPEEDY69]

13 hours ago, truthsayer said:

Crikey all those companies like Volkswagen, Renault and Land Rover investing billions in EV technology, but a bloke on the internet is telling them they're doing it all wrong....

Speedway is perfect for electrification. Six minutes of running a night, no problem. If you want motorsports in the cities, you have to make it quiet.

Nothing wrong with motorsports in cities, other than exorbitant land costs/rent/business rates, plus transport to and from etc.  Would not work for speedway I don't think.  Seemingly, many people don't want motorsports in residential areas, nothing to do with noise but that's their excuse.  Those people from Mildenhall were a pain I seem to remember.  Massive noise from airplanes overhead but they moaned about the speedway, having moved into a house next door. 

As for future investments, do you really think they're not looking at other technologies, with the money you pay them for their current vehicles?

[RS50]

13 hours ago, truthsayer said:

 

Speedway is perfect for electrification. Six minutes of running a night, no problem. If you want motorsports in the cities, you have to make it quiet.

Would we have delays after every false start,  while the riders re charge their battery, and a further delay should anyone have consecutive rides. 

[truthsayer]

1 hour ago, RS50 said:

Would we have delays after every false start,  while the riders re charge their battery, and a further delay should anyone have consecutive rides. 

No. For such short races there would be no such issues. The batteries would be so compact that arguably they'd be swappable and chargeable off bike.

A bike would have to run for a maximum of 10 minutes and this could be easily achieved using a battery weighing less than a regular speedway engine.

[f-s-p]

...and instead of releasing the starting gate, that button would unlock the the power unit in the bike, so no tapes needed.

[Humphrey Appleby]

2 hours ago, iainb said:

You only have to look at F1 to see the impact that sound has on Sport, the high revving V12,V10 & V8 engines were their trademark, so much so that they used the same sounds in their promotional videos long after the hybrid engines were introduced... If it doesn't sound fast it doesn't look fast to me. Although during the lockdown the TV companies overdubbed crowd noise at the Football matches to generate some atmosphere, perhaps that's what's needed in Speedway not just engine noise... but crowd noise as well 

It’s a matter of perception. If you’d only ever known quiet e-formulas, you wouldn’t miss the noise or smell.

To use the analogy of heritage railways, I don’t miss the soot, smoke and burning coal smell because I always travelled on electrified railways for as long as I can remember. I don’t particularly like the smell of coal either.

[Humphrey Appleby]

2 hours ago, SPEEDY69 said:

As for future investments, do you really think they're not looking at other technologies, with the money you pay them for their current vehicles?

Electric vehicles for road use are not yet entirely practical due to lack of range, the demand of lithium, and the battery disposal problem. But I’d think speedway would be well suited to it, and the battery issue would be almost insignificant with what, maybe under 2000 speedway motors in the whole world?

And where do old speedway engines currently go to die?

[bluebee]

Interesting to note that the country is opening a coal fired power plant because of gas  supply and price issues as well the inability of wind power to operate when a) wind speed is too low and b) wind speed is too high. And this is before the arrival of millions of electric vehicles to replace current petrol ones.. The car companies can invest in electricity but are governments investing in the electricity grid to cope with demand.  If we legislate only for electric vehicles there will clearly be fewer on the road - most people will be priced out of owning one. So the question will be how will supporters get to the stadiums to watch e-speedway bikes? I have to travel 40 miles to get to Leicester for my speedway fix. I suspect that a lot of others travel similar distances - or even more - to get theirs.

 

I suspect proposed legislation on electric only vehicles is merely virtue signalling at the moment. The politicians proposing it know they won't be in power if and when it happens so they will avoid any accountability for the chaos that it will cause.

 

As for lack of noise, look what happened when football was played in empty stadia. The broadcasters simulated the crowd noise. Noise is an important part of most of exciting spectacles .

I think the move in the direction of less carbon emissions will be sensibly slower than the zealots desire. How many people will vote to limit their freedom of movement - particularly when they have families.

[The Third Man]

3 minutes ago, bluebee said:

I think the move in the direction of less carbon emissions will be sensibly slower than the zealots desire. How many people will vote to limit their freedom of movement - particularly when they have families.

Different context, but this has been happening for the last 18 months without anyone voting for it

[Ray Stadia]

59 minutes ago, Humphrey Appleby said:

Electric vehicles for road use are not yet entirely practical due to lack of range, the demand of lithium, and the battery disposal problem. But I’d think speedway would be well suited to it, and the battery issue would be almost insignificant with what, maybe under 2000 speedway motors in the whole world?

And where do old speedway engines currently go to die?

In sheds or the back of the garage! 

[bluebee]

36 minutes ago, The Third Man said:

Different context, but this has been happening for the last 18 months without anyone voting for it

Indeed that is true. But will the eco zealots really convince us that the rate of climate change will require the suspension of democracy? If anything, I would think the pandemic has convinced most people that governmental control of the population is not something that we should accept without serious examination. and debate Can you see this country  acceptingresticting freedom of movement when the world's greatest polluters carry on as normal? 

Anyway, back to electric speedway bikes. Scalextric was never a consumer sport and never will be even if it is scaled up on motorbikes. We might have as e-scooter racing some day in supermarket car  parks across the country but I can't see it being a crowd puller on national scale - just something to attract the odd police presence in a rainbow paint job car.

[SPEEDY69]

The rate of change in the climate is undoubtedly increased by us humans and we're feeling it now with more extreme weather.  However, it is for Governments to do all they can to improve environmental impacts and reduce emissions etc. rather than put that onus on the general populous.  I understand our government is about to sign-off on a new oil field excavation in the North Sea, to burn for fuel rather than look for sustainable solutions.  Picking on private motorists whilst businesses utilise heavy-polluting vehicles (just how many diesel sucking vans are there in the UK now?!!) and air travel continues to pour out emissions high-up in the atmosphere seems pointless from an environmental perspective.  Where is the new transport solution because we knows roads are just getting more and more clogged.  As for speedway, if it becomes electric I won't be going, 'sounds' really boring and I'd rather it disappeared altogether so we can all just sit on our ars*s watching I'm a celebrity with all the other sheep.