Honda Monkey Breaks World Record Covering 4,183 Km on Single Tank
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As for this mini motorcycle, it's impressive that it still looks pretty decent and someone unfamiliar with this model might even mistake it for stock. I never quite understood why it's so hard to find even aftermarket tanks for bikes that get the range up to car range...I just want to go 500 miles on my bike without refueling. Put the gas in the frame AND into a 5+ gallon tank up top. Put gas into a portion of the seat. Put it up behind the headlight or in a big fender. Carrying jerry cans or even the bag style ones is just so bulky and inconvenient for overlanding on two wheels without a support vehicle carrying extra fuel.
They won't replace the 737 any time soon of course, but progress is progress.
https://harbourair.com/harbour-airs-all-electric-aircraft-op...
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetl...
Why are you on Hacker News when you clearly are not a Hacker and don't have the IQ to understand such a simple, interesting point OP is making.
Is it jealousy because OP travels and they want to hack it out even further than the normal model gives them? Why put them down otherwise?
What EV cars do is exactly what is happening here, they are highly aerodynamic and weight reduced, at the cost of practical things. They have to, to get distance.
- dubious IQ (dIQ) measuring
- incorrect accusation of “putting them down” immediately following an ad hominem attack
- unspecific “insight” that EVs sacrifice practical things to get distance, when the parent and OP were both basically saying the opposite: EVs sacrifice distance for practicality
Make for some expensive litter.
It’s worse than that. A recent Yale study found that—for an average car on the road—from $5 of gas you’re really only getting $1 of that energy to propulsion.
It’s 20%.
I was wondering how Guinness Record would deal with such a category, and the answer seems to be that they just don't. Most of their electric vehicle records have either a time limit, or no refueling/single charge limitation
e.g. https://guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/115107-greate...
Given that the farthest I've ever ridden in a day was about 800 miles, being able to go all day on two, maybe even just one fill-up(s) seems reasonable.
https://www.bennetts.co.uk/bikesocial/news-and-views/feature...
https://www.visordown.com/features/top-10s/top-10-longest-ra...
https://www.ducati.com/ww/en/accessories/ACC012304
Something like 350 mile range (lot of variables) once that's added on. Enough to get from Coldfoot to Prudhoe Bay (one of the harder routes to clear on a bike, historically).
So this extension functionally works as if your single tank just got larger. Might not be something that everyone cares about, but the value proposition over a jerrycan is clear.
1. Generally you don't need the excess range, and this thing seems like a relatively permanent modification, so you're dealing with the excess weight/bulk all the time, and getting the added benefit only when you actually need to do the long haul.
2. This Ducati thing is only 8 liters, and adds 40% to your range.
So a jerrycan would (more) easily be added/removed as needed, and holds 20 liters, doubling your range. You could even add two, to triple your range.
Also, there's the fact that a jerrycan costs about $40, while the Ducati tank costs... $1900!? Yikes -- yeah, I'm sticking with the jerrycan :-)
But I get it -- I've ridden with Gatorade bottles full of spare gasoline too (yes it'll eventually eat through the plastic, but not fast enough to matter in my experience.)
Samesies! I once ran out of gas on a GS-550, walked to a Circle-K, bought and drank a quart of milk (I'm not much for gatorade) then bought enough gas to lightly rinse out the paper carton and then fill it to take back to my bike. This was a long time ago, please don't judge me :-)
Electric aviation is not yet viable commercially, but it will be soon. I'm working at a company building electric aircraft, and one of our prototypes has done a flight of more than 380 miles. Note that this is a prototype, in ideal conditions, with a tailwind, last few miles were circling the airport within the glide cone, etc. The actual production vehicle range, with all of the safety margins, seats for passengers, passenger weight, etc, will be a lot less; but still, 150 miles is enough for many commercially viable trips, especially in dense areas like the BosWash corridor, or getting from suburbs to a long haul airport, or many others.
Electrification can also make viable new architectures, like VTOL, and the extra efficiency and longer maintenance intervals can drastically drive down operating costs; so there will be many trips that are economically viable in an eVTOL that wouldn't be in conventional airplanes (due to needing an airport) or helicopter (due to high fuel and maintenance costs).
We're a little bit quieter than some of the other players, as we're still a private company and are focusing more on engineering than marketing right now.
edit: Oh, hey, just checked your profile and I guess your firm is one of our investors, so I guess you already know about us.
But the more amazing thing about a 4000km motorcycle ride is they weren't injured or killed by someone using their smartphone.
High speed head-on collisions could have been quite spectacular.
Reducing certain emissions is commendable... But not when you realize that the environmental damage from strip mining rare earth metals in developing countries is far worse.
http://web.archive.org/web/20110310093031/http://www.deathmo...
0- when it reports that there's 0km left in the tank, I can only fill it up by 40L, so is it really a 50L tank? Hard to say.
10 liters seems on the high end though.
> After a grueling 304-lap test, Acerbis found they needed to use sponges to combat the sloshing inside the tank at the expense of losing some volume. The final tank weighed 15.2 kg (33.5 lbs) and could hold 108 liters.
I love this sort of simple yet effective solution.
I fitted an off road style fuel tank on a truck I had, but I opted for the version without sponges/baffles. It would try to stall when stopping on a low tank.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokai_Challenger
The best ICE still isn't cool because it's fundamentally Earth's chain-smoker with terminal lung cancer failing to light a cigarette while almost blowing up their oxygen tank.
Wow, faster too! When comparing the aerodynamics of a dude in a jacket to a wing, I suppose being an average of 20mph faster makes sense.
Why did you feel the need to wrap your environmentalist polemic in such a complicated metaphor?
weird metaphor. Given that ICE isn't going anywhere for some time I wish that people would realize that the choices are never a binary "perfectly clean EV" vs. "Coal-powered tree crusher" -- advancement in ICEs still represent an environmental benefit to the world. The Honda Monkey is one of the most efficient ICE vehicles that a consumer could hope to find, but i'll bite : where might I pick up a Tokai Challenger?
The way towards EV isn't by demonizing the things that have made the world tick throughout every industrialized society, it's by incentivizing the use of alternatives.
Anyway, in the next 20 years, virtually all ICE vehicles need to go away. There’s basically no option for them except perhaps e-fuels, but given the 5x energy use compared to EVs, they will have extremely limited scope.
Is this actually possible? i.e. are there actually enough resources and production capacity to replace all ICE vehicles on the road in two decades. I remember hearing Elon Musk suggest it'd take about double that.
It’s almost surely impossible to replace the global fleet of cars in that time too.
Yes, we are behind schedule, and we can't get there just by replacing ICE cars one for one with electric cars, but there is plenty more we can do.
Living in walkable neighborhoods. Demanding better infrastructure for more than just cars. Working from home if you have a desk job.
And of course personal transport is only part of it. Electricity generation. Industrial precesses like steelmaking, and concrete will need to go carbon neutral as well.
Electric cars will be part of it, though. Those infrastructure changes won't happen overnight, we need all possible options at our disposal, it's not either/or, it's "yes, and."
But it can be done.
They achieved 91 mpg. A stock 125cc Monkey is claimed to get 169 mpg, but actual user reports are closer to 120 mpg. https://www.fuelly.com/motorcycle/honda/monkey
Yes, the lack of monkeys with 100L tank is not an argument; base model will get better fuel efficiency.
> Anyway, in the next 20 years, virtually all ICE vehicles need to go away.
Pretty sure monkey + the fuel for entirety of its lifetime would still produce less CO2 than EV over lifetime + whatever amount of solar panels and power storage needed to keep it powered.
Doubtful for a similarly sized vehicle.
For comparable sized cars, EVs are always better than the ICE equivalent including all production: https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/are-electric-vehicles-defini...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_fossil_fuel_vehic...
The Monkey 125 has peak power of 7.5 kW and an area of 1.7 m x 0.75 m or 1.3 m^2 [0,1]. The sun delivers a theoretical maximum of 1.3 kW per m^2. In the same area as a Monkey 125 the max solar energy would be 1.7 kW, or 23% of the Monkey 125's peak power (which was probably all used as the team travelled over mountains). Fraunhofer claims a photovoltaic cell with 47% efficiency so a solar Monkey would have about a tenth of the petrol Monkey's ability to move.
0. Specific model used was probably a variant of this Honda, not the OG Monkey that stopped production in 1999: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Grom
1. https://www.hondaprokevin.com/2021-honda-monkey-125-review-s...
2. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/05/30/fraunhofer-ise-achiev...
...but having electric bike/scooter just connected to charger is far more practical way to do it
It’s the pot calling the kettle black! If you need it spelled out.
Electric trucks are becoming available.
Heavy transport trains are now electric:
https://thedriven.io/2022/01/19/mining-giant-bhp-orders-elec...
https://www.australianmining.com.au/fortescue-battery-electr...
https://www.railtech.com/rolling-stock/2022/03/04/australian...
If you are to make a better world you have to build it out of the flawed one, right?
Let’s see. EVs generally have worse range and are substantially slower to charge while on a trip.
But they are quieter, simpler, more reliable, have generally superior performance (at least in categories where weight doesn’t matter), need substantially less maintenance, don’t stink (tires still stink, but the rest of the EV doesn’t), can recharge at home, and can do V2L/V2H/V2G [0].
[0] To be fair, V2L is a surprisingly rare feature. V2G seems likely to get stuck behind an embarrassing unwillingness on the part of anyone involved to use genuinely open standards or do decouple the implementation from various middlemen involved whose sole purpose is to intermediate between the vehicle and the utility. And V2H will share all of V2G’s problems plus the utilities’ general desire to discourage anything that reduces customer’s reliance on them and also the fact that there seems to be nothing remotely resembling a standard for microgrid interconnection devices / disconnects to enable islanding. As far as I can tell, most microgrid solutions are single-vendor, and most of them except the serious hardcore off grid gear are annoying tied to the cloud. We need a standard where a building can have a microgrid interconnection device, with multiple available suppliers, and where customers can install downstream equipment that interoperates with the device, sources from other brands. And this whole thing needs to work without explicit approval from the utility. (Requiring certification of each device makes sense. Requiring paperwork to be filed and permission obtained from the utility to install a V2H-capable EVSE or a solar inverter or a generator or whatever is broken. (Requiring utility permission to export is a different story, and utilities should be able to communicate, in real time, permissible export limits and the current and upcoming rate schedule. This should work without an internet connection.)
But this rant about V2H/V2G shouldn’t distract from the overall point: ICE cars aren’t doing V2G/V2G at all anytime soon.
Actually, as the costs of fossil fuels rise, and costs of energy production drop, synthetics are becoming more and more viable. Could be very soon...
Yes, bioruels are better than fossil fuels, but worse than clean electricity.
Anyhow, it's not an either/or. ICE vehicles will be with us for a while, so it's better to use more efficient ones, but we also need to be replacing as many as possible with electric.
Biofuels are better than fossil fuels, but most ICE engines run on gasoline, and can't run on 100% biofuels efficiently and cleanly.
Also, if it turns out biofuels is the answer (and IMO synthetic fuel production seems way more efficient in the long run), there are ways to reduce the externalities. Using land that wouldn't be used for crops, growing the plants or algae without use of fossil fuels. And of course if you're going for externalities, most forms of green energy have them too...
These kinds of solutions are useful to do research and development on for cases where we're not sure if battery electric vehicles will ever have a path to replace, like long haul aviation.
But for surface transport, it's really hard to see much being competitive with battery electric vehicles; they are already commercially viable, and can be powered with 100% green energy, and green energy prices are already lower than fossil fuel. My EV is charged with 100% carbon neutral power when I charge at home or work. Sure, the mix of sources varies across the grid, but given how cost effective renewable energy is, and incentives, the share of renewables is growing fast.
The infrastructure and production capacity are rapidly developing. And while energy density and specific energy of batteries are a bit limiting now, there are a lot of developments that are nearly ready for mass production that will get rid of many of the remaining limitations of battery electric vehicles for all but the most demanding of applications (like long haul air transport).
I think you might be surprised by how fast ICE vehicles become obsolete for all but niche use cases. As infrastructure develops, production ramps up, and battery technology improves, it won't be long before EVs start to outsell ICE vehicles. EVs already outsell ICE vehicles in Norway, in China they're at about 25% of new car sales, and worldwide they're at about 12% of new car sales; and these numbers are growing rapidly, they may already be out of date by now. Once they are outselling ICE vehicles, it will only be about a decade before EVs are the majority on the road.
I would find it hard to imagine a way in which synthetic fuel would ramp up to production readiness and be cost-effective in the same kind of time scale.
In any case none of what you brought up above contradicts my general point that ICE does not automatically mean evil.
Electric motorcycles are only just becoming viable, and are a lot more limiting compared to electric cars.
And an ICE motorcycle can be a lot more fuel efficient, and is also lower carbon impact to manufacture, and takes up less space on the street and to park. For a single occupancy vehicle, an ICE motorcycle is a lot cooler than an ICE car; and depending on the use, could even be better than an EV car.
I am hopeful that within about 5-10 years, battery technology and prices will improve to the point that electric motorcycles actually become viable. But for now, buying a gas sipping Honda Monkey and commuting to work on it could be a big step up over a car.
> To achieve this feat, the technical team at Acerbis engineered the largest motorcycle tank ever used,
Oh.
Someone above linked a solar car, which went roughly the same distance, significantly faster. Given that it apparently had 1.8kw nameplate capacity solar panels... and it covered 3000 km in 30 hours, we know it's (substantially better than) 1.8kwh/100km (at 100kph!).
0.03 gallons of gasoline release 1kwh of energy when burned, combined with the above the solar car was getting the equivalent of 1150 mpg. This trip would have taken 2.26 gallons (falsely assuming perfect efficiency, but then we get to ditch all the weight and aerodynamic losses from having solar panels on board... and I assumed the solar panels operated continuously at their nameplate capacity).
That's still slightly larger than the Honda Monkey's 1.5 gallon tank, but it's not unreasonable to think that someone could have done this. It would have been a lot cooler than "strapping on more fuel tanks" IMO.
also called "dying in motorcycle accident"
> Someone above linked a solar car, which went roughly the same distance, significantly faster.
On a significantly straighter road, in significantly sunnier place than "trip across the europe"
If it was practical to get an order of magnitude improvement in fuel economy, someone would have done that.
I was just defending that it was legitimate to feel let down by the title.
I couldn't imagine 4,000km on a knee-high 125cc bike.
They are very cool bikes though. I'd love to buy one, but I want to buy a Rebel first.
The B body, culminating in the Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale Brougham LS (8th gen, "Body by Fisher") was a rolling couch you could sink into, with that ridiculously static-generating and uncleanable velour. Some Cadillacs and Lincolns were also okay, but Fisher put all other automotive brands, foreign and domestic, to shame in the comfort category.
As for the specific car you mention… Umm… Yeah I guess taste is subjective.
A bit tangential, but this guy drove from Alaska to Argentina on a c90. It was a few years of sleeping in a tent, some random person's spare bedroom, or the cheapest hotel possible.
this distance reminds me of the Cannonball Run from Red Ball Garage in Manhattan to Portofino Inn in Redondo Beach, which is about 2,900 miles. I don't think anyone's done a Honda Monkey Cannonball Run yet
Sponges are also commonly used in race bikes so I'd guess there are some advantages vs just building a tank with baffles
This can be considered great if they made advancements in engine / combustion design that increased the distance traveled on a per liter (or gallon) of fuel.
So, this has nothing to do with fuel efficiency. It is just a question of who can build the largest gas tank.
Does a rider survive either one exploding?
It’s the fumes that can cause an explosion.
A properly designed gas tank will prevent the formation of fumes, whether by having a “bladder” within (most modern cars do this) or perhaps some type of venting.
I’d consider it far more dangerous to be going 40mph under the prevailing speed limit on a highway you can’t go around, such as over a bridge. The tank is a minor consideration.
I also believe you could find a way to use bladders and fairings in your tank design such that it bulges out into a 50gal tank when starting off and gradually stretches and shrinks back into the existing profile and shape as the gas gets used up. A further mileage hit at first, but all bonus miles.