Not trying to take this off-topic, but after reading a thread about possible future directions for trials bikes, could there be room for a hybrid trials bike? Use an electric motor to provide high torque instantaneously and with an effective infinite transmission, and a gas/petrol engine run at a constant/optimal rate to charge a battery. The battery would be required to deliver the high currents momentarily required by the motor when under extreme load.

 

My son's OSET was pretty amazing, but when the juice was gone I pushed. Having an on-bike battery charger would have been fantastic. It's pretty hard to beat the amount of energy in a litre of fuel, and it's convenience.

 

Having the two systems combined into one bike sounds appealing. But I guess the down side is that you now have the weight/volume penalty of a generator and battery. But then there would be the savings of no transmission.

 

Your thoughts, please.

 

Dale

 

The problem with hybrid technology is it requires a lot of space - you need to have a petrol tank, batteries, and two motors, plus a more complex gearbox (assuming you want the petrol engine to power the bike and not just as a range-extender), and all the electrics to handle the delivery between the two motors, plus heat management which is more complex, and you also need to keep the petrol motor away from the batteries as that's an explosive risk if they get hot ... trials bikes will only ever have room for one motor because weight is such an important factor.