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iris123

Electric Speedway

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55 minutes ago, Humphrey Appleby said:

The Dutch F1 GP was nearly prevented from happening because of a legal challenge on environmental grounds, and this sort of thing is only going to increase as the world moves to electric vehicles. Whether traditionalists like it or not, speedway is going to have to move to electric if it's still around in 10 years time, and possibly even before. 

I'd have thought speedway with its short races would be well suited to electric propulsion, and might even bring down the costs of engines and expensive tuners. 

Methanol is much less environmentally damaging than petrol and filthy diesel.  Argument on that score surely lost with the vast increase in diesel vans & lorries that we have nowadays (who sees and exemption for commercial vehicles in the future?), a few speedway bikes is neither here nor there.  And don't get me started on aircraft :).

Noise is also really annoying - 'local residents' who have chosen to move right next to a stadium.  Speedway is about half an hour of bike noise once a week at most tracks.  F1/road racing goes on for hours, sometimes over more than one day, which again is incomparable.  A lot of football stadia are in residential areas and they produce plenty of noise for a couple of hours for a large part of the year but good luck trying to curb that! 

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1 hour ago, Humphrey Appleby said:

The Dutch F1 GP was nearly prevented from happening because of a legal challenge on environmental grounds, and this sort of thing is only going to increase as the world moves to electric vehicles. Whether traditionalists like it or not, speedway is going to have to move to electric if it's still around in 10 years time, and possibly even before. 

I'd have thought speedway with its short races would be well suited to electric propulsion, and might even bring down the costs of engines and expensive tuners. 

The move against noise pollution is getting stronger by the week it seems and isn't going to go away.

I posted on her possibly a year ago about some moves. Towns and cities banning loud motorbikes at the weekend. Now Paris has even gone to a 30kmh limit in most areas, and noise was one of the factors. It is getting hard for private people, so a recreational sport will find itself under even more pressure and especially one that is only watched by a small strange section of society has no real pressure working in its favour

You could say it is even less necessary in Denmark as most of their tracks, possibly all are outside residential areas. Often well away

Edited by iris123
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1 hour ago, SPEEDY69 said:

Methanol is much less environmentally damaging than petrol and filthy diesel.  Argument on that score surely lost with the vast increase in diesel vans & lorries that we have nowadays (who sees and exemption for commercial vehicles in the future?), a few speedway bikes is neither here nor there.  And don't get me started on aircraft :).

It doesn't really matter what the rights and wrongs are. Noisy combustion engines using carbon-based fuel are going to get outlawed sooner or later, regardless of whether there a few or many.

I'd think things like heritage railways are also going to come under scrutiny, even if they can still get hold of coal. There's probably going to be a market for old London Underground trains in future.. :D

Quote

Noise is also really annoying - 'local residents' who have chosen to move right next to a stadium.  Speedway is about half an hour of bike noise once a week at most tracks.  F1/road racing goes on for hours, sometimes over more than one day, which again is incomparable.  A lot of football stadia are in residential areas and they produce plenty of noise for a couple of hours for a large part of the year but good luck trying to curb that! 

Again, it doesn't really matter whether they're justified or not - complain they will and use every spurious argument. It will be harder to counter the noise argument if much quieter engines are available. 

Edited by Humphrey Appleby

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Didn't Robert Lambert try one a few years ago and quite enjoyed it. He said that the power was the same but strange being quiet because you couldn't tell what the bike doing regarding spinning, bogging down, wrong sprockets etc because a lot of that is figured out through noise as well as feel... 

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1 hour ago, iris123 said:

Interesting football development

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

Nothing about football is interesting - not to me anyway :D

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.

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1 hour ago, Humphrey Appleby said:

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

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

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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. ;)

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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.

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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

 

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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. :D

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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.

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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 by Ray Stadia
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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 :lol:

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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?

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