Ecoble - Latest Comments in Awesome: Solar Powered Bicycle Boat Design

Re: Awesome: Solar Powered Bicycle Boat Design

Erica — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 08:48:33 -0000

I never stop being astonished at what things people come up with these days. This design seems nice, what I like most about it is energy saving, the fact that it's enviromentaly friendly and it might be faster than other ordinary bicycle boats. However, imagine that the passengers will have to paddle, which is ok but there should be some kind of a dynamo inside its skeleton for accumulating of the power, or shoudln't it? All in all, it looks promising.

Re: Awesome: Solar Powered Bicycle Boat Design

Roger Burns — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 18:10:27 -0000

This has quite clearly been designed by somebody who knows next to nothing about boats or about photovoltaic solar power.

It's got paddles instead of screw propellors, which haven't been used seriously since screw propellors were developed because they're so inefficient, and with the tiny amount of power that solar panels put out you'd want your propulsion system to be as efficient as possible so you didn't waste any.

Speaking of which, today you would coat as many of the upper surfaces of the boat as possible with flexible solar panels and not just have a couple on top of the mushroom to maximise the possible energy generation:
http://www.newscientist.com...

If you want a clean powered boat wind is a novel idea... if you don't want sails, you can use things like this:
http://i.treehugger.com/ima...

Re: Awesome: Solar Powered Bicycle Boat Design

solar power — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 08:07:06 -0000

This is so cool!
I wish I had one of those.
However, I am not sure how practical this designs are, I mean - is the solar power is ebough to run the boat? is it now taking too much space? and what about sailing at night?
I hope that there is a good answer to all of these questions.

Re: Awesome: Solar Powered Bicycle Boat Design

curt — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 17:37:37 -0000

That's really an amazingly simple, yet very attractive design. It could really replace/support the fleet of rent-a-boats, which don't look so tempting as this one.
Dry, sealed batteries as energy storage will probably support a real model.

p.s.
It really looks so 'nicely posh' for a rent-a-boat, though.

Re: Awesome: Solar Powered Bicycle Boat Design

Reboot — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:03:06 -0000

Terrific find! I like the fact that it's a catamaran-style for additional stability.

I can't help but think that if the seating area was lowered, it could be used as an aquarium (ie, encased in a plexiglass design to allow seeing underwater).

btw, the current ad on this page ("create you pirate and play') overlaps the [Leave a Reply] form in Opera.