Velomobiles Efficiency | Velomobile World 

Great video! Thank you. Finally somebody in just a few minutes explained me why rolling resistance is more important for velomobiles than for bikes, it's just a matter of proportions.

Those wattage to speed ratios are close to what I have achieved in my Milan SL - With race hood, latex tubes and Grand Prix LTD tires and mirrors removed I managed 177 watts for a sub-3 hour century avegrting 33.8mph or 54.4 Km/hr for 161 km. on a flat loop course. (4 laps) Pedal, breathing, nutrition and water also all play a role as well during speed attempts. The Milan is incredible

Dieses Video führt mit seinen Zahlen eins deutlich vor Augen: Angesichts dieser Werte erscheint es völlig aus der Zeit gefallen, dass wir uns noch von tonnenschweren Fahrzeugen bewegen lassen, die millionenfache Energieverschwender und Dreckschleudern sind. Wenn diese Autos nur 10mal leichter und nur so groß wären, wie sie auch ihre Passiere eigentlich nur brauchen, dann hätten wir weder ein PLatz- noch ein Umweltproblem damit. Technisch wäre das alles überhaupt kein Problem, aber damit kann man nicht angeben, repräsentieren, seine selbst nicht vorhandene Stärke demonstrieren u.s.w. und es ließe sich mit solchen Fahrzeugen sicher auch nicht soviel Geld verdienen. Dafür wäre ihr Ressourcenverbrauch aber auch um Größenordnungen geringer bei ihrer Herstellung und ihrem Betrieb. Wir würden also unseren Kindern noch etwas von den Schätzen der Erde übrig lassen anstatt alles auf einmal in wenigen Generationen zu vergeuden. Aber wer will das schon. Nach uns die Sintflut. Hauptsache das Bruttosozialprodukt steigt stetig.

Großartig erklärt und dargestellt. Besser kann man es wohl kaum machen.

All well in theory, many of the roads here are horrendous, not fit for even doing 30 without breaking something. And this is Belgium. Not to mention the polite, patient and respecfull car drivers.

Excelent video. Well explained. Though I can't achieve that kind of efficiency with my Milan SL. Though we don't have very good quality roads around here, so it must be the high rolling resistance which is slowing me down.

Very Well explained! Although your calculations are a bit too optimistic in my opinon: 1. You completly ignored drivetrain efficiency, which is a lot worse in velomobiles than in road bikes. In a Velomobile it is not uncommon to lose 10-20W due to drivetrain inefficienies, even at low speeds. 2. You treat the coefficient of drag as a constant value, even though it's not. Especially for low drag bodies, the cd is not constant. It may vary more than 20 % within the typical velomobile speed range, with higher speeds usually meaning lower cd. This means that the power numbers you calculated for lower speeds are too low. I personally also believe that the assumption of a cd of 0.08 is too optimistic, especially for a velomobile with holes for headlights and mirrors (as shown in the video). While I haven't heard of anyone ridging (avg) close to 40km/h at 100W in a velomobile on public roads, I myself (and many others) have ridden 40km/h on a road bike at lower than 300 W. 3. Your road bike power numbers can't be compared to your velomobile power numbers in everyday use. You can't expect to average close to 50km/h @ 150 W in a velomobile in everyday use. Power in a velomobile is highly dependent on road surface (rolling resistance is relatively high compared to road bikes) and number of accelerations. This is because the energy to create the momentum is a lot bigger compared to a road bike (due to the higher speed). There are even more aspects to this power discussion. All in all velomobiles are still clearly superior to road bikes in most scenarios! It's just not as easy as one might think from watching this video.

Good video! Nice, clear and calm voice! You notice that there have been pros involved!!!! I myself own a A7 and YES, velomobiles are a different "world"!

One of the best videos I have seen in a long time.

If these were cheaper omg I’m 14 so can’t afford one but pulling up to school in this would be so cool

Excellent explanation of the benefits of velomobiles vs cars when it comes to energy consumption. It should be noted that the tires are always a compromise between rolling resistance and puncture resistance. So you would get about twice the rolling resistance if using “puncture proof” tires instead of the tires preferred for fast velomobiles. Something else we should think of is to stop using the dimensionless Cd, we should instead use CdA, the Cd multiplied with frontal area. Then comparison of air drag would be much easier.

Very interesting!

Thank you for not adding music to the video.

WOW!! Great video - very informative !

Parabéns pela excelente resumida e objetiva explanação!

Very interesting video.

very interesting video, its dont adress weight and how gaining of speed can make driving bit hard. Also for normal cyclist watt outputt is bit esoteric since wattmetters are bit outside of normal measuring. How much wider would have to be velo if its designed around 26" front wheels?

Wow. The physics explanation really makes this video stand out.

Terrific video. I am amazed at some of the speeds I see on many YT vids of various velomobiles. I can manage 28km average on a 80km ride in a WAW. I guess I could do better if I had different tires but I have yet (10,000km) to fix a flat on our rough debris covered roads and that is worth a lot more than a bit more speed. Schwalbe Marathon Plus seem impervious to almost anything. Again, great informative video! 🇨🇦

Awesome presentation, just wish it went longer. Informative and enjoyable..

Sehr gut!

Considering the rolling resistance being that important, could you please explain the setup of the Milan shown here? What are the best tires that are available atm? And how important is tubeless?

Those numbers are much better than my quest. And so much more better than my alleweder A1 snr 5. I remember going with a friend to yearly maintenance, he with his quest and me with my alleweder (alligt and velomobiel where neighbours then). Due to some reasons I couldn't get the alleweder past 25km/h at about 50km distance, and I was almost crying. Then my friend offered me a ride in his quest and I was happily going over 40, until we swapped back (my muscles could push more). This was a temporary problem and that's why it needed to go to Alligt for checkup. But to be clear: that alleweder was way faster than my alligt modern which felt way faster than any bend rider. And with faster I of course mean: the resistance was low enough that I could increase my speed a bit for extended distances, like 700km in a weekend. Even mountains were more easy despite the 20kg extra, but that was because I could also slow bike with a trike. But I remember together with my friend that we were always lubing and trying to keep the rolling resistance as low as possible. On the quest I've tried so many tires. But still 67km/h was my max in the quest, and that was definitely a 1kW burst. (Since I stopped biking I try to do HIT bursts at the gym and that thing tells me I did 1kW for a few seconds, and when I did the 67km/h I was definitely trained) While wim schermer optimized his quest and he did more than 60km/h average at an hour trial at an age of 65? But nice video! Finally some great comparisons.

I liked this video, but it would have been nice to see the rolling resistance *added* to the wind resistance on the chart, to better visualize a more complete comparison of efficiency between the Milan and the road bike.

how do recumbents with an aerodynamic rear storage box compare to this? seems like the best of both worlds to me. not as sweaty, 2 wheels only so it can lean into the corners (fun), and probably still much-much faster than a lycra wearing roadie

Thank you, verry well explained. Now I know, why Schwalbe Marathon Plus on a WAW are not the greatest choice. ;-)

Could you do a video about hills and their effect on a velomobile

视频做的不错 我在b站翻译发布了 国内躺车相关视频太少了 感谢作者分享

Finally a video I can show around when I get asked 'why?!?!'.

This has me thinking about a combination of the Velocycle and an E-Bike

How many watts can one achieve in a recumbent? Is the difference big compared to an upright one?

And a velomobile keeps the rain off

They indeed are a different world as long as the road is even, or goes slightly downhill. But what about roads in f.i. upper bavaria, where you have many narrow roads and quite steep hills to climb. You have to gain all the power out of your upper legs and can't use your body weight for peddaling. I have a recumbent bike and going straight is a blast, whereas climping uphill for longer distances is brutal.

geweldig : de intro reklame is van ... wij kopen auto's ;)

Very interesting! (in contrast to my comment)

Now what if you would add golf ball dimples to the body of the velomobile?

There is some discrepancy within the video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-gKsGS1zcNsM.html there it says 93W @ 60km/h. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-gKsGS1zcNsM.html there one can read ~230W @ 60km/h. Update: The latter (the graph) is **total power needed** (not only for air resistance, but also rolling resistance). ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-gKsGS1zcNsM.html there one can see the part of that rolling resistance, so that explains it (there is no discrepancy).

Interesting and well explained. But you forget one big point: the world is mostly not flat! I'll have an elevation of about 500 to 1500m for every 100km around and into my city. And that's the deciding criteria to not use my velomobile more than a few time a year...

Jan I am wondering why you are not returning my phone calls ? Can you explain to your viewers what is happening to me and my velomobile?

If it could go 100kmh I would consider it for going to work (which is about an hour from where I live) - assuming it could be electrified. But for going to the store to buy groceries, I'm afraid someone would steal it off the parking lot. It would also need a lot more visibility to go on a highway - such as very high visibility strobe lights - otherwise cars don't notice and you lose your life in an accident. As it is, the applications are too limitted for everyday commuting.

For a complete picture, one needs an analysis of climbing speeds for a bike vs a velo.

What would help the credibility of the video would be how the drag coefficient of 0.08 was determined.

Werden velomobile staatlich finanziell gefördert?

Naja , die Werte mögen auf ner idealen Straße stimmen, aber auf realen Straßen ist der Rowi doch was höher.

90 km/h rolling at -2% grade !

The theory and the formulas are correct and nicely explained. The cd value (0,08 ) for Milan SL however is not realistic at all.. If it was true the Milan Sl could win all the races with a weak driver (just do the calculations) . This is not happening however, and people need much more power to ride fast. Please stop using this value and make it more realistic. This value is calculated from wind-tunnel results, but experts know this value is not what you have in real life on the road. We have done many test on public roads with Watt meters, Values can vary a lot with weather conditions and road surface. With many test you can calculate a real life Cd value for a velomobile. These values are more in the region of 0,2.

0:40 not 4,5-times bigger front-area, but 5,5-times bigger... I hope, you are otherwise stronger in arithmetics...

It's the price that makes it unaffordable, if you made one for 2000 pounds it would be fine

ein Audi A2 😀

Also consider that car has in average 1.5 passengers, so it is slightly better per passenger than per all passengers. But still cars suck :)

：００

Trouble though is that the world is not flat. Downhill, a velomobile is too fast. Uphill, very, very, very slow.

what junk