will the Empulse work for me?

[Richard230]

For whatever it is worth, the day before my 2008 EMS GPR-S with its Etek-RT motor and 60V, 20 cell, 50Ah Hi Power battery system burnt up its BMS, I was able to ride up a 6% grade freeway for several miles at a speed of 55 mph, which I held all the way to the top of the hill. Coincidentally, that was exactly the same speed that my 1968 Yamaha 350 was able to climb that hill in top gear at full throttle.

Unfortunately, I wouldn't dare try that with my current 2010 EMS GPR-S D&D sepex motor and its 72V, 24 cell, 50Ah Hi Power battery version. It would top out at 45 mph and would probably catch on fire before it reached the top of the hill. No progress there. I really need a Brammo 10.0.   

[badamsfx]

Would it be possible to use a Garmin-type GPS unit to record your commute to tell us total elevation gain and moving average speed? 

Sorry for the incredibly slow response but I've been buried at work since starting a new job. I was finally able to borrow a gps unit. I manually recorded readings at roughly the top and bottom of the three big hills I go over and generated the calculations below. I used rise over run times 100 to determine grade and came up with the following:

            distance      grade
            ---------      ------
leg 1     2.4 miles    5.29%
            2.1 miles    2.93%
            1.6 miles    3.96%
leg 2     4.9 miles    2.74%
            1.2 miles    2.81%
              1 mile      3.22%

After this I found out there is a gps app for the iPhone so I bought that and recorded the trip as a kmz file. The kmz file is here and will download automatically when you click the link:

https://files.me.com/badamsfx/tlktha

I don't know how to access the elevation information in the kmz file but I found I could open it in Google Earth to see the path. Here is the summary information from the kmz file:

Date:   Jan 27, 2011 10:31 am
Distance: 60.7 miles
Elapsed Time: 1:01:53
Avg Speed: 58.8 mph
Max Speed:    84.2 mph
Avg Pace:   01' 01" per mile
Min Altitude:   0 ft
Max Altitude:   790 ft
Start Location:   
    Latitude:    34.277959º N
    Longitude:   119.192524º W
End Location:   
    Latitude:    34.024962º N
    Longitude:   118.389711º W


I don't know how much to trust these figure because I notice big discrepancies between the various devices. For instance the dedicated GPS unit put my max elevation at 1105 ft but the iPhone app says 790 ft. Also when I pulled over to the side of the road to write down the GPS info I noticed the altitude swinging wildly by as much as 30 feet as I sat there in one place. The iPhone app claimed the following summaries:

Leg 1 (heading in to work)
Total Ascent 1,065 ft
Total Descent 1,027 ft
Max Pos Gradient 13.3%
Max Neg Gradient -12.1%

Leg 2 (heading home)
Total Ascent 1,130 ft
Total Descent 1,038 ft
Max Pos Gradient 6.2%
Max Neg Gradient -6.5%

Big discrepancies again, especially in the grade measurement. I made a composite image of the graphics from the iPhone program which is sorta cool and it's here (will autodownload):

files.me.com/badamsfx/pxhjuy

So in the end I guess all I can say is these are ballpark figures. I have an alternate route which would be to take Pacific Coast Highway which has much less hillage. I'll see what sort of figures the iPhone app gives me for that trip. A significant thing BrammoBrian said is that the weight the bike has to carry will have an impact on its range so it would be cool if getting an electric motorcycle was what finally made me lose the extra weight I've been needing to lose for years!