_haha_oh_wow_Forget electric bikes, Kawasaki is building an electric horse for actual production
pomegranatefernMy first reaction: LOL. LMAO, even. My second reaction: … Wait, this could actually be really useful if it’s actually functional and affordable though.
I’m not holding my breath, but like, in theory this could actually be really good?
artyomYeah people still use horses in many places where any wheeled or even tracked vehicle can’t go. It’s pretty smart.
Will this be better than a horse though? You don’t have to charge a horse, just feed it and water it (on the other hand, you can’t repair a horse like you can a machine).
I think it depends, but considering pure practicality, horses tend to require a fair amount of pasture and food that an electric “horse” wouldn’t. You can’t just leave a horse in a garage for a few months.
LOL a horse is a living creature. It can be temperamental or ill and needs a barn and you have to clean it’s shit. This will absolutely be better.
You can eat a horse. If it comes to it.
In the early 1900s, horses were the original “mobile emissions” source of pollution, causing great consternation to anyone that happened to be in their wake at the wrong time. Yes, we have troughs that catch horse poo now, but still doesn’t perfectly mitigate the problem specific to horses.
And then there’s the issue of horses on surfaces: on dirt, their weight cause erosion. On pavement, they can injure their hooves, plus the sound of horseshoes at full gallop on asphalt must be deafening.
(I promise this isn’t a subtoot about automobile environmental impacts)
As an aside, in wilderness in America, where there is the most protection for the environment and anything mechanized (like bicycles) are prohibited, it is a bizarre historical exception that horse riding is permitted, in spite of the obvious degradation caused by trampling over everything. Wilderness is meant to be a nature-first place, but somehow it’s actually horseriders-first, then nature.
on dirt, their weight cause erosion. On pavement, they can injure their hooves
These problems would equally apply to the ‘electric horse’, would they not?
In the same way that torque/current-limited ebikes will cause less soil erosion in national parks – case in point, Tahoe National Forest in California now explicitly permits Class 1 ebikes on trails, once they had enough data to support that assertion – I would expect that an electric horse could also be tuned to limit its acceleration on tricky surfaces.
DasusUh, you could technically have this in an apartment building, depending on the type of storage / parking available. There’s gated parking places in some apartments nearby me and if this fit through the door, you could technically keep it in the bikeshed, I guess.
But a horse? Nah, a horse needs shelter from the weather, food, cleaning, medical attention. Also they’re brittle af. If a horse breaks its leg, it’s still more or less the only thing to do to put it down. Perhaps if you’re obscenely wealthy you could try and have all sorts physical therapy devices and just supports designed for them and have them held up each night while sleeping or something but I still don’t know whether it’s even possible.
Oh, yeah, apparently they can survive minor breaks with modern veterinary care, but above the knee or serious, like a compound fracture and the main go-to is still euthanasia.
Anyway yeah horses are expensive af and take a lot of caring. Whatever this thing costs the cost of use should be waaaay cheaper than a horse. And horses aren’t cheap to get either.