They offered grandiose plans for an electric and hybrid motorcycle back in 2001-2003. Boy I wish I took screenshots.
Today? They seem to manufacture electric engines. And their vehicular ambitions? well maybe digging up in the web site can tell of anything. I gave up trying years ago. I was enthusiastic, writing them emails and always checking their progress. And in the end pretty disappointed by empty promises.
For me eCycle became the poster child of this scourge of modern marketing called vaporware. Plain and simple. I asked them in 2001 about their motorcycle, and even asked why in the hell they needed to make the critical parts custom. Those critical parts where the battery bay and the electric engine/generator (from what I recall). Wouldn't one be able to find what they need for an effing motorcycle in any regular dealership, and simply modify/convert an existing design, and reuse the critical parts?
The reply I got was a staunch: "Because it needs to be so!".
In 2003 if I recall again they announced "trials" for the hybrid bike (the pure electric motorcycle was by then defunct). The conditions were so not customer friendly: Put down 6K, then pick up the puppy and play with it at your own risks, with no service, no warranty and no responsibility if it causes death and injury.
In the end they seem to have found a niche and finally product parts for the electric transportation industry. But it took a mere decade, almost.
Another vaporware example is the REEVU motorcycle helmet: Still waiting about 5 years for this glorious head contraption which is supposed to have a rear vision mirror built-in...
What sucks the most is I wasn't counting on some rear vision besides the regular side mirrors on my motorcycle, but hoping to have that helmet on when a cutie would ride behind me with an open shirt.
Damn!!!
Oh well they dashed my dreams of lowering my stress level and increasing my life expectancy while riding my favorite vehicle.
Their glorious site is here http://www.reevu.com/. Like bigfoot report to me if you see one of those rarities!!!
My whole point in those 2 examples? Sometimes one single solitary custom detail (either an engine or a mirror) can derail a promising project into vaporware territory. And those are not pie in the sky products. I believe the motorcycle has been around for more than a mere century now, and the motorcycle helmet for pretty much as long...
Scorn, frustration and laughing will ensue if a project becomes a vaporware. That is quite shameful...
So this is not what I want for this project!!! Therefore my first motto will be:
If trying to do something, first see if someone else already does it!!!
This is actually taken from a well known Computer Science mantra. Reuse, simplify, Refactor... and repeat endlessly until the complexity of what one tries to accomplish is manageable.
Yes I am a programmer and how I approach everything here will be influenced by my entire training in dealing with complex endeavors and somehow tackling them for a living.
Liquid hydrogen tanks? Maybe ask BMW
Liquid Oxygen tanks? countless vendors and providers, some of them for the aerospace industry
Mesh for the body? From India to China to the US there are a lot of them, some making tubes out of composites and offering services to weld them too.
Control panel, software etc...? Ditto...
One can look at our world of complex products and delivery routes not stretching thousands of miles and wonder why all this wouldn't be leveraged to accomplish something in fact simpler than a commercial jet.
This is why I believe I can find all I need off the shelf...
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