Maybe someone will indulge an ignorant question: Is there any reason someone couldn't make a cargo E-bike powered by a car-battery, or a marine-battery?
Of course regular E-bikes need a battery with a slick form factor, but a longtail or a bakfiets could fit a big rectangular box somewhere in the cargo space. Are there electrical engineering reasons why I've never seen this done?
You can use regular'car' batteries. The problem is only in the amount of power they provide by weight. Lead acid batteries can only deliver about 15-20% of their full power (these are example numbers not precise.)
So let's say you can go full speed but only for ten minutes, then slower and slower.
Lithium batteries can provide about 80% of their full power, so same vehicle as above, but 60 minutes of full power.
There are of course lots of other pros and cons to available batteries.($$$)
But range to weight, is the most basic.
Atomic zombie will sell you plans for one. He really needs to update his plans, some cool bike plans, but all look 20 years old and obviously are missing advancements from since then.
I’m surprised and slightly disappointed that my memories don’t bring up a clear answer to this.
The hardest problems I’ve faced were never exactly solved, just moved past or muddled through. Things like loss of close friends and family, acknowledging my own limitations, and accepting the inertia of flawed institutions.
Any problem that eventually found a solution I remember as feeling relatively simple in retrospect.
Agreed on the technical problems- the "hard" problems in my career have been massive degradations/failures with no error messages, which are typically solved with liberal application of strace, gdb/pdb, iproute2/ss and Wireshark. Once you find the smoking gun in the kernel or on the wire then it becomes simple again.
I guess the hardest problems I've ever "solved" (mitigated) were mental (depression/anxiety/impostor syndrome). But those aren't one and done happy endings- they're a bundle of general anxieties that are never fully resolved. You just learn how to manage.
Finding a solvable hard problem is itself very difficult. If the problem is within your confort zone, you will never feel that is an hard problem. If it is too far from your confort zone you will not be able to solve it.
A lot of colleges and churches will lend people suit jackets and or leather shoes for job interviews. That really helps people, just make sure they feel comfortable and warm/cool enough and don't smell bad for job interview.
Basic simple cheap outdoor/indoor clothing that is suitable for job interviews. See if you can find it at goodwill. Merino sweater, patagonia jacket or old wool suit, glasses, toothbrush, good backpack, from thrift store.
I wrote up a very rough summary/set of notes. Please excuse all the errors in punctuation, spelling, and formatting. Thought it might be helpful for people who want to skim, as the whole thing is more-or-less a book.
Of course regular E-bikes need a battery with a slick form factor, but a longtail or a bakfiets could fit a big rectangular box somewhere in the cargo space. Are there electrical engineering reasons why I've never seen this done?