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4/06/2021 10:55:00 AM
Figured I'd address these issues since they were definitely things we considered. Ultimately, we decided against many optimizations because we wanted to repurpose more of what we had, and the benefits were way smaller than you'd assume.
First off, if you do the math, I think you might not be recognizing how small those weight contributions are compared to two humans, food, water and gear. We estimated that upgrading bike and panels (to within affordable limits) would only change the total weight by \~6%. And that mostly only matters on hills and since we implemented regenerative braking we get back some of that weight on the downhill anyway. But we didn't want to buy a new fancy bike, so we decided to work with what we had. Plus as it turns out, a sturdy old bike with a lower center of gravity is really nice when towing.
For the panels, I agree I'd totally want more power out of them, but the materials were constraints handed by life, and in the end there's only so much battery needed for how far we plan to go per day. Also, because it's charging while we are moving we have to deal with variable voltage anyway so some controller is needed. Ideally, we'd have a little more voltage to up the efficiency of the step-up and we might update someday as these panels are already a few years old and will degrade before long.
I'd be all for a lighter design of course, but your suggestions boil down to "why didn't you spend more money and buy more new things?" That's not what I'm about personally. If you had a clever idea about how to do more with what we have, I'd be all ears. (also, just wanted to remind you that a human is writing this and your first post was totally rude and unhelpful. I know it can be easy to forget on this website.)
PS: I'll update the post to address your comments. You are right that those things could make it slicker, it's just less important than you'd think.