Louisa Swaden

🏍️ Biker | Thinker | Storyteller
🎥 Reels on mindset & meaning
📖 Author of The Stoic Rider - out 9 August
🔗

[Louisa Swaden @Existentialbike]

Book Launch Alert! My first book, The Stoic Rider will officially launch on 9th August at Pendine Museum of Land Speed! Where it began. I'll be talking about racing on the sands and at Bonneville: 'From Sand to Salt: A Story of Speed, Stillness, and Saying Yes' Do come. #CofGâr

[Louisa Swaden @Existentialbike]

Subscribe to What Is Stoicism? 🌷 https://t.co/T5xzu8jxEX

[Louisa Swaden @Existentialbike]

Where Our Perspectives Come From (and Why Changing Them Is So Hard) https://t.co/f3I43ctIWT

[Louisa Swaden @Existentialbike]

Finally! a follow up to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Lessons in stoicism weaved with motorcycling memoirs and science. For anyone who has ever ponderered on the best way to navigate life. Bike optional. Signed copies at: https://t.co/6XTxDO2D9R

[Louisa Swaden @Existentialbike]

Well I finally made it! I’m a collector card! So chuffed to be two dimensional 😂. Thank you @WRWRApp

[Louisa Swaden @Existentialbike]

Happy birthday Mr Spock!
Live long and prosper my boy.

[Louisa Swaden @Existentialbike]

The road doesn’t reward appearances, it rewards endurance. It’s the ability to keep moving forward – eyes open, heart steady – even when every part of you wants to stop. #thestoicrider #motorcycle #stoic
https://t.co/fC4VhVJbup

[Louisa Swaden @Existentialbike]

Check your mirrors. Your ego is like a monkey with a wrench. Useful if tamed, highly dangerous if not. Never to be trusted. Read why on my latest blog: https://t.co/vxh2LeBVa2 #thestoicrider #motorcycle #stoic #motorcyclephilosophy #ego

[Louisa Swaden @Existentialbike]

“Virtue isn’t about being perfect. It��s about noticing when you haven’t been – and choosing again.” ✨
👉 Read more: https://t.co/24YpIQYplV
#TheStoicRider #Stoicism #Motorcycling #LifeLessons #RideWithVirtue

[Louisa Swaden @Existentialbike]

Where you look is where you go.
True on a bike. True in life.
Here’s why it changed everything for me 👉 https://t.co/5JkViq23cT

[Louisa Swaden @Existentialbike]

My latest reel in the Stoic Rider series. Amor Fati. Loving your fate. Not just the good stuff, but all of it. https://t.co/8CcmF8rifV

[Louisa Swaden @Existentialbike]

Amor Fati. Love your fate. Find purpose and value in every experience, even those that seem negative or undesirable. That is within your control. #thestoicrider #amorfati

[Louisa Swaden @Existentialbike]

I’m thrilled to announce that THE STOIC RIDER — my new book weaving together philosophy, mindset, and motorcycling — will launch on 9th August at the Museum of Land Speed in Pendine, Wales.
Come for the talk and leave with the book 😊. See you there. #thestoicrider #Booklaunch

[Louisa Swaden @Existentialbike]

🚀 Big news! I’m writing my book "Where You Look is Where You Go" All about adventure, risk and living fully. Stay tuned for updates! 🏍️🔥
👉 https://t.co/4EAOXvkq11
#AmWriting #AdventureAwaits #MotorcycleLife #FearlessLiving

[Louisa Swaden @Existentialbike]

Happy New Year people and creatures of planet earth! Hope it’s a good one. Do at least one thing that scares the sh*t out of you!

[Dr. Andy Palmer @AndyatAuto]

Having read Rowan Atkinson’s article and its “fact check counter” in the Guardian attacking and supporting electric vehicles, I came away feeling particularly bemused by the EV lobby's hatred of alternative forms of propulsion and visa-versa - and I say so as someone who has been dubbed by the media as the ‘Godfather of Electric Cars’. 

No solution is perfect and all solutions have side effects. After all, each technology is at a different stage of maturity. When I started development of the Nissan LEAF, arguably the world's first mass EV, the vast majority of public commentary was negative. With that in mind, let us remember that ‘green legislation’ is trying to solve the blight of Co2 emissions and not particulates; the more critical of which are now brake and tyre dust.

It is an inescapable truth that EV’s produce Co2 in their manufacturing. The only reliable reference data we have is the Volvo analysis that suggests an EV produces about 70% more than an equivalent ICE. The Co2 use in running an EV depends on the source of charging electricity, but is cleaner than running an ICE. Over life, an EV’s total footprint will be less than that of a conventional ICE.

But there are alternatives, notably and importantly, now validated by the EU in their interpretation of “zero carbon”. Today there are three major alternatives:

1) Fuel Cell 
2) Combustion of hydrogen 
3) Combustion of synthetic fuels or E-fuels 

Each have advantages and disadvantages; all are an improvement over current state.

Combustion of hydrogen or hot hydrogen is interesting for, heavy goods vehicles, as an example. It uses about 80% carry-over ICE parts and the resultant tail pipe emission is water.  The advantage verses EV is lower manufacturing Co2 and virtually no Co2 in operation. The disadvantage is the sourcing and cost of green hydrogen and a small amount of NoX produced. 

Combustion of synthetic fuel will become better understood from 2026 as it powers F1. Synthetic fuel takes Co2 from the atmosphere, converts it to gasoline and then burns it in a combustion process - resulting in net zero carbon use. The disadvantage is the maturity and sustainability of the fuels' manufacturing process and the fact that you have tail-pipe emissions, albeit at the level of Euro7.

The EV haters, hydrogen haters, e-fuel haters need to acknowledge that no one solution is the final solution.   When government pick winners they always fail. Best solutions come from running and allowing many solutions; allowing them to compete and letting the end consumer pick the winner or winners. Darwinism, if you will. 

What I’d like to make clear is that any significant improvement in Co2 consumption is a good improvement. We do not have the technology to produce totally net zero carbon cars today or in the foreseeable future, but we can see ways of significantly reducing the carbon consumption in multiple technologies. Rather than dismissing one technology verses another, I advocate “the engineer's” approach of acknowledging the imperfection of every solution and continuing the improvement/ kaizen of each over time. 

There are more alternative solutions ahead of us, that are unknown today; that is the nature of engineering. Let’s not dismiss any of the alternatives which accelerate the journey to net zero carbon travel.

[Louisa Swaden @Existentialbike]

“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” — Eleanor Roosevelt

[Louisa Swaden @Existentialbike]

It’s time I gave something back to the planet. In July I’ll be riding in Namibia on a motorbike and then giving it away to a Park Ranger. The bike I give will be used to directly help combat illegal poaching. Please support me! https://t.co/C2umMpVHU0 #stoppoaching #savetheplanet

[Louisa Swaden @Existentialbike]

@WilliamShatner Great! Trying to raise money to buy a motorbike to ride to Namibia tp help park Rangers stop poaching our endangered species. Average day. Thanks for asking! https://t.co/C2umMpVHU0

[Buitengebieden @buitengebieden]

The landing.. 😊 https://t.co/JeqTtSnUCF