> I hope this article will inspire people to look at e-bikes as potentially commuter car replacement, to send Bosch and other e-bike technology manufacturers a message that if they won’t supply what people need that they are going to have to live with people hacking their stuff and to get people to comment on the way the thing works, what they would do with it and how it could be improved or how I could work better/safer on stuff like this.
i bought a Onewheel-XR+ a few months ago and then found a lot of reddit threads about how the mfg DRM'd the controllers to prevent people from adding longer range batteries and buildig their own apps to do diagnoatics over bluetooth. they sent cease/desists to several prominent modders.
it's super sad. the modding community was very vibrant until they kneecapped it via firmware updates.
their android app is bloated 42MB crap with social features that requires an internet connection and google's framework to connect over bluetooth to the board under your feet to read battery levels, change riding modes, control headlights, etc. previously there were third party apps < 1mb that could be used offline for this, until they crippled everything via firmware updates.
now they released their new GT boards a month ago with extended range (and much heavier). the new Pint GT looks really compelling, so really torn about giving these sh*theads more of my money :(
LOL I built the first version of their android app back in the day. Can't speak to why they've been going after modders, but it's likely from a liability / legal standpoint. At the end of the day I still love their products and currently own an XR (may upgrade to a GT next spring!).
At least for the earlier versions all the info was published as standard BLE descriptors, so building a third party lightweight app for that is fairly straight forward. Not sure what they're doing these days, but if you wanted to investigate LightBlue is a great app for digging into BLE devices ;)
Is it really liability? Because I really doubt that. People modify vehicles all the time and it causes unsafe driving that can lead to collisions. The car manufacturer doesn't get sued because somebody made a stupid change. Maybe it could be a super minor thing they use as an excuse to prevent modding, but I think the actual answer is what the other commenter mentioned. They don't want their own product competing with their newer products.
Someone won't buy their new product if they can just mod their existing product to get the same capabilities their new product gives.
See the thing is; I think a genuine company would encourage a modding community rather than discourage it. This example may not apply, but take a videogame like Minecraft. They didn't have modding support built into the game but people hacked the game and built in their own modding support on top of it. This then allowed a huge amount of people to be able to much more easily mod the game using a modding framework. The game is hugely moddable on both the client side and server side. It was so successful that there are many companies that employ multiple people to run their Minecraft servers and code minigames for them. The game likely wouldn't have taken off as much as it did without these modding capabilities that Mojang let go on.
I feel like more companies need to take this approach where they allow or even encourage modding. It brings more people to the platform. Especially in such a new market, making anti-consumer business decisions just seems like a good way to start your companies slow death.
Just last night I was trying to establish a connection via a BLE handshake and it seems like with the newer boards you have to exchange tokens you get from their web service. A bit of a PITA especially when they ban your IP from making requests because you spammed them too much.
It's pretty insane how locked down their software is. I was looking into building a battery status app for the Garmin Fenix watches that connected directly to the board over bluetooth, but you need to fetch a key from their api with a carefully crafted request that is used to re-authenticate with the board every few seconds. If you mess up the API call they IP ban you and warn you of API abuse.
I love my Pint and was excited to also pick up the XR replacement once it launches. But not anymore, Future Motion will never get another dime from me. Please don't support them.
Awesome project Jacques! I saw a comment of yours on an article a day or two ago and was hoping to see this pop up soon.
I've found the most difficult thing about riding an e-bike is the other motorists have no idea how to react to you. You're not really a regular bicycle anymore due to your speed, but you're also not a motorcycle that deserves its own lane. I have at least one car turn in front of me almost every trip out just because they're misjudging my speed. I get honked and yelled at when on the road because folks get frustrated when I'm using the left-hand side of the right-turn lane as a bike path.
Sidewalks/bike paths tend to be a lot less safe in residential areas as well, since cars coming out of their driveways really don't expect an e-bike to come rolling through. I've learned to dramatically reduce speed in areas like this.
Aside from those things, I love it! I ride the e-bike whenever I'm going somewhere in range (I live in Florida so things tend to be spread out) and the weather permits. My bike gets about 80km which is more than enough for anyplace I want to go on a bicycle anyway.
> but you're also not a motorcycle that deserves its own lane. I have at least one car turn in front of me almost every trip out just because they're misjudging my speed. I get honked and yelled at when on the road because folks get frustrated when I'm using the left-hand side of the right-turn lane as a bike path.
Cycling is my primary mode of transportation, and I've found a couple things help with this:
1. Take the lane any time there's a chance of conflict such as a right hook, and when there is not enough space for a car to safely pass [1][2]
2. Use a headlight all the time, even during the day. This is what motorcyclists do, and when I made this change I noted a major drop in the number of drivers that turn without noticing me.
I totally agree with this. I also find it’s best to take the lane in urban traffic where you’re not impeding the flow of traffic. The people I see getting in trouble/hurt are those (curiously, largely boomers) who insist on weaving around cars or moving up on the right without room. Just get in with the cars and move predictably.
In the USA the situation is much more risky than here.
I don't like riding in traffic mostly because drivers tend to have a short fuse for anything that isn't exactly at the limit, but on bike paths everything works just fine. The problem is that s-pedelecs are technically lumped in with the scooters, even though there is no throttle and there is absolutely no way you are going to sustain 40 Kph+ for anything but a very short period. But they're still pretty new and little by little municipalities are adapting and allowing s-pedelecs to use the bike lanes. What helps is that s-pedelec riders are extremely defensive. In town I simply reduce the assist to 'eco' and cycle with the rest of the bikes, and on the intercity bike paths I go as fast I conditions allow, typically 35 to 38 or so. On a longer trip that averages out to 33 to 35 Kph, which means a 1 hour car trip turns into a 2 hour bike trip, which is acceptable (and never traffic jams, which can turn that 1 hour car trip into a three hour car trip!).
I have an e-bike and I disagree with your assertions. I'm a fat asthmatic and I have absolutely no problem maintaining 40kph for long stretches of time on my bike. The fastest I've done on it (on a large hill but still) is 42.7MPH (~68Kph). Average cruising speed on flat land can easily be 30-33mph(48-53kph). Not all e-bikes are capable of this, but they are certainly not some kind of rare expensive impossibility - mine was less than 3000 USD.
My point is that you should be more ingenuous with your assertions of what the capabilities of these bikes are when communicating with people about it. Nothing makes people more skeptical than reading things that are just plain false from an advocate.
Very cool project. I'm currently evaluating whether I could commute 75km per day on a pedelec. In Switzerland there is a small bike manufacturer that makes long range pedelec : https://www.speedped.com/ (German only). It's very expensive though but the battery pack can be updated to something quite impressive.
Whatever you do in traffic, be very careful. I'm still driving a car and inner city traffic is basically slaloming between cyclists. If something goes wrong, only one of us will end up in hospital.
I do also ride my bike on weekends have have been riding a 650cc motorbike for 15+ years, so not at all against 2 wheels. It's just that most people on two wheels seem to have started very recently and they don't know how to behave.
As a cyclist I tend not to care so much about all the mistakes other people do. Realistically it's a very small percentage of people that are new in traffic, the problem is that you usually only see the mistakes people do. You will never see that cylist who changed their pace 20s ago to avoid you.
What has been shown is that people who travel by many different modes; cylists, pedestrian, motorcycle, car, bus etc, are usually much safer and better at navigating traffic. We are all still masters at judging people only based on feelings though that will probably never change.
> You're not really a regular bicycle anymore due to your speed…
The top speed (with assist) for class 1 & 2 e-bikes is well within the speed range of a regular bicycle. 15 MPH is considered a reasonable average speed for beginners, and 18-22 MPG is not out of the question with training. I've ridden my own e-bike past 20 MPH with no assist on occasion, and being a foldable model designed for electric assist it has a higher mass, smaller (20") wheel radius, higher rolling resistance (due to low-pressure 3-4" tires), and lower gearing than your typical non-electric commuter bike.
> … but you're also not a motorcycle that deserves its own lane.
Bicycles should have their own lane, whether electric or not, regardless of speed. It's not safe to share the lane with another vehicle.
I've tried driving over the top of the motor on this bike and it is almost impossible. I'm a pretty strong cyclist and I never managed more than 48 kph and that only very briefly. The drag is insane.
Cars misjudging the speed of oncoming bicycles is a huge problem, even without pedal assist. I have added significant length to my bike commute to avoid places where cars turn across my path. I can take a 1% risk once in a while, but not twice a day.
You deserve your own lane, although the rules vary from state to state. Some states have FRAP (as far right as practicable), others (such as mine) say that a cyclist should take the lane. As a motorist, and cyclist, I cringe when I see a cyclist half-in and half-out of traffic. As a cyclist, I avoid streets with fast, congested car traffic altogether. Fortunately, my locale has a lot of alternatives for bikes, including some bike paths plus neighborhood streets.
When getting your motorcycle license here in Belgium they teach you to always take the lane. Ride 3/4 of the way in. If you give the car some space, they'll drive closer to you, try to pass and then get impatient & aggressive when they can't. If you take up all the space they'll usually just accept it.
Obviously rules for bicycles may be slightly different but more and more inner city roads here in EU are now clearly marked as bicycle friendly.
> You're not really a regular bicycle anymore due to your speed
I don't understand, ebikes are regulated and the assistance will top at 25kmh in most EU countries, which is a very average speed for a bike without assistance.
Unless you're talking about speed bikes, that can ride faster but are regulated like a motorcycle with license plate and can't ride on cycle paths. So it's just an electric motorcycle that looks like a bicycle.
E-bikes in the US require pressure on the pedals to avoid being classified as vehicles (they’re cycling assist devices). That said, many people have retrofitted those assist systems with garage modifications that remove the need to push the pedals or even add a digital “throttle”.
Illegal? Sure. Are they going to get charged for it? Probably not.
I just discovered electric bikes lately, and started going to the office on an ebike instead of subway!! I then discovered how dangerous this can get especially at the end of the day when my brain is tired!
I thought of stop riding bikes, but then chose to have a life insurance instead
Agreed, highly frustrating this. I found a way to make it work but it would have been a lot better if third party batteries could be supported by the system out-of-the-box without butchering a Bosch pack first.
Love it, glad to see you keep doing nice stuff, Jacques.
Also glad to see there are still real makers in the world. Makers do, period.
Another type of person would've asked for 10M of seed funding for "a revolutionary way to commute to work, target market: the whole world" and would've delivered nothing after 2 years of "working really hard on it".
> Another type of person would've asked for 10M of seed funding for "a revolutionary way to commute to work, target market: the whole world" and would've delivered nothing after 2 years of "working really hard on it".
... and yet another person would've bootstrapped a company off it :-)
There are alternatives that don’t involve DRM or Bosch at all.
I built our ebikes around regular bikes using a TSDZ2 torque sensing motor and an em3ev 52V battery. Total cost around 600$ + bike + tools. The battery is already assembled so no risk of setting your house on fire. The torque sensing makes it really natural (like having bionic legs), the whole thing has an open source firmware if you want to replace the Chinese made one (https://github.com/OpenSourceEBike/Color_LCD) and you can use any battery with it. With a 850Wh battery we get around 100km range.
There is also the cyber bike for which you can buy plans and build from scratch but that one is more of a motorcycle and you’ll probably need certification + insurance to use it legally.
The EU is large. Did you or anyone else by any chance do any research on EU countries with a fairly flexible certificate of conformity approval procedure for L1e-B/speed pedelecs?
I'm starting to research my options for a twice weekly 2*65km commute. Most of it is ideally suited for speed pedelecs, along a canal and an old railway converted to cycle highway. The commercial offerings don't suit my needs. I wouldn't really want to pay a lot of money for a DRM offering either. That would be different for a DRM free version with serviceable battery packs.
A lot of the problem would go away if the Bosch DRM could be broken in some way, or at least convinced to accept non-Bosch batteries...
We have a pretty good network of fire roads in the southern Los Padres National Forest.
Several times recently I have seen hunters and campers using E-Bikes to extend their range into the forest. From what I can tell they use a cargo trailer for gear as well as extra batteries.
It will be interesting to see what other uses being find for E-Bikes as ranges increase.
> From what I can tell they use a cargo trailer for gear as well as extra batteries.
This is the main reason if you might ever buy multiple ebikes in your household, buy a drivetrain brand that has generic, swappable batteries that can work on all your ebikes. Buying batteries is expensive (~$1,000 for Bosch).
For example, some ebikes don't have swappable batteries (either they're integrated or are a no-name brand).
The Bosch Powerpack, on the other hand, is ubiquitous and swappable. If I'm going on a long trip, I steal the battery from my other ebike and bring it along (I have a Surly Big Easy cargo bike and a Trek Verve+ 2. My SO also has a Verve+ 2).
Another benefit on buying ebikes with the same powertrain manufacturer is the battery lock can be keyed alike. It simplifies a lot.
(Oh, one last thing! If you go with Bosch, you can get the battery locks keyed alike to Abus U locks.)
If you can charge your batteries up to 60% when you store them for a longer time rather than 100%, then charge to 100% just before you need them. That will keep them around that much longer. Better still if you can avoid discharging them below 15% soc.
An added benefit for hunters is that deer aren't afraid of the sound of bikes. Similar to cars, they just don't care. It's much easier to approach a deer on bike than on foot.
These particular roads are also closed to normal vehicle traffic (autos and OHV).
I will be interested to see if E-Bikes end up being included in the motorized category in the future and therefore not allowed on these roads. There is some debate locally as to whether they should be allowed on normal trails which are already off-limits to motorized vehicles (but OK for standard bikes).
a friend does this for getting to fishing spots quicker from campsites. Sounds like an incredible idea if you've got the space for it, especially if you've got a large battery bank in your camper/vehicle for partial charges without having to turn an engine/generator on (I've got ~100amp hours of lithium battery in my truck camper, and I'd probably at least double that if I was gonna charge a bike every now and then)
Reading OPs own multiple mentions of live bomb, more than a little bit scary, "especially given where it is located" makes me nervous just looking at it!
Hopefully op says the casing trespa has enough protection so they can get off it it catches fire or the ali express balancer breaks. From what I've read managing the batteries is a big part of tesla's success.
So that’s 7kg extra for your 2150Wh, over the original 500Wh battery? So around 250Wh/kg?
I’ve been planning a velomobile that I can live out of, and I’ve been interested to observe that by the time you get to one kilowatt hour, I can’t find any Li-ion batteries at all: they’re all LiFePO₄. https://au.renogy.com/renogy-smart-lithium-iron-phosphate-ba... is then about 1280Wh (12.8V/100Ah) for 11.8kg, 110Wh/kg, around half the specific energy (though I haven’t excluded the weight of the controller electronics or any differences in casing). But I understand LiFePO₄ will live longer, and is generally safer (less prone to thermal runaway and whatnot).
I’m guessing you were going with Li-ion because you were working in the Bosch ecosystem (and potentially for weight as well), but do you happen to have any wisdom to offer about the differences between Li-ion and LiFePO₄?
Hi Jacques! A little late here. It's cool to see someone else spot welding! For the DC area, it's totally faster to commute and I took my daughter everywhere! Now we're in Philly and I use it for long ranges. I've built a bunch of these in various forms, my favorite is a big wheel scooter. It's my main commuter. Look up rivet nuts for securing to the frame! Was a big life saver.
One thing: After years of riding various bikes I've built, please for the love of everything, be careful at high speeds because I've discovered the weakest point of the bike is the C shaped thing at the end of the fork for the wheels. At super high speeds the bumps are rougher on the bike and will eventually pull it apart, even with mid motor power. It may not even come apart all the way, but spread open slightly. Maybe millimeters.
I've tried several bikes, offroad and everything. It won't happen now, but like at odometer 6000 or something. Every single time it fails there. I've had 3 bikes, various scooters, all fail that way. It means your wheel may eventually, suddenly come off at a high speed. I think the answer is a custom fork, but haven't gone there yet.
I'm jakecodes on twitter if you want to trade knowledge.
Hi Jake, I love this kind of response, all the armchair lawyering and other bs is just a huge distraction, there are exactly four comments in this whole thread including yours that are constructive. You mean the metal part joining the two sides of the fork? That's a great warning, I never thought of monitoring that bit in particular but now that you mention it that makes perfect sense, there is quite a bit of force on that joint.
I'll go and have a look at my bike right away and I'll keep a sharp eye on this as well.
And you've got one more follower in Twitter :)
Do you have any pictures of those failures? I'd love to see what they look like to get an idea of where an early warning might manifest itself.
I looked up the names for the parts of the fork: It's the part of the fork called the dropout that fails. Here's a picture of a dropout itself: https://i.stack.imgur.com/VZ8bO.jpg, not mine.
When it fails it may look exactly the same (you won't see anything wrong), if you take calipers to it, you'll notice the gap has widened. So measure it now and remeasure every once in a while. If it's changing you've got a problem.
OR you may be able to see it is visibly slightly wider, like more bowl shaped. It doesn't take much for the wheel to come off, it's very tight tolerances. I've never had one snap yet, but I've heard of other's whose dropouts have snapped.
You will notice it is starting to fail when you brake and the wheel feels like it is shifting ever so slightly. It might make a tiny little clink sound. Sometimes it will make the wheel clink around in the dropout when you go over bumps, since the tolerances are SO tight in that area.
It's not just stretching the C towards a straight line that happens, but also twisting at that area or flattening from side to side movement.
Ever since they failed on me a few times I've been riding less because it's a problem I have not solved yet. I reinforced them with 1/4 inch steel. Still it moved independently.
One other solution I've heard about to get bigger tires, they are often called "fat tires". That dampens the stress on the bike a lot. It also makes for a much smoother ride. But I've not done that yet since fat tires need space in the fork. I think a stronger fork and fat tires may totally solve the problem. Fat tires would be nice because it'll turn your bike into a nice smooth ride, and you know how rough the ride can be at that speed for that long.
While I've never seen/heard of this happening, I suppose it's possible. I'd chalk it up to 2 issues: 1) possibly not tightening the quick release skewers quite enough 2) cheaper aluminum dropouts on the suspension lowers. One solid option is to purchase a thru-axle fork and wheel. They're becoming pretty much the standard across the cycling/mtb industry and you can even find rigid steel options (https://surlybikes.com/parts/karate_monkey_fork). If you're replacing your fork, that'll also open up options to buy a larger rim & higher volume tire to absorb more impact. Generally speaking, thru axle forks are designed to take a lot of abuse, so you'd be hard pressed to overstress one in a commuting setting, even over a long period of time.
You can also try a bolt on hub/fork where you're actually tightening a hex nut to secure the dropouts on the axle—most older 10 speeds are in this vein. They're also typically steel which is always nice for reliability.
I electrified a Kona Unit last year as a car replacement and have put it through the ringer. If you like tinkering, I highly recommend poking around the forums on lunacycle.com.
This bike has the added benefit of being theft resistant - on the basis that it's too heavy for one person to lift. Seriously though, what does it weigh?
With a typical sized Dutch man, stopping from full speed is going to be a real test of the brakes...
For the same reason I don't like scooters on bike paths, I wouldn't want this sharing a bike path with me. When heavy fast vehicles and regular bikes collide, the regular biker usually suffers more.
About 35 to 36 Kg. Bike + rider is 105K, which is actually not that bad. Your typical parent+bike+two kids is a lot heavier, I've had my 'daddy bike' up to well over 130 Kg before one of the kids was old enough to ride by themselves.
Full speed to stop is pretty good too, I did a couple of e-brakes to see how the change of weight and COG affected the bike. Stopping distance is a bit longer, it doesn't kick out when braking hard in a corner more than it did before, and - not surprisingly ;) - it transfers a bit more weight to the front when you hit the brakes hard.
But compared to a scooter it is much lighter and compared to a normal e-bike it is only 5 Kg heavier (29 vs 35 Kg).
haha I'm more than that on my road bike and I'm stopping with rim brakes. This is incredibly impressive work; congratulations! Can't wait to see the update. I suspect you're going to be just fine on water ingress based on what the inside of the package looks like.
People steal cars and motorcycles that are heavier. If you leave it out and think it’s too heavy to be stolen you’re living in a much friendlier place than me, electronic transport isn’t even always sought after for personal gain.
Scooters are routinely thrown in the water around the world.
>stopping from full speed is going to be a real test of the brakes...
I'm sure it'll be fine if you stick some high end mountain biking disk brakes on there. I suspect you could also use the moter to bring it to a sharpish stop.
It's got large diameter hydraulic disc brakes, there clearly is a bit of a difference with the added battery weight but it stops just fine (still way faster than my 10 speed with rim brakes in spite of the much higher bike weight). The fat tires (2 1/4") also really help with that.
I am surprised velomobiles are never mentioned: they are much faster than traditional bicycles, have some protection from the weather and can be electric assisted too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velomobile
They are super dangerous too. Very low to the ground, nearly invisible from the perspective of a motorist and far harder to overtake with on narrow bike paths than regular bikes. We have a couple of them near here, also a few battery assisted ones. The velomobile would be an ideal vehicle if everybody rode one.
I haven’t yet ridden a velomobile (though I may purchase one soon and am planning on building one for riding round Australia and living out of for a year or so), but I’ve been riding a recumbent tricycle (Greenspeed GT3 Series II) since 2014, including various touring in Australia (Victoria and some South Australia), America (through California, and from St Louis to Philadelphia) and New Zealand (Auckland to Kaikoura¹).
People often assume that the trike is more dangerous than an upright bike because of being lower, and there is some truth in that aspect, but on the balance of things I consider and find it much safer than an upright bicycle. The increased width increases visibility again somewhat; the fact that the maximum width is at ground level rather than over a metre up means that you can’t ride in the gutter as bicyclists often do and have to be further out from the edge of the road, which makes you much more visually distinct (rather than blending in with the edge); the fact that you’re necessarily further from the kerb makes it so that in many places cars can’t sneak by you dangerously close and have to be more considerate in how they overtake; you the cyclist are far more aware of how traffic is flowing due to your posture (constantly beholding the world in front of you rather than craning your neck painfully from time to time, and with a mirror² in which you can also constantly monitor what’s coming up behind) and so can interact more usefully with it (which is a massive deal for safety). I always run at least one flag, and when heavily laden drape the back of one of my old hi-vis orange shirts over the back of my load. Combine all that with the inherent stability (which incidentally helps you to go in an actually straight line), the greater comfort, the low centre of gravity and a few other such factors, and I feel very significantly less safe when riding an upright bicycle (road or mountain), as I have a handful of times since getting my trike.
Recumbent bicycles (as you seem to be showing talking of in part) I have no experience with; they indeed have some notable problems for casual use, and are more suited for racing. When talking of velomobiles, make sure you’re considering their tri- or quadricycle basis, as distinct from two-wheeled speedliners which have a tendency to amplify some of the problems or hazards of recumbent bicycles even further. Of velomobiles in general compared with recumbents, I have heard some people reporting that traffic sometimes interacted with them more like a strange small car than like a strange bicycle, and that they felt slightly less safe.
—⁂—
¹ At Kaikoura just a couple of weeks ago I suffered unexpected and unexplained sidewall failure in my rear tyre, upon which I discovered that literally no one in the entire country stocks 349mm tyres—the national Schwalbe distributor, for example, doesn’t import anything below 20″. So instead of cycling the rest of the way to Christchurch I took a bus, and on returning to Australia last week equipped a spare I had, and I can buy more.
² On uprights, mirrors don’t tend to work well for lack of suitable attachment points and techniques, but on recumbent tricycles they work much better, and on recumbents in general mirrors are nigh essential as seeing behind otherwise takes leaning forwards out of your seat a fair way in order to twist your body enough to see behind adequately.
It's very much less convenient than a bicycle since it's bigger, less maneuverable, harder to get in/out and harder to "park".
Also, when commuting you don't need "fast". A bicycle or a regulated ebike are sufficient enough given the constraints you will encounter (lights, stops...).
What makes using (e)bike to commute awesome is not the speed per se, it's the reliability. You won't be stuck (= taking part) in traffic, so if on Monday you take 30 minutes to go to work, it will be the same each day of the week. No need to rush to +30kmh between lights.
By and by, enough cars will be equipped with enough driver assist that heavy cars that must be crashworthy at relatively high speeds will no longer be needed, much in the way active safety makes light high speed rail carriages possible. Then lightweight vehicles can come in to wider use. Imagine how road capacity would be increased by something like a lightweight one-seat series hybrid "bike" with an enclosing fairing. A lot of communities could be done in vehicles weighing 5-10% the weight of a car.
Yes, this is definitely a good point. There is an arms race like effect at work here, if you could de-escalate that lighter vehicles would be much better.
Awesome project and 500 km range is a cool achievement! Kudos to OP for all the effort and research that went into this.
I’ve run into the same issue that standard battery packs on eBikes are just not enough. The problem is not so much needing to do super long trips but if you forget to charge one day, you’re going to be stuck the next. Luckily it’s become more common for OEMs to offer dual battery setups with the piece of mind of extended range but also having a warranty! We own two cargo eBikes in the family and both have two Bosch batteries. Range varies from 80 to 200 miles depending on level of assist and is more than enough for our daily ~20 mile errands.
Finally, a constructive comment instead of a bunch of legal stuff and fantasy performance figures. Thank you very much, I'll look into this.
edit: Hm, the power supply looks to be a LiPo pack, the other two options are no longer available. But very nicely executed kit, now to find a way to power it from a wall socket.
That's what I did for a custom ~600Wh pack I made. From memory (that was ~3y ago) I've set the voltage to ~12V and amperage to 30A. If you weld super fast, you'll start to be rate limited by the capacitor charge rate, but then you can just slow down a bit and all is well. It seems like the creator of the project has since released this custom voltage regulator that you can hook to a server power supply:
This would be useful if you don't have a lab bench powersupply that can't provide 30A at 12V, and you're impatient. The website looks like their stuff is all in stock, so you shouldn't have a problem. Although you already built your pack so it might be too late. :)
> I traced it down to the several KA welding pulse that caused the ground fault interruptor to be EMP’d. Running the welder without ground took care of that.
That's a solution, I suppose. Not one that I would pursue, but I'm glad the author got the pack welded without any injury.
I know my way around electrical stuff, not having ground on the welder was ok given the work place setup, but agreed that if you are unsure about the possible consequences that you shouldn't do that.
Ironically, the only time I ever really got zapped was when I was connecting a scope to what I thought was the ground terminal of a very large high voltage power supply. The only slight problem was that it was a positive ground system...
Kind of strange that they build scopes with ground tied to mains earth, as it is the source of so many problems and hazards. Letting the entire thing float would be the proper solution.
This is an interesting project, but if I needed long range transportation and didn't want a car, I'd get an electric scooter (the Vespa kind, not the Razor kind), or an electric motorcycle. It's built to handle higher speeds and can coexist with cars more safely.
For highways of larger roads perhaps. If you’re somewhere with good bike infrastructure you won’t be able to take advantage of those nice separated lanes.
I bought a Vespa instead of an e-bike a few years ago because I thought e-bikes would get cheaper with time and I figured I already have a bike, why get a more expensive one? Also because my SO could ride with me instead of having to have two bikes.
However I noticed that bikes can still be faster than sitting in traffic and trying to filter through to the front at traffic lights. Now I have an e-bike but have kept my Vespa for the wind-in-the-hair feeling of a scooter on nice summer days.
Unless you are doing some competitive riding, there is a reasonable limit for how long you want to ride per day. As a motorcyclist, I know well that distances of 350-600 miles per day are possible but taxing on your body. So for regular commute or light weekend riding (roundtrip), I would say 4-5 hours of battery life is sufficient. Depending on cruising speed, you can calculate the distance it will get you. Anything above that is just an extra unnecessary battery weight you are carrying.
This is true, modulo that if you charge your battery to the max and discharge it all the way that you are murdering it, so some spare capacity will very much improve your battery's life span, way beyond what you would get out of it otherwise.
I have a question for the author - what safety precautions do you take against theft for such an e-bike, especially when going to public places like supermarkets? I recently came to the Netherlands and have heard that bike theft is common, especially for expensive bikes. I would guess that such an e-bike would be an attractive target, so do you take additional precautions when parking in public places (like 2/3/4 locks), or simply not park in public places at all?
I park a similar ebike in San Francisco fairly often. I have a good U-Lock and only lock to secure bike rings on main streets but haven't had any trouble. I've left it for hours at a time, but never later than about 9pm. You can mitigate the overall risk with an insurance plan, which is only a few hundred bucks a year.
Do people steal the bikes by picking them up with a car, or do they try to ride them away?
I'm surprised I haven't seen e-bikes with an electronic immobilizer (that will either disable the motor or use it as a brake, unless unlocked with a code or physical token).
I have a specialized Vado sl. You can purchase a range extender and easily do over 100km with it, in reality closer to 200k. Any reason you didn’t consider this as it’s manufacturer supported?
I've looked at that bike now. It's a regular e-bike, not an s-pedelec so quite a bit slower, also the range is very small. I like the looks though, very elegant. But like I wrote in the article, I'm probably faster on my old non assisted racer than I would be on that bike even though it would give me more range because it's assisted. The battery on my bike is more than four times as large, and will do 180 km at maximum assist, far faster than that Vado SL bike will go, and it's a different class of bike entirely (pedelec vs s-pedelec).
Are you driving the s-pedelec on bike lanes in NL? It’s illegal to do so here in Finland although it’s not well enforced and no way am I riding in traffic here. You’re also required to have a license plate for the s-pedelec here also.
I never even knew about the brand. The three that I looked at were Stromer, Bosch based systems and Klever. The Bosch based system won out because it doesn't use fancy one-off stuff, there is a fairly good source for spares (batteries, motors, controllers) and it seems to be the most reliable system on the market. The Stromers are a bit faster (higher powered motors), the Klever looks clunky and I've read a ton of stories about their reliability issues.
Specialized is one of the most well-known bike brands among enthusiasts. Unfortunately also one most expensive ones.
But they have some interesting innovation going on, e.g. with the FutureShock system on rigid bikes, integration of storage in downtubes, their various suspension designs on mountainbikes, first dual-crown fork on an enduro bike, and their own e-bike system.
You can think of them as the Apple of the bike market.
The Vado SL with the range extender still has a smaller battery than the Vado. If you want that kind of range all the time, isn't the Vado the better choice? At $450 for 160Wh, the Vado SL range extender is the worst deal in the Specialized catalog, and that's saying something!
The Vado is also twice as heavy. The SL is super light so that heavy battery is hauling a lot more weight around. The SL is for those who still want to cycle. The power of the normal Vado basically makes you redundant.
Great project. I have a 2018 giant quick e+ that is speed limited to 28mph for the US market - in reality gets up to 26-27. In general the push bike cycling technology is universal (SRAM, shimano, campy, etc kit works everywhere) but for e-bikes there are wierd oddities where all the enthusiasm of the international DIY community doesn't quite translate to different locations because of differences in the battery and motor. I wanted to add a supernova headlight to my bike and what seemed like it would work was really hard because the US wire harnesses were different, voltages were different, etc.
In order to support the weight of the motor and batteries these bikes tend to be really beefy and top out at around 50 lbs. Not sure how much your extra batteries weigh - but if you exhaust the batteries on a 50lb bike you need to make sure you have a super granny gear to get you home if you have hills.
Chances of depleting this battery in normal use are nil unless you end up driving to Berlin from Amsterdam or so :) It can go up to the country borders in every direction.
The added weight is 130 times 50 grams + the weight of the enclosure. 170 batteries in there, but the original battery already had 40 of those.
Agreed that you don't want to pedal it uphill without the motor running that would get old really quick.
I built a stretch cruiser ebike out of parts, including a bafang / 8fun mid drive and 52v “shark” style battery. It does pedal assist and straight up throttle to danger in lickety-split.
This is a cool project, however, I wouldn’t have gone this route because:
It isn’t a great idea to lock up an ebike, but there are circumstances where you might want to and you’ll want to take the battery with you when you do.
If you need added capacity, I’d recommend a second battery to swap in during a longer ride. This can limit the size of the extreme failure should that occur, and let’s you choose less weight for shorter trips.
Finally, there are some quality battery builds out there, in a variety of shapes that include enclosures offering some resistance to shock.
Besides all the testing and perfect wiring here, you can rely somewhat on the seller to back up their work.
If the battery isn't easily removed then I would say it's probably just as safe to lock up this ebike as much as any other expensive bike. It'd be really hard to flip/fence with a custom battery like that though
What's HN favorite fancy-ish ebike from the likes of VanMoof or Cowboy or something else? I saw one of the bikes sell for as high as $5k which, provided how many very nice-looking alternatives at 50% the cost there are seams unreasonable.
I bought this one second hand for half of what they go new for. It was sold as though it had 1800 km on it, deep readout of the controller revealed that I got scammed (it has done 11000 km), but I still think it's a pretty good deal, I'll just need to swap out some bearings a bit sooner.
The Stromer range is very nice, super pricey, Klever as well.
I haven't tried or looked at other s-pedelecs. Regular e-bikes there are so many types and brands that it is hard to say what works and what doesn't without just trying them.
But I'd never buy a new one, I think they are simply way too expensive, it's just another bike with a small electric motor and these prices are ridiculous, you can buy cars for that kind of money.
Interesting reading this as a US resident that modded an existing bike with some parts from Grin and other places. The battery I bought has 17Ah which supposedly has ~50 miles of range which is more than enough for my needs. I'm also able to throttle control and pedal cadence control and hit top speeds of 30+ mph. It's unfortunate that modern e-bikes are so locked down and restricted because the DIY route is a lot of work and pretty expensive, but clearly mainstream e-bikes are arbitrarily limited and holding back the true potential these bikes have.
> clearly mainstream e-bikes are arbitrarily limited
I don't know that I'd call laws ensuring that high-speed motorcycles aren't allowed on mixed bicycle/pedestrian lanes just because they happen to be powered by electricity "arbitrary"; seems utterly reasonable to me. YMOV.
Wow, this would have been perfect for me when I was younger. I hope this will become more mainstream, an off roader would really open up the places to explore on a day trip.
For anyone interested in e-bikes, that has a do it yourself attitude, I recommend looking at Grin Technologies in Vancouver. I met someone who built their own e-bike this summer while out riding, and he suggested them to me. The founder has a bunch of videos online about e-bike technology that I learned quite a bit from.
> and besides a lot better for our precious climate, which is the main reason I wanted to cut down on the use of my car.
I'm sure building an e-bike is a lot of fun. But there must be plenty of other ways to help the climate if you'd like to use your car occasionally.
For example, people who bike a lot might still order a ton of goods online (say, from Alibaba?) to save money, which then has the double effect of encouraging the global trade + transportation routes that are not climate friendly, and encouraging the "emerging market" businesses which don't necessarily produce products in the most sustainable ways in order to lower cost.
I know somebody who refuses to turn on their central air conditioning lower than 77F "because that wastes energy so it is irresponsible", and another person who turns off their hot water heater in between daily showers. Really I'd just like some sort of website that compares people's ideas about what helps the climate, to what actually helps, and how to balance things out in one's life.
that seems unfair.. OP is a nerd doing nerd things with the side effect of a feel good environmental story/reward.. vs turning off a hot water heater between daily showers is more like a misunderstanding of thermodynamics(?) or some part of physics. or not running an A/C which, hey, if they're happy, who gives a shit?
Everyone believed the claims that recycling would help the planet. But it turned out that most (not all, but most) recycling was being burned or buried, because it was never going to be cost effective. Nobody verified the claims, but it "made them happy" to think they were helping the planet. And now we live in a world with just as much trash and even more microplastics, when we could have been making real changes to actually reduce our waste impact. Letting people blithely say "oh I'm doing it to help the climate" helps people be happy while exacerbating the problem they're pretending to be helping to fix.
Another example is people who say "hey I'm not racist! my best friend is black!" while their subconscious bias at work actively prevents black people from being hired or promoted. Or "I'm not sexist! I love women!" while speaking over them in every meeting and shooting down their ideas. It's not enough to just feel good about what we're doing. We need to verify we're actually helping, not just assume we are.
After reading this, did you ever consider using petrol, gas, oil or whatever you call it there for environmental reasons (against electric is Lithium battery manufacturing, power loss in AC transfer, dirty fuel used to make electricity, and battery degrading) weight, energy density, simplicity and would the fuel cost much more? It’s 2-3x more than in the US would that have changed your mind, and would you still find it cheaper to maintain? Here’s some motors https://boneshaker.bike/motorized-bicycle-kits/
Do you see a benefit in a using 2 battery packs, so one can charge and the other will be used and swapping them, you can mount them so you don’t carry them, or switch them since they don’t rely on high voltage.
For the Bosch is it easy to beat the DRM? If they’re at best using essentially voltage to turn a brushless motor, it can’t be that hard to beat can it?
I figured with the kind of mileage that I'm getting out of this and the cost of electricity it's a pretty good deal compared to firing up my trusty boxer.
I've used two packs, two times 500 Wh but I'd run them dry on my regular commute so that's what drove the decision to build this bigger pack. There are some advantages, but the Bosch system keeps a reserve so you'll end up transporting some idle capacity anyway and you're killing the batteries cycle wise.
The DRM I have not - yet - been able to crack. Not for want of trying though and I'll definitely have another go at it. The CPU is a 32 bit chip that can do all kinds of neat encryption stuff so it's not going to be easy. To my knowledge it hasn't been hacked yet.
Keeping them within a certain range is useful but not as much as preventing them from overheating, heat and fast charging is more dangerous, basically if you limit them to 80% it will prevent trickle charging, you can do this in hardware by monitoring the speed it charges at and shutting off when it lowers with wattage monitoring equipment. Apple has this as well, and every lithium charger has trickle charging at 80%, but not all of them are able to end charging at this percentage.
By hack I mean a bypass versus your meaning of attacking the security and removing DRM, is there a reason you can't just use another chip or anything special its doing? Do you need the CPU and is the cryptography documented enough to make it easy or woth the effort? It may also be a passion project so I understand if you just want to do it to do it, and even share the information. If it is battery charging features if they're important are not special. The last 20% makes extra cycles and is the most stressful.
>Turn off the device or disconnect the load on charge to allow the current to drop unhindered during saturation. A parasitic load confuses the charger.
>Charge at a moderate temperature. Do not charge at freezing temperature. (See BU-410: Charging at High and Low Temperatures)
>Lithium-ion does not need to be fully charged; a partial charge is better.
Not all chargers apply a full topping charge and the battery may not be fully charged when the “ready” signal appears; a 100 percent charge on a fuel gauge may be a lie.
>Discontinue using charger and/or battery if the battery gets excessively warm.
>Apply some charge to an empty battery before storing (40–50 percent SoC is ideal). (See BU-702: How to Store Batteries.)
A city-wide charging network with standardized, user-replaceable battery packs would be the "holy grail" of short- and medium-range electric bike and moped commuting. Unfortunately, jury rigging a larger battery capacity is the only solution due to competing, non-interoperable solutions and outdated speed and distance regulations.
Regen will usually only gain you 3-5% total range, most of the power from biking is dissipated as heat through aero drag, even if you're biking up and down hills. Source – my company exclusively does ebike research and development.
I love the idea of e-bikes and would love to be able to use them and not need a car (which i don't own), but i just don't feel safe using them in US cities... NYC has too much traffic, SF has too many hills, Seattle is too wet.
I wish there was more alt-transit for commuter scale transportation to get around without a car, but the autonomy of not using a bus. Scooters seem promising but they're a pain on the roads (with laws banning use on sidewalks), and i've heard horror stories of how unsafe they were.
I feel like the ideal form factor is a pallet dolly: You have a handle, its wide so its comfortable to stand without balancing, and you can ride in the road confident a car can see you and not run you off.
You can always come up with a million reasons not to do something. Plenty of people bike safely in NYC, SF, and Seattle.
You don’t have to wish for an alt-transit solution that’s not a bus. Bikes exist. The more people who ride them the safer and more normalized they get.
I’ve bicycled (conservatively) 7,5000 or so urban/downtown miles over the past decade or so in Portland, OR. I get wet, I get sweaty, I get tired, I get into the occasional close call with cars, I get scared.
My biggest tips are: don’t buy a bunch of gear at once. Buy 1 thing at a time once you figure out what you might like. Ride slower, it’s not a race. If you get too scared, pull of the road, walk your bike, and take a break — I still do it even after a decade of riding.
> Plenty of people bike safely in NYC, SF, and Seattle.
Oh i know and power to them. Personally, i'm very clumsy and not very balanced, so i don't feel like i'd be comfortable riding in the city. I've rode a bike around silicon valley a bit, and it was fine.. most of the time.
I used to bike a lot in youth, (mostly on bike paths for fun), and for sure i know that a mostly-bike/ped environment feels much safer.
> The more people who ride them the safer and more normalized they get.
This is why i've been keeping an Ebike in the back of my mind (and hoping for alternatives to emerge). I'm hopeful for a future where cars are second-class citizens on urban streets.
Maybe i'll try biking around my neighborhood this spring, and see if I can get used to it.
> i've heard horror stories of how unsafe they were
Wait, scooters are not a thing in the USA? As in, obscure enough that the closest experience you have is "heard horror stories" and that's it?
I feel like every second person here (Netherlands) owned one, or perhaps rather, at least I would expect every teenager to know someone with a scooter. I personally never saw the appeal but then I also hate cycling (too much work, can't transport groceries well at all, and you get wet) so I consider myself an outlier anyhow.
I used to live in Seattle and a personal scooter is where it's at. Plus, it's impossible to look like more of a dweeb than the tech people riding electric unicycles.
Great article. Bosch seems to be the go to for most electric bikes sold in london. My experience so far is OK; school run replacement has been brilliant. The range estimation is ridiculously bad! I find the battery bars are better estimator.
I this spurs on more entrants or drives more features. Recharging feels too frequent. There's no feedback on 'driving' style and impact on range. I'd love regenerative breaking. Silly things like a clock on the control pane would be hugely useful options.
As someone who lives in SEA this obsession with e-bikes is rather fascinating. Modern ice motorbikes are dirt cheap (you can get one for the price of OPs battery pack) , easy to maintain and are surprisingly silent. Finally it can carry the whole family - pets included! It's not that uncommon to see 4 people on a scooter around here.
Honestly aside from weather I wonder why the west has such terrible adoption for imho the best transport vehicle we've got.
ICE motorbikes in the west are usually ridden by hobbyists, not people using them for commuting. Where I live, it is cold and/or miserable for 7 months of the year, and its rare to see motorbike riders during that time. So they're bought by people who already have other modes of transport. The weekend rider crew. And they are usually quite expensive. On top of that, where I live they need special licensing, so add 2000€ for a driver's license. Also, you'd be pulled over so fast for having a child or pet unsecured on one of them, your head would spin.
Also we are generally wealthy enough to afford cars and they fit a whole family a lot more comfortably. If you can afford a car, why by a motorcycle unless you want one for fun? Ebikes are nice in the west because they can travel in bike lanes which have a lot less traffic.
> Also we are generally wealthy enough to afford cars and they fit a whole family a lot more comfortably.
I'd disagree with comfort - sure sitting in a car is great but a motorbike brings it's own comforts like easier parking and faster commute. I think we can all agree that the worst parts about commute is the traffic and parking - getting rid of these does change your perception of the experience significantly.
> it barely discharges over a trip like that, which should help with longevity
Only if you don't charge it fully though, right? As in, charge to just below X% when the amount of charge you expect to need is X/2 percent-points, rather than to 100% and not use it fully. At least that's my understanding and how I've been treating my li-ion devices.
Very precisely: it goes from 40.5 (about 80% soc) to 37.5V (about 60% soc) over a 64 km ride.
So indeed, not charged fully. Just enough to stay in the 80 to 20 window, which still gives me about 100 km of range to play with which is plenty and if I need it I can always charge it up fully and run it down but I don't expect that to ever happen. But those would be expensive cycles life-span wise.
The innovation possible due to a customizable battery configuration, and the simple drivetrain of a electric motors, can lead to some very wild experimentation with all kinds of mobility assisted devices. While pedelecs are seeing the initial interest, but a rapid evolution of battery powered exoskeletons cannot be very far.
Everything about this is awesome, great work. Love the write up — the bits on safety in particular. The layout is also oddly aesthetically pleasing. Inspiring, though I’m so so far at the beginning of the road with hardware and electronics. Might attempt a solar powered pond pump and battery though.
The biggest issue I have with getting more than 20 miles out of my e-bike is the controller. The manufacturer of the controller set it to shut off when the battery pack hits 42v. (using a 52v pack) Sucks pushing a bike up a hill when you know you still have ~15% capacity remaining.
That's to increase the life-span of the pack. At 15% max discharge the pack will live much longer (orders of magnitude) than if you were to ride it down to zero. This is precisely why I over dimensioned my pack.
I still remember the author of of the post for making pianojacq, a free in-browser piano learning helper software
Yet another interesting project! I wish I had the knowledge to dive into making the same bike. How about a crowd funding effort to manufacture some more?
What's the motivation in peoples mind between using an e-bike and just using a tesla? If the argument is that the tesla is still unclean since the energy might not come from clean sources, doesn't that apply for e-bikes as well?
According to wikipedia[1], an ebike is about 10x as efficient per passenger mile as a tesla. Also, an ebike is 2x(!) as efficient as a conventional bike.
E-bikes can be much faster than a Tesla in dense urban cities. The reason for this is that in places with dedicated bike lane infrastructure you can easily skirt city traffic.
It uses a tiny fraction of energy to produce and drive around with. Lower emissions if you're using dirty energy. More energy left to spare if you're using clean energy.
Because the batteries have to ride somewhere, in a bag in the back it messes up the weight distribution of the bike and every time you make a turn all that weight bangs into the frame at the back. Another problem is that you get a silly little bit of range per battery, 30 km on a good day, so you end up maxing out those batteries. If you want to spread the load across four batteries (same weight) then you will have to swap batteries every 16 km or so. So this is far more practical and much better for the cells in the longer term as well as a safer bike to ride.
Awesome! What speed does eco mode mean? A 500km range is pretty impressive, possibly also longer than it would be comfortable to sit on a bike without needing to sleep!
The speed doesn't really change, it's just that you have to work that much harder to achieve it. In ECO mode I'd say you are going to get tired about twice as fast as you would at max assist.
The 500 km range in eco mode is something I never expect to even go near though it might be fun to once ride around IJsselmeer or so on a single charge.
I have the 2022 Zero S and it is a delight. Highly recommend it for anyone who would be interested to try a motorcycle but don't want to deal with clutches. First motorcycle as well. There is simply less overhead to getting started, it's more noise appopriate for neighbors, and I don't have to worry about silent operation since I try to avoid risky maneuvers with other drivers when I can. I don't plan on dealing with traditional motorcycles ever.
"Avoiding risky maneauvers" :) - reminded me of an insurance agent of mine who always quipped that motorcyclists are a claim waiting to happen... and his joke that there's only two types of motorcyclists, those who have been in an accident and those who will be in one.
People in general, at least in the US, don't really even register you as existing if you're on a motorcycle... it doesn't jibe with the typical car driver's frame of mind, which means - and you've already figured this out - the higher burden of staying alive/responsible is - sadly or not - on you.
Had a boss who rode his Harley every single day in Seattle to work and home, for 25+ years, no accidents. He was of the same mindset as you - no risky/stupid maneuavers and defensive driving. Turn your body/bike into a flashy/strobe thing if you have to, that gets attention... who cares if you inconvenience someone w/extra lighting as long as it saves your life and lets them know where you're at.
It weighs half that, including me, and the average speed over a longer trip is about 33 to 35 Kph. In cities you ride just as fast as the rest of the bike traffic, there isn't any point in trying to go faster, and top speed is rarely achieved, you'd need a 100% full battery and a rider in very good condition. More usual you'll be around 35 to 38 kph in open country where there is very little other traffic.
My 'commute' is 64 km, it takes me two hours on the dot door-to-door.
All the speed of motorcycles without the sound awareness, what could possibly go wrong? My overall experience is that E-bike riders generally have decent cycling manners, it's the scooter and unicycle riders that seem to think they can just crank their walking speed up to 30mph and go everywhere a pedestrian would. I usually just give them a firm "heads up next time" when I get buzzed by an electric motor whine at 20mph.
I used to ride a motorcycle, now I have an ebike. They seem equally safe to me, which is to say neither are safe at all if there are other people on the road. The only solution is extremely defensive driving/riding, assume no one (including pedestrians) can see you. This attitude has been embedded deeply in the motorcycle culture and is the best way to all-around responsible riders -- and it needs to be propagated to ebike riders. I don't think it's about having manners, really. Also, sound awareness is a myth propagated by Harley riders.
You probably mean "one wheel" riders? (As in the electric, low profile, self balancing type, not the traditional large wheel, seated, fixed axle unicycle) Unless you live around an inordinate amount of rude unicyclists. In that case, I must see that as it sounds very humorous.
Scooters are a plague (and this bike is classed as a scooter, unfortunately, so I'm lumped in with the worst), but a bigger danger is mobile phone use by cyclists. That's roughly 1/3rd of all the adults and 2/3rds of the teenagers here.
I have a class 3 and I don't feel safe riding in bike lanes at full speed, zipping by slower bicycles. There's no place to go if someone swerves. I will usually ride in traffic instead.
Riding in traffic here is suicide. Drivers get very irritated when you are not exactly at the speed limit and I've had more than one instance where someone essentially overtook and then forced me into the bike lane. And that's just here in town, where there is absolutely nothing to gain.
We really need a terminology to differentiate better between pedal-assist only e-bikes ("pedelec") and electric motorbikes. A "bicycle" that can accelerate without the need to pedal at all is an electric motorcycle, no matter if you put pedal on it or not.
I see the two as totally different things: I've tried pedal-assist e-bike and they're great. But... Although I have nothing against motorbikes I'm not cool at all with basically motorbikes getting a free pass because they're disguised as bicycles.
BTW this reminds me of the old french "Solex / VéloSolex": basically a real engine put on top of the front wheel, and able to accelerate by itself without the need to pedal. But the thing still had pedals. I used to use one and still have one in a garage. But I didn't use it on the bicycle lanes...
And scooters, electric-scooters, and sit-down electric scooters. And electric wheelchairs, and non-electric wheelchairs and mobility assist carts with handlebars. We also have to delineate between a daydreaming cyclist who's top speed is slow, and a hard-core cyclist with a $3000+ bike that can hit 40 mph in the right conditions. Those cyclists should be banned from using the same paths as the first kind of bicyclist, and should be relegated to the same areas as 'electric motorcycles'. Because it's really about acceleration and top speed, and it matters zero whether the thing has pedals or not.
Or put it another way, if my 'electric motorcycle' is slower to accelerate and has a slower top speed than you could possibly manage on a bicycle, it's really not a 'motorcycle' in any way, no matter how many pedals it does or doesn't have.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but even a <$1000 road bike with drop bars and 25-32mm tires can hit 30-40mph in the hands of novice/moderately experienced riders assuming they have a decent baseline fitness and either some straight level road or a long downhill run. If you've got a 52x12 gear ratio and can spin up to a cadence of 90RPM you'll be traveling roughly 31mph. Spin up to 110RPM and you're pushing 40mph.
The only difference is the experienced, lycra-clad cyclists with expensive bikes just get up to speed faster, maybe with less of a tailwind or downward grade. However, unlike their speedy novice kin, they (should, in theory) have better bike handling skills.
Overall, I think a strategy of banning with people the highest cycling skills from bike paths seems like a bad idea. Sure, you got weekend warrior dentists with fancy expensive bikes but their mediocre fitness level doesn't allow them to really extract significant benefit from their high-end cycling equipment. Their fancy aerodynamic carbon fiber bikes are probably only getting them a few mph over a classic steel frame. For more serious enthusiasts and professionals, those seconds matter... for everyone else it's just a flex.
Multi-lane bike ”highways” would be awesome. What matters most (imo) is that all these riders are unprotected, and should be kept far apart from cars.
If the unprotected, single rider, narrow vehicles want do drive at vastly different speeds then multiple lanes seems like a good solution.
Honestly I don’t know if more rules is it. I think better infrastructure that encourages separation is better.
I live in a bike (and very e-bike heavy) US city and the rules don’t really get followed too much.
And I don’t blame anyone, because while there are inconsiderate people, speed comfortability is really relative. Some of my friends find just being on a bike scary versus my friends who skate through traffic just fine. I can’t invite them to the same things.
> We also have to delineate between a daydreaming cyclist who's top speed is slow, and a hard-core cyclist with a $3000+ bike that can hit 40 mph in the right conditions.
Surely even skilled cyclists should be permitted to use bike paths as long as they don’t tear by everyone at 40 mph. And I’m genuinely a bit unclear as to why no-pedaling-needed bikes shouldn’t be able to mingle with bikes as long as they follow the rules.
> We also have to delineate between a daydreaming cyclist who's top speed is slow, and a hard-core cyclist with a $3000+ bike that can hit 40 mph in the right conditions.
Are there not speed limits for bike lanes? Most cars have a top speed well above the freeway speed limit too.
I'm totally ashamed that I forgot to mention electric skateboards with 4 wheels and electric skateboards with 1 wheel and electric unicycles (larger single wheel vs a 'one wheel' electric skateboard) and it's too late to edit them in.
This is a pedal assist e-bike. There are people that cheat and that install throttles so they can move without pedaling but that's a great way to get your vehicle confiscated.
A typical ride has me providing 40 to 60% of the Joules and the remainder comes out of the battery. If there is a very heavy wind up (not rare here) that might drop to 30/70 and if I have a tailwind it is the reverse. The bike has a nice stats display where it tracks all this stuff. Maximum assist is 350W (10A current out of a nominally 36V battery), at the wheel considerably less than that, this is only used when starting up from a complete stop. The rest of the time you're at a small fraction of that.
> There are people that cheat and that install throttles so they can move without pedaling but that's a great way to get your vehicle confiscated.
Note that this varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In the US e-bikes with throttles are legally classified as Class 2 electric bicycles and are generally legal for use in bicycle infrastructure as long as they don't exceed 20 MPH.
FYI, the US classes are as follows: (1) 20 MPH (32 km/h) max, pedal-assist; (2) 20 MPH max, throttle; (3) 28 MPH (45 km/h) max, pedal-assist.
My wife just bought an ebike (from RadPower) that has both pedal assist and a throttle that doesn't require pedaling. You can also adjust the amount of pedal assist so you can "feather pedal".
Looking at those power numbers, I can't help but wonder how much you'd gain by doing this sort of modification on a bike that is more efficient and/or aerodynamic even without the motor attached.
A touring bike frame with 700c wheels and a more stretched out position would likely allow you to travel at the same speed for lower total power output - and make your battery go further (or not require such a large battery).
But why does anyone actually care if you technically need to be pedaling in order for the electric motor to engage? Surely an electric bicycle could still go arbitrarily fast while arbitrarily requiring the pedals to turn. Isn't this whole thing just a silly loophole in what is considered a "bicycle"? What if instead, bicycle lanes just had rules regarding top speed, weight, form factor, etc.
> This is a pedal assist e-bike. There are people that cheat and that install throttles so they can move without pedaling but that's a great way to get your vehicle confiscated.
I really need to understand what's the difference with a throttle and a pedal assist whose curve is basically so that it gives all power at a ridiculously low pedaling rate...
> I see the two as totally different things: I've tried pedal-assist e-bike and they're great. But... Although I have nothing against motorbikes I'm not cool at all with basically motorbikes getting a free pass because they're disguised as bicycles.
Eh, it depends if you see pedal assistance being the defining difference between a bike and a motorbike.
From a safety perspective, speed may be a better differentiator.
Speed (or better, momentum) is important. But pedal assistance is definitely material to me. Switching from pedal-assist to throttle-controlled changes the proportionality between impulse and real-world results.
As a kid my first response to pretty much anything with a dial was to turn it up all the way and see what happened. That's a behavior I saw quite a bit during the brief plague of VC-funded scooters: novices at 100% motor output rocketing down sidewalks, etc. That's much less likely to happen it they have to pedal hard to get the top speed.
I think something like average real world speed and weight are the two important metrics. Maybe this is the intuition with petal assist vs throttle controlled e-bikes. I do sort of think it should take some work to get a bike up to it's top speed so that riders don't just cruise at that speed.
> I'm not cool at all with basically motorbikes getting a free pass because they're disguised as bicycles
Why? Seems like a pointless distinction in regards to any sort of rules. Surely where they're allowed to operate, for example, should be based on things like speed and weight, rather than "whether or not the operator is moving their legs in a circular motion."
This. There's an element of snobbery often in this discussion where there's a disdain for people who haven't "worked for" the movement they're getting.
Which seems besides the point. The reason you can't ride a motorcycle in the bike lane isn't because you haven't worked hard enough to deserve it, it's because of the top speeds and mass of the vehicles presenting a danger to others in the lane. It's the same reason cars present such a danger to cyclists - the scale of kinetic energy going around is just too high.
I think fast e-bikes are a technologically interesting thing, but from a regulatory point of view I'm much more mixed. ~30 kph seems eminently reasonable for bike infrastructure, and I'm excited about the ability for that to displace car trips - both from a sustainability perspective and a road capacity perspective. Much faster than that though?
Read jacquesm's reply to my comment: there are people hacking their pedelec so that they accelerate without you pedaling and that's illegal. I think it's a good thing it's illegal. I do also believe only pedelec are allowed on bike lane in Belgium/Brussels.
A bicycle which you can use without using the pedals is, to me, not the definition of a bicycle.
> Surely where they're allowed to operate, for example, should be based on things like speed and weight, rather than "whether or not the operator is moving their legs in a circular motion."
speed / weight and acceleration. But I'm still not sure about that. Bicycle lanes were made, at first, for people cycling. In European cities it's part of an overall move to be "greener": what's green about a vehicle with can be used without doing any exercise at all? You basically took the ICE engine of a motorbike and put instead an electric motor.
KTM (motorbike company) is already in to e-bike game. These companies are going to come and game the system as much as they can if limits aren't set: they'll otherwise build ultra light full-carbon e-bike with crazy fast acceleration and the selling point is going to be "It's a motorbike you can use in a bicycle lane".
I do honestly think saying: "if you don't need to pedal at all, it's not a bicycle and hence cannot use the bicycle lanes" (like they're apparently doing in the Netherlands) ain't a bad rule.
> I'm not cool at all with basically motorbikes getting a free pass because they're disguised as bicycles.
As long as they'r not causing problems for other cyclists, they're still a big win in terms of transportation: way less carbon usage and occupies less space.
> As long as they'r not causing problems for other cyclists,
They cause problems. Maybe not every e-motorcycle rider, but most of them take full advantage of the power to out-accelerate other bikers and double the top speed of everyone around them.
Bike paths were design with typical cyclist speeds in mind. It's not uncommon to see a young kid flying down our local bike paths at 40mph or more on a modded e-bike, forcing all of the pedestrian and other cyclists to get out of the way as fast as possible. Worse, two e-bikers flying toward each other at 40mph in opposite directions is the same as one of them crashing at 80mph. Those speeds aren't really appropriate for bike paths, yet here we are.
I frequently run into young e-bikers or e-motorcycle riders on my local trails who are flying at unexpectedly high speeds. They're also tearing up the trails at a rate much faster than normal bikes because the rider has less control over wheelspin and is more prone to throttle out of corners than someone with a direct connection to the drivetrain.
I was a fan of e-bikes when they first came out, but the current incarnation of e-bikers and e-motorcyclists is quite bad in the real world. Again, not every e-biker, but many of the most prolific e-bike riders on my local trails are the same ones running modified e-bikes with too much power and manual throttles.
As long as they'r not causing problems for other cyclists
And if a frog had wings, it wouldn't bump its ass when it hops. "Other cyclists"? They're not cyclists, they're motorcycle riders, for starters. Now any jackass can zoom down the bike path at 25-30mph, but yeah, as long as that doesn't cause problems...
> Although I have nothing against motorbikes I'm not cool at all with basically motorbikes getting a free pass because they're disguised as bicycles.
A free pass for what ?
You dont need a motor to reach 40kph on a bike, plenty of people can do it with only their legs. What we can do is limit the speed on bike lanes, but that means we could allow any vehicule on it. There is no reason a motorbike couldn't go on a bike lane if it goes slower than 20kh as most people on bike reach that speed.
It is not because you are on a bike that you have to go on a bike lane.
> A "bicycle" that can accelerate without the need to pedal at all is an electric motorcycle, no matter if you put pedal on it or not.
That sounds very American. Don’t we have Vespa scooters and mopeds in the USA as well? There are plenty of bike formats between bicycle and motorbikes.
In China most e-bikes aren’t pedal assists and no one would ever claim they were car road worthy vehicles, they got bike lanes or the side of the road, and are not allowed on the ring road. American bike lanes seems to be recreational, whereas in other countries that are oriented much more at daily life and more heavily used.
Vespa style scooters are motorcycles in many US states, but there are exceptions.
Mopeds with engines under 50cc and that have pedals are often treated differently than motorcycles but some states still require licensing and registration similar to a motorcycle.
Agreed, 70mph but you have to pedal to keep the bike going = e-bike (although an illegal one)...
15mph and has a throttle = electric motorbike (and also illegal)...
But make that 15mph illegal electric motorbike 10mph faster and add extra hardware so users have to waggle their feet around in a circle to trigger the motors... SUDDENLY LEGAL!
I highly doubt there are any safety benefits from pedalling - it seems like an arbitrary limit.
Pedelecs are regulated on all three: maximum continuous power of 250W, assistance only from 6km/h, top assisted speed of 25km/h.
The point of pedelec regulations (in europe anyway) is to be a baseline: anything which satisfies the pedelec specs must be treated as a bicycle by all member states, so if you have a pedelec you know that it will be usable as a bike throughput the union. Member states can go beyond if they want to.
The pedaling aspect is also not really what matters, because you can in principle reduce the load factor so much that the pedals also just become a fancy throttle, no?
I've found this to be correct on most every e-bike I have rented. You can "feather pedal", just spinning the cranks without engaging any energy, and the e-bike will send power to "assist".
The laws where I live do not see it this way. If it has pedals, and is under 750 watts, then it is an e-bike. This includes the ability to use a mid-drive motor that supplies 750 watts but makes full use of the bicycle's gearing system.
> A "bicycle" that can accelerate without the need to pedal at all is an electric motorcycle
Most pedal-assist-only ebikes can run without you pedaling (and without a throttle either). You just need to pedal fast at first, and then take your feet off the pedals. (You can rest them at the center of the frame for example.)
Usually, if there is some friction in the system (but not too much) the pedals will keep on turning, making the bike think actual pedaling is going on. And then the system is self-sustaining (battery permitting, of course).
It's quite funny to do; not very practical, or elegant, but fun.
In my opinion the throttled e-bikes should be treated as bicycles as long as they have pedals and are under 25kg and 250W power.
That would legalize my e-bike that I have used for 14000km in city saving a lot of carbon emissions and not sacrificing much as I can park it in bicycle stand.
Of course going faster than 20-25km/h in pedestrian traffic (where bicycles are allowed) is extremely dangerous. But from my experience going fast in car traffic 35-40 km/h (where bicycles are allowed) is safer than chugging along slowly as cars don't have a need for overtaking between traffic lights.
The reality is that there is no useful bright-line rule to distinguish between bicycles and motorbikes. Historically, the two have been very distinct, so we haven't needed one. Now, we are starting to see more of the space between the extremes be explored.
We do absolutely need good laws and conventions here, for safety and fairness. But i don't think basing them on a classification is the way to write them.
Right, but there's a large question at least in the US as to what & who the bike lanes and infrastructure are for. There are commuters who travel via bike, casual bikers, and then there are also extreme bicyclists that compete.
There are bike lanes that are on normal streets and then there are bike paths that are often shared with pedestrians.
I think there is a solid case that bike lanes adjacent to streets are for commuters. The main argument is that the entire argument for installing bike lanes was to provide an alternative to driving.
The bike paths are a bit different. A lot of places in the US will have paths that ban anything with a 'motor'. In the past this just meant that motorcycles including small [sic] mopeds were banned as well. However, in recent years it isn't unusual for someone to use these paths wile riding a e-bike or e-scooter. IMO the main reason for banning motors was that those vehicles were loud and larger than a bike/scooter.
I think that since it's practical to use a e-bike/e-scooter at the normal non-assisted speeds the proper solution is to just have speed limits in places to protect pedestrians and other bikers.
A bike lane far from a city center could have the same speed limit as the road since the it's going to be mostly commuters using it. A bike lane closer to a university campus might have a speed of 15 or 20mph since those lanes will have a lot more traffic and a greater mixture of e-bikes and regular bikes.
A bike path that connects the bike lane to the bike parking area would be like 15mph. A shared sidewalk/path with pedestrians might have a max speed of <10mph.
I think the only group that might loose out is the pure-bicyclists that are used to using the bike lanes more like a gym so having to share the bike lanes with e-bikes could be an issue.
But even then I think very few of them tend to ride during the peak commuter hours.
Not sure where you are located but they already do have this. I have a class one pedal assist which cuts out at 20 mph. Allowed on most Mnt bike trails and to do 20 for any amount of distance requires substantial effort. I get passed on the paved bike trails all the time by road bikes with way more gears. Then class 2 which has a throttle and can go 30ish. Then class 3 with a throttle and speed is essentially whatever you can do. 2 and 3 are not allowed on any Mnt bike trails and depending on city, county, are crazy to ride on the paved bike trails, not legal, but do see every now and then. Most people that own them respect the rule.
The most important thing should be the speed, not the method. A fit enough cyclist could easily go fast enough to be dangerous to other cyclists with a normal bike on cycle paths too.
E-bike is basically the smaller version of electric cars, whose sustainability depends on how we power our energy (not that they have a circular manufacturing process of course).
Differentiating between pedal assist & throttled e-bike serves no great purpose.
There should be no distinction, legally, between a normal bicycle and an electric bike of any kind (throttle or otherwise).
Personal Electric (micro) Mobility is the answer to many problems, let's not add any roadblocks to adoption. Other than keeping powers-that-be comfortable and sparing the feelings of cycling puritans, the distinction is useless, bordering on harmful to the environment.
The recent explosion of high speed scooters has been a menace since my city recently allowed them and e-bikes on bike paths and the local bike rental places purchased whole fleets.
The problem is that tourists and knaves are constantly riding them on paths that are marked pedestrian-only (sometimes due to unfamiliarity with the path system, though often intentionally). Even when they stick to the adjacent bike lanes the scooters accelerate and go so much faster than bikes they are constantly putting pedestrians and slower cyclists in danger. If they stuck to bike lanes on streets it wouldn’t be so bad, but I worry there will soon be a raft of Bernie Goetz style vigilante clotheslining of irresponsible riders.
I don't think there is a meaningful clear demarcation between pedal-assist and electric motorbike. The throttle control just looks different.
On good e-bikes I've ridden, the pedaling is basically limited to telling the motor to go, no meaningful force involved. Sure, you can put "controls motor with button" and "controls motor with pedal" into different legal categories, but I doubt there is much of a benefit in doing so.
Why not just have reasonable rules for bike lanes, like a speed limit and perhaps size/weight limits? Cars with a top speed of 85mph and a 0-60 of 10 seconds are treated with precisely the same rules as cars with a top speed of 170mph and a 0-60 of 3 seconds. We don't really need separate terminology or separate lanes for them.
I see it more as a matter of power produced, I'd probably use 1hp or 750w brushless or something thereabouts as the line to draw. With most pedal ebikes you go faster by pedaling anyways.
Oh... I worked with something really similar but only for decoration purposes. I guess it's rigged enough to give the construction stability but it's still very prone to punctures. Do you think it would withstand a rock chip at higher speeds also do you prefer the high mechanical stability for a battery package? I don't really know if I would prefer it to warp at impact or break like hpl.
How many times are you going to tempt fate? You already had an accident which makes it so you can't easily ride a regular bike anymore and yet here you are on an e-bike. I don't really want an answer, just more expressing my dismay. Good luck!
That was a pretty bad accident but the mechanics of it were - retrospectively - quite predictable. It's just that a low recumbent seemed very safe right up to the second that it wasn't.
Anyway, those two really don't compare, and I can ride a regular bike just not quite as easily as before. Those screws and the steel really should be taken out but between COVID and work there hasn't really been a 3 month gap where I figured I would chance it, because it's a full recovery after that again.
Thanks for the concern though, and I'll try to stay in one piece.
It’s worth saying that it’s not to hard to train up to being able to do 100-200km rides with no electronic assist. At such distance, the weight saving is probably outweighing the battery and you can use the space in the frame can be used for luggage such as extra clothing.
At longer distances the ride limiting factor is comfort, not stamina / endurance - here the Ebike adds nothing
I can do 100K rides just fine, but not in the same time. An e-bike is much more convenient for that, we have this thing called wind here that can really get you. On my 10 speed (an elderly Guerciotti, very nice bike) my peak is 38 or so and I can average about 28 for a two hour ride, after that it drops and there is no way I could do a return after 65 km at that speed without slowing down considerably.
I've done many 10's of thousands of kilometers on bikes and there is no way to compare the two in practice, even the very best racing bike can't keep up with an e-bike over a long distance unless the rider is tour-de-France level.
E-bikes add range, compared to what you would do on your own in the same time. That is what makes them viable replacement for a car, suddenly 60% or so of your car trips are within the range of the e-bike, and with this large battery for me that is more like 95% or even more. Since getting the second battery for the e-bike I haven't used the car more than twice (that's a few months). Car ownership has gone from being a 'must' to 'uneconomical' and no regular bike that I've ever owned had that property.
And that's before we get into the fact that without the assist I have a hard time to get started at all.
The author provided a compelling reason for this long-distance ebike: they have an injury and the acceleration assist allows them to cycle without aggravating the injury. I don't think it's fair to assume that every person who wants to cycle 200km can do so without electrical assist.
This has got to be a troll comment. On an ebike on the top assist levels you can pedal leisurely at ~50watts and get 300 watts of output to travel at 30kph plus, and tackle any climbs with no issue, while not getting your heartrate up all that high. Sure 100-200km is still far and not everyone will want to go that far even on an ebike, but it's undoubtedly much easier than a non-assisted bike. You have to train pretty seriously as a cyclist and be in really good shape to ride 100+ km like it's no big deal. And you have to make sure you plan out water stops and plan enough food for the ~5000+ calories you will burn.
And "the weight saving is probably outweighing the battery", is completely untrue. The increased weight of an ebike is probably adding like 5-10 watts of drag on flat ground and maybe 20-30 watts on hills, while the motor is providing 250 watts of output. It's not even close to canceling out, that would be insane.
Well I can do 100-200 km rides with no electronic assist but I am quite tired and hungry as all hell after that. And it takes time (I don't think I've averaged over 30 kph on a long trip so yeah that's 3-6 hours of cycling plus breaks).
I would like to be able to make these trips 1) faster 2) with less effort.
> I hope this article will inspire people to look at e-bikes as potentially commuter car replacement, to send Bosch and other e-bike technology manufacturers a message that if they won’t supply what people need that they are going to have to live with people hacking their stuff and to get people to comment on the way the thing works, what they would do with it and how it could be improved or how I could work better/safer on stuff like this.
i bought a Onewheel-XR+ a few months ago and then found a lot of reddit threads about how the mfg DRM'd the controllers to prevent people from adding longer range batteries and buildig their own apps to do diagnoatics over bluetooth. they sent cease/desists to several prominent modders.
it's super sad. the modding community was very vibrant until they kneecapped it via firmware updates.
their android app is bloated 42MB crap with social features that requires an internet connection and google's framework to connect over bluetooth to the board under your feet to read battery levels, change riding modes, control headlights, etc. previously there were third party apps < 1mb that could be used offline for this, until they crippled everything via firmware updates.
now they released their new GT boards a month ago with extended range (and much heavier). the new Pint GT looks really compelling, so really torn about giving these sh*theads more of my money :(
https://old.reddit.com/r/onewheel/comments/l2vhra/future_mot...
https://old.reddit.com/r/onewheel/comments/kcl816/4209_or_ne...
LOL I built the first version of their android app back in the day. Can't speak to why they've been going after modders, but it's likely from a liability / legal standpoint. At the end of the day I still love their products and currently own an XR (may upgrade to a GT next spring!).
At least for the earlier versions all the info was published as standard BLE descriptors, so building a third party lightweight app for that is fairly straight forward. Not sure what they're doing these days, but if you wanted to investigate LightBlue is a great app for digging into BLE devices ;)
Is it really liability? Because I really doubt that. People modify vehicles all the time and it causes unsafe driving that can lead to collisions. The car manufacturer doesn't get sued because somebody made a stupid change. Maybe it could be a super minor thing they use as an excuse to prevent modding, but I think the actual answer is what the other commenter mentioned. They don't want their own product competing with their newer products.
Someone won't buy their new product if they can just mod their existing product to get the same capabilities their new product gives.
See the thing is; I think a genuine company would encourage a modding community rather than discourage it. This example may not apply, but take a videogame like Minecraft. They didn't have modding support built into the game but people hacked the game and built in their own modding support on top of it. This then allowed a huge amount of people to be able to much more easily mod the game using a modding framework. The game is hugely moddable on both the client side and server side. It was so successful that there are many companies that employ multiple people to run their Minecraft servers and code minigames for them. The game likely wouldn't have taken off as much as it did without these modding capabilities that Mojang let go on.
I feel like more companies need to take this approach where they allow or even encourage modding. It brings more people to the platform. Especially in such a new market, making anti-consumer business decisions just seems like a good way to start your companies slow death.
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> but it's likely from a liability / legal standpoint
sure. but also the same reason mfgs dont want their modded/refurbished/re-sold prev-gen products competing with their new products.
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Just last night I was trying to establish a connection via a BLE handshake and it seems like with the newer boards you have to exchange tokens you get from their web service. A bit of a PITA especially when they ban your IP from making requests because you spammed them too much.
It's pretty insane how locked down their software is. I was looking into building a battery status app for the Garmin Fenix watches that connected directly to the board over bluetooth, but you need to fetch a key from their api with a carefully crafted request that is used to re-authenticate with the board every few seconds. If you mess up the API call they IP ban you and warn you of API abuse.
Crazy: https://github.com/ponewheel/android-ponewheel/issues/109#is...
I love my Onewheel - but why can't they just open up a read only API for stats so people can build 3rd party apps around them.
Agree! I was just trying to do this with my PintX and an ESP32. Insane how locked down this is.
I think an open-source onewheel equivalent would be totally doable using VESCs.
It is. I built one.
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I love my Pint and was excited to also pick up the XR replacement once it launches. But not anymore, Future Motion will never get another dime from me. Please don't support them.
Awesome project Jacques! I saw a comment of yours on an article a day or two ago and was hoping to see this pop up soon.
I've found the most difficult thing about riding an e-bike is the other motorists have no idea how to react to you. You're not really a regular bicycle anymore due to your speed, but you're also not a motorcycle that deserves its own lane. I have at least one car turn in front of me almost every trip out just because they're misjudging my speed. I get honked and yelled at when on the road because folks get frustrated when I'm using the left-hand side of the right-turn lane as a bike path.
Sidewalks/bike paths tend to be a lot less safe in residential areas as well, since cars coming out of their driveways really don't expect an e-bike to come rolling through. I've learned to dramatically reduce speed in areas like this.
Aside from those things, I love it! I ride the e-bike whenever I'm going somewhere in range (I live in Florida so things tend to be spread out) and the weather permits. My bike gets about 80km which is more than enough for anyplace I want to go on a bicycle anyway.
> but you're also not a motorcycle that deserves its own lane. I have at least one car turn in front of me almost every trip out just because they're misjudging my speed. I get honked and yelled at when on the road because folks get frustrated when I'm using the left-hand side of the right-turn lane as a bike path.
Cycling is my primary mode of transportation, and I've found a couple things help with this:
1. Take the lane any time there's a chance of conflict such as a right hook, and when there is not enough space for a car to safely pass [1][2]
2. Use a headlight all the time, even during the day. This is what motorcyclists do, and when I made this change I noted a major drop in the number of drivers that turn without noticing me.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicular_cycling#Lane_control
[2] This page has descriptions of several types of collision, with example videos and how to choose a lane position that avoids them: https://iamtraffic.org/engineering/behaviors-and-risk/
I totally agree with this. I also find it’s best to take the lane in urban traffic where you’re not impeding the flow of traffic. The people I see getting in trouble/hurt are those (curiously, largely boomers) who insist on weaving around cars or moving up on the right without room. Just get in with the cars and move predictably.
In the USA the situation is much more risky than here.
I don't like riding in traffic mostly because drivers tend to have a short fuse for anything that isn't exactly at the limit, but on bike paths everything works just fine. The problem is that s-pedelecs are technically lumped in with the scooters, even though there is no throttle and there is absolutely no way you are going to sustain 40 Kph+ for anything but a very short period. But they're still pretty new and little by little municipalities are adapting and allowing s-pedelecs to use the bike lanes. What helps is that s-pedelec riders are extremely defensive. In town I simply reduce the assist to 'eco' and cycle with the rest of the bikes, and on the intercity bike paths I go as fast I conditions allow, typically 35 to 38 or so. On a longer trip that averages out to 33 to 35 Kph, which means a 1 hour car trip turns into a 2 hour bike trip, which is acceptable (and never traffic jams, which can turn that 1 hour car trip into a three hour car trip!).
I have an e-bike and I disagree with your assertions. I'm a fat asthmatic and I have absolutely no problem maintaining 40kph for long stretches of time on my bike. The fastest I've done on it (on a large hill but still) is 42.7MPH (~68Kph). Average cruising speed on flat land can easily be 30-33mph(48-53kph). Not all e-bikes are capable of this, but they are certainly not some kind of rare expensive impossibility - mine was less than 3000 USD.
My point is that you should be more ingenuous with your assertions of what the capabilities of these bikes are when communicating with people about it. Nothing makes people more skeptical than reading things that are just plain false from an advocate.
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Very cool project. I'm currently evaluating whether I could commute 75km per day on a pedelec. In Switzerland there is a small bike manufacturer that makes long range pedelec : https://www.speedped.com/ (German only). It's very expensive though but the battery pack can be updated to something quite impressive.
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Whatever you do in traffic, be very careful. I'm still driving a car and inner city traffic is basically slaloming between cyclists. If something goes wrong, only one of us will end up in hospital.
I do also ride my bike on weekends have have been riding a 650cc motorbike for 15+ years, so not at all against 2 wheels. It's just that most people on two wheels seem to have started very recently and they don't know how to behave.
As a cyclist I tend not to care so much about all the mistakes other people do. Realistically it's a very small percentage of people that are new in traffic, the problem is that you usually only see the mistakes people do. You will never see that cylist who changed their pace 20s ago to avoid you.
What has been shown is that people who travel by many different modes; cylists, pedestrian, motorcycle, car, bus etc, are usually much safer and better at navigating traffic. We are all still masters at judging people only based on feelings though that will probably never change.
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> You're not really a regular bicycle anymore due to your speed…
The top speed (with assist) for class 1 & 2 e-bikes is well within the speed range of a regular bicycle. 15 MPH is considered a reasonable average speed for beginners, and 18-22 MPG is not out of the question with training. I've ridden my own e-bike past 20 MPH with no assist on occasion, and being a foldable model designed for electric assist it has a higher mass, smaller (20") wheel radius, higher rolling resistance (due to low-pressure 3-4" tires), and lower gearing than your typical non-electric commuter bike.
> … but you're also not a motorcycle that deserves its own lane.
Bicycles should have their own lane, whether electric or not, regardless of speed. It's not safe to share the lane with another vehicle.
I've tried driving over the top of the motor on this bike and it is almost impossible. I'm a pretty strong cyclist and I never managed more than 48 kph and that only very briefly. The drag is insane.
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22 mph = 35 kmh. The average speed of Tour de France is 40 kmh: https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/tour-de-france/2016/gc/...
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> You're not really a regular bicycle anymore due to your speed, but you're also not a motorcycle that deserves its own lane.
Even human powered bicycles are entitled to their own lane. They are vehicles like anyone else.
Cars misjudging the speed of oncoming bicycles is a huge problem, even without pedal assist. I have added significant length to my bike commute to avoid places where cars turn across my path. I can take a 1% risk once in a while, but not twice a day.
This is rule #1 of bike safety: avoid risky situations.
You deserve your own lane, although the rules vary from state to state. Some states have FRAP (as far right as practicable), others (such as mine) say that a cyclist should take the lane. As a motorist, and cyclist, I cringe when I see a cyclist half-in and half-out of traffic. As a cyclist, I avoid streets with fast, congested car traffic altogether. Fortunately, my locale has a lot of alternatives for bikes, including some bike paths plus neighborhood streets.
When getting your motorcycle license here in Belgium they teach you to always take the lane. Ride 3/4 of the way in. If you give the car some space, they'll drive closer to you, try to pass and then get impatient & aggressive when they can't. If you take up all the space they'll usually just accept it.
Obviously rules for bicycles may be slightly different but more and more inner city roads here in EU are now clearly marked as bicycle friendly.
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> You're not really a regular bicycle anymore due to your speed
I don't understand, ebikes are regulated and the assistance will top at 25kmh in most EU countries, which is a very average speed for a bike without assistance.
Unless you're talking about speed bikes, that can ride faster but are regulated like a motorcycle with license plate and can't ride on cycle paths. So it's just an electric motorcycle that looks like a bicycle.
Electric moped that works like a bicycle.
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* You're not really a regular bicycle anymore due to your speed, but you're also not a motorcycle that deserves its own lane.*
If you’re traveling at normal road speeds, wouldn’t you be a (electric) motorcycle? And require lights, tags, and insurance like any other motorcycle?
E-bikes in the US require pressure on the pedals to avoid being classified as vehicles (they’re cycling assist devices). That said, many people have retrofitted those assist systems with garage modifications that remove the need to push the pedals or even add a digital “throttle”.
Illegal? Sure. Are they going to get charged for it? Probably not.
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That's how it is for S-Pedelecs in Germany.
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I just discovered electric bikes lately, and started going to the office on an ebike instead of subway!! I then discovered how dangerous this can get especially at the end of the day when my brain is tired!
I thought of stop riding bikes, but then chose to have a life insurance instead
> I thought of stop riding bikes, but then chose to have a life insurance instead
This is how i treated cars, but it feels backwards. You're made right after the accident, but you're already dead.
> I then discovered how dangerous this can get
Presumably this has nothing to do with biking and everything to do with other motor vehicles?
> the Bosch BMS is part of a DRM setup that pretty much prohibits using 3rd party batteries
Another good reason to fight DRM: https://www.defectivebydesign.org/.
Agreed, highly frustrating this. I found a way to make it work but it would have been a lot better if third party batteries could be supported by the system out-of-the-box without butchering a Bosch pack first.
You probably should add "Show HN:" in front of the title, since it's you who posted and did all this. Thank you for a great article!
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Love it, glad to see you keep doing nice stuff, Jacques.
Also glad to see there are still real makers in the world. Makers do, period.
Another type of person would've asked for 10M of seed funding for "a revolutionary way to commute to work, target market: the whole world" and would've delivered nothing after 2 years of "working really hard on it".
> Another type of person would've asked for 10M of seed funding for "a revolutionary way to commute to work, target market: the whole world" and would've delivered nothing after 2 years of "working really hard on it".
... and yet another person would've bootstrapped a company off it :-)
And then there are people like you and me who do neither and spend time talking shit on HN.
Well, kind of, ..., my 2021 has been one of my most productive years ever.
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There are alternatives that don’t involve DRM or Bosch at all.
I built our ebikes around regular bikes using a TSDZ2 torque sensing motor and an em3ev 52V battery. Total cost around 600$ + bike + tools. The battery is already assembled so no risk of setting your house on fire. The torque sensing makes it really natural (like having bionic legs), the whole thing has an open source firmware if you want to replace the Chinese made one (https://github.com/OpenSourceEBike/Color_LCD) and you can use any battery with it. With a 850Wh battery we get around 100km range.
There is also the cyber bike for which you can buy plans and build from scratch but that one is more of a motorcycle and you’ll probably need certification + insurance to use it legally.
Where I live you can't legally cobble together your own s-pedelec, you need type approval.
The EU is large. Did you or anyone else by any chance do any research on EU countries with a fairly flexible certificate of conformity approval procedure for L1e-B/speed pedelecs?
I'm starting to research my options for a twice weekly 2*65km commute. Most of it is ideally suited for speed pedelecs, along a canal and an old railway converted to cycle highway. The commercial offerings don't suit my needs. I wouldn't really want to pay a lot of money for a DRM offering either. That would be different for a DRM free version with serviceable battery packs.
A lot of the problem would go away if the Bosch DRM could be broken in some way, or at least convinced to accept non-Bosch batteries...
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Same here. The tsdz2 based bike is limited to 25 km/h so it’s a bicycle and not a s-pedelec.
The so called cyber bike is though and it wouldn’t be legal either where I live.
We have a pretty good network of fire roads in the southern Los Padres National Forest.
Several times recently I have seen hunters and campers using E-Bikes to extend their range into the forest. From what I can tell they use a cargo trailer for gear as well as extra batteries.
It will be interesting to see what other uses being find for E-Bikes as ranges increase.
> From what I can tell they use a cargo trailer for gear as well as extra batteries.
This is the main reason if you might ever buy multiple ebikes in your household, buy a drivetrain brand that has generic, swappable batteries that can work on all your ebikes. Buying batteries is expensive (~$1,000 for Bosch).
For example, some ebikes don't have swappable batteries (either they're integrated or are a no-name brand).
The Bosch Powerpack, on the other hand, is ubiquitous and swappable. If I'm going on a long trip, I steal the battery from my other ebike and bring it along (I have a Surly Big Easy cargo bike and a Trek Verve+ 2. My SO also has a Verve+ 2).
Another benefit on buying ebikes with the same powertrain manufacturer is the battery lock can be keyed alike. It simplifies a lot.
(Oh, one last thing! If you go with Bosch, you can get the battery locks keyed alike to Abus U locks.)
If you can charge your batteries up to 60% when you store them for a longer time rather than 100%, then charge to 100% just before you need them. That will keep them around that much longer. Better still if you can avoid discharging them below 15% soc.
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Oof, $1500 per kWh.
I keep hearing about lithium ion batteries getting so cheap per kWh; when is that going to make it into reasonable-quality products?
An added benefit for hunters is that deer aren't afraid of the sound of bikes. Similar to cars, they just don't care. It's much easier to approach a deer on bike than on foot.
These particular roads are also closed to normal vehicle traffic (autos and OHV).
I will be interested to see if E-Bikes end up being included in the motorized category in the future and therefore not allowed on these roads. There is some debate locally as to whether they should be allowed on normal trails which are already off-limits to motorized vehicles (but OK for standard bikes).
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a friend does this for getting to fishing spots quicker from campsites. Sounds like an incredible idea if you've got the space for it, especially if you've got a large battery bank in your camper/vehicle for partial charges without having to turn an engine/generator on (I've got ~100amp hours of lithium battery in my truck camper, and I'd probably at least double that if I was gonna charge a bike every now and then)
This is truly hacker! awesome.
Reading OPs own multiple mentions of live bomb, more than a little bit scary, "especially given where it is located" makes me nervous just looking at it!
Hopefully op says the casing trespa has enough protection so they can get off it it catches fire or the ali express balancer breaks. From what I've read managing the batteries is a big part of tesla's success.
Ha awesome! Sorry if I missed it, but I didn't see a mention of the weight of the battery pack by itself, how much does the custom pack add?
It adds about 7 kg.
So that’s 7kg extra for your 2150Wh, over the original 500Wh battery? So around 250Wh/kg?
I’ve been planning a velomobile that I can live out of, and I’ve been interested to observe that by the time you get to one kilowatt hour, I can’t find any Li-ion batteries at all: they’re all LiFePO₄. https://au.renogy.com/renogy-smart-lithium-iron-phosphate-ba... is then about 1280Wh (12.8V/100Ah) for 11.8kg, 110Wh/kg, around half the specific energy (though I haven’t excluded the weight of the controller electronics or any differences in casing). But I understand LiFePO₄ will live longer, and is generally safer (less prone to thermal runaway and whatnot).
I’m guessing you were going with Li-ion because you were working in the Bosch ecosystem (and potentially for weight as well), but do you happen to have any wisdom to offer about the differences between Li-ion and LiFePO₄?
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That's super light for that kind of range!
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Hi Jacques! A little late here. It's cool to see someone else spot welding! For the DC area, it's totally faster to commute and I took my daughter everywhere! Now we're in Philly and I use it for long ranges. I've built a bunch of these in various forms, my favorite is a big wheel scooter. It's my main commuter. Look up rivet nuts for securing to the frame! Was a big life saver.
One thing: After years of riding various bikes I've built, please for the love of everything, be careful at high speeds because I've discovered the weakest point of the bike is the C shaped thing at the end of the fork for the wheels. At super high speeds the bumps are rougher on the bike and will eventually pull it apart, even with mid motor power. It may not even come apart all the way, but spread open slightly. Maybe millimeters.
I've tried several bikes, offroad and everything. It won't happen now, but like at odometer 6000 or something. Every single time it fails there. I've had 3 bikes, various scooters, all fail that way. It means your wheel may eventually, suddenly come off at a high speed. I think the answer is a custom fork, but haven't gone there yet.
I'm jakecodes on twitter if you want to trade knowledge.
Hi Jake, I love this kind of response, all the armchair lawyering and other bs is just a huge distraction, there are exactly four comments in this whole thread including yours that are constructive. You mean the metal part joining the two sides of the fork? That's a great warning, I never thought of monitoring that bit in particular but now that you mention it that makes perfect sense, there is quite a bit of force on that joint.
I'll go and have a look at my bike right away and I'll keep a sharp eye on this as well.
And you've got one more follower in Twitter :)
Do you have any pictures of those failures? I'd love to see what they look like to get an idea of where an early warning might manifest itself.
I looked up the names for the parts of the fork: It's the part of the fork called the dropout that fails. Here's a picture of a dropout itself: https://i.stack.imgur.com/VZ8bO.jpg, not mine.
When it fails it may look exactly the same (you won't see anything wrong), if you take calipers to it, you'll notice the gap has widened. So measure it now and remeasure every once in a while. If it's changing you've got a problem.
OR you may be able to see it is visibly slightly wider, like more bowl shaped. It doesn't take much for the wheel to come off, it's very tight tolerances. I've never had one snap yet, but I've heard of other's whose dropouts have snapped.
You will notice it is starting to fail when you brake and the wheel feels like it is shifting ever so slightly. It might make a tiny little clink sound. Sometimes it will make the wheel clink around in the dropout when you go over bumps, since the tolerances are SO tight in that area.
It's not just stretching the C towards a straight line that happens, but also twisting at that area or flattening from side to side movement.
Ever since they failed on me a few times I've been riding less because it's a problem I have not solved yet. I reinforced them with 1/4 inch steel. Still it moved independently.
One other solution I've heard about to get bigger tires, they are often called "fat tires". That dampens the stress on the bike a lot. It also makes for a much smoother ride. But I've not done that yet since fat tires need space in the fork. I think a stronger fork and fat tires may totally solve the problem. Fat tires would be nice because it'll turn your bike into a nice smooth ride, and you know how rough the ride can be at that speed for that long.
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While I've never seen/heard of this happening, I suppose it's possible. I'd chalk it up to 2 issues: 1) possibly not tightening the quick release skewers quite enough 2) cheaper aluminum dropouts on the suspension lowers. One solid option is to purchase a thru-axle fork and wheel. They're becoming pretty much the standard across the cycling/mtb industry and you can even find rigid steel options (https://surlybikes.com/parts/karate_monkey_fork). If you're replacing your fork, that'll also open up options to buy a larger rim & higher volume tire to absorb more impact. Generally speaking, thru axle forks are designed to take a lot of abuse, so you'd be hard pressed to overstress one in a commuting setting, even over a long period of time.
You can also try a bolt on hub/fork where you're actually tightening a hex nut to secure the dropouts on the axle—most older 10 speeds are in this vein. They're also typically steel which is always nice for reliability.
I electrified a Kona Unit last year as a car replacement and have put it through the ringer. If you like tinkering, I highly recommend poking around the forums on lunacycle.com.
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Look for thru-axle, they're standard on gravel-oriented bikes and mountain bikes, and are getting onto more and more of the road oriented bikes.
This bike has the added benefit of being theft resistant - on the basis that it's too heavy for one person to lift. Seriously though, what does it weigh?
With a typical sized Dutch man, stopping from full speed is going to be a real test of the brakes...
For the same reason I don't like scooters on bike paths, I wouldn't want this sharing a bike path with me. When heavy fast vehicles and regular bikes collide, the regular biker usually suffers more.
About 35 to 36 Kg. Bike + rider is 105K, which is actually not that bad. Your typical parent+bike+two kids is a lot heavier, I've had my 'daddy bike' up to well over 130 Kg before one of the kids was old enough to ride by themselves.
Full speed to stop is pretty good too, I did a couple of e-brakes to see how the change of weight and COG affected the bike. Stopping distance is a bit longer, it doesn't kick out when braking hard in a corner more than it did before, and - not surprisingly ;) - it transfers a bit more weight to the front when you hit the brakes hard.
But compared to a scooter it is much lighter and compared to a normal e-bike it is only 5 Kg heavier (29 vs 35 Kg).
haha I'm more than that on my road bike and I'm stopping with rim brakes. This is incredibly impressive work; congratulations! Can't wait to see the update. I suspect you're going to be just fine on water ingress based on what the inside of the package looks like.
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That is impressively light. My opafiets is 30kg.
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People steal cars and motorcycles that are heavier. If you leave it out and think it’s too heavy to be stolen you’re living in a much friendlier place than me, electronic transport isn’t even always sought after for personal gain. Scooters are routinely thrown in the water around the world.
https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/local/hillsboroughcounty/s...
https://www.electrive.com/2021/06/17/hundreds-of-scooters-la...
https://www.kcrg.com/2021/06/03/teen-arrested-for-throwing-e...
>stopping from full speed is going to be a real test of the brakes...
I'm sure it'll be fine if you stick some high end mountain biking disk brakes on there. I suspect you could also use the moter to bring it to a sharpish stop.
It's got large diameter hydraulic disc brakes, there clearly is a bit of a difference with the added battery weight but it stops just fine (still way faster than my 10 speed with rim brakes in spite of the much higher bike weight). The fat tires (2 1/4") also really help with that.
Bare weight of the cell is 50g. With 170 cells that is is 8.5kg. Still considerably lighter than cargo e-bikes.
And 40 of those cells can be discounted because they were also present in the old pack.
I am surprised velomobiles are never mentioned: they are much faster than traditional bicycles, have some protection from the weather and can be electric assisted too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velomobile
They are super dangerous too. Very low to the ground, nearly invisible from the perspective of a motorist and far harder to overtake with on narrow bike paths than regular bikes. We have a couple of them near here, also a few battery assisted ones. The velomobile would be an ideal vehicle if everybody rode one.
> Very low to the ground
That makes recumbent bikes safer (actually the safest) during falls. Less height - less kinetic energy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recumbent_bicycle
> nearly invisible from the perspective of a motorist
Usually solved by bright colors and adding a flag on top.
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I haven’t yet ridden a velomobile (though I may purchase one soon and am planning on building one for riding round Australia and living out of for a year or so), but I’ve been riding a recumbent tricycle (Greenspeed GT3 Series II) since 2014, including various touring in Australia (Victoria and some South Australia), America (through California, and from St Louis to Philadelphia) and New Zealand (Auckland to Kaikoura¹).
People often assume that the trike is more dangerous than an upright bike because of being lower, and there is some truth in that aspect, but on the balance of things I consider and find it much safer than an upright bicycle. The increased width increases visibility again somewhat; the fact that the maximum width is at ground level rather than over a metre up means that you can’t ride in the gutter as bicyclists often do and have to be further out from the edge of the road, which makes you much more visually distinct (rather than blending in with the edge); the fact that you’re necessarily further from the kerb makes it so that in many places cars can’t sneak by you dangerously close and have to be more considerate in how they overtake; you the cyclist are far more aware of how traffic is flowing due to your posture (constantly beholding the world in front of you rather than craning your neck painfully from time to time, and with a mirror² in which you can also constantly monitor what’s coming up behind) and so can interact more usefully with it (which is a massive deal for safety). I always run at least one flag, and when heavily laden drape the back of one of my old hi-vis orange shirts over the back of my load. Combine all that with the inherent stability (which incidentally helps you to go in an actually straight line), the greater comfort, the low centre of gravity and a few other such factors, and I feel very significantly less safe when riding an upright bicycle (road or mountain), as I have a handful of times since getting my trike.
Recumbent bicycles (as you seem to be showing talking of in part) I have no experience with; they indeed have some notable problems for casual use, and are more suited for racing. When talking of velomobiles, make sure you’re considering their tri- or quadricycle basis, as distinct from two-wheeled speedliners which have a tendency to amplify some of the problems or hazards of recumbent bicycles even further. Of velomobiles in general compared with recumbents, I have heard some people reporting that traffic sometimes interacted with them more like a strange small car than like a strange bicycle, and that they felt slightly less safe.
—⁂—
¹ At Kaikoura just a couple of weeks ago I suffered unexpected and unexplained sidewall failure in my rear tyre, upon which I discovered that literally no one in the entire country stocks 349mm tyres—the national Schwalbe distributor, for example, doesn’t import anything below 20″. So instead of cycling the rest of the way to Christchurch I took a bus, and on returning to Australia last week equipped a spare I had, and I can buy more.
² On uprights, mirrors don’t tend to work well for lack of suitable attachment points and techniques, but on recumbent tricycles they work much better, and on recumbents in general mirrors are nigh essential as seeing behind otherwise takes leaning forwards out of your seat a fair way in order to twist your body enough to see behind adequately.
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It's very much less convenient than a bicycle since it's bigger, less maneuverable, harder to get in/out and harder to "park".
Also, when commuting you don't need "fast". A bicycle or a regulated ebike are sufficient enough given the constraints you will encounter (lights, stops...). What makes using (e)bike to commute awesome is not the speed per se, it's the reliability. You won't be stuck (= taking part) in traffic, so if on Monday you take 30 minutes to go to work, it will be the same each day of the week. No need to rush to +30kmh between lights.
By and by, enough cars will be equipped with enough driver assist that heavy cars that must be crashworthy at relatively high speeds will no longer be needed, much in the way active safety makes light high speed rail carriages possible. Then lightweight vehicles can come in to wider use. Imagine how road capacity would be increased by something like a lightweight one-seat series hybrid "bike" with an enclosing fairing. A lot of communities could be done in vehicles weighing 5-10% the weight of a car.
Yes, this is definitely a good point. There is an arms race like effect at work here, if you could de-escalate that lighter vehicles would be much better.
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Too close to the ground; that's what "killed" Sinclair's version of it.
Awesome project and 500 km range is a cool achievement! Kudos to OP for all the effort and research that went into this.
I’ve run into the same issue that standard battery packs on eBikes are just not enough. The problem is not so much needing to do super long trips but if you forget to charge one day, you’re going to be stuck the next. Luckily it’s become more common for OEMs to offer dual battery setups with the piece of mind of extended range but also having a warranty! We own two cargo eBikes in the family and both have two Bosch batteries. Range varies from 80 to 200 miles depending on level of assist and is more than enough for our daily ~20 mile errands.
FYI: spot welding is a lot easier and precise using this welder: https://www.keenlab.de/index.php/portfolio-item/kweld/
With the capacitor module, you can easily power it with a lab bench power supply.
Finally, a constructive comment instead of a bunch of legal stuff and fantasy performance figures. Thank you very much, I'll look into this.
edit: Hm, the power supply looks to be a LiPo pack, the other two options are no longer available. But very nicely executed kit, now to find a way to power it from a wall socket.
If you pair it with this ultracapacitor bank, you can power it with a regular lab bench power supply.
https://www.keenlab.de/index.php/product/kweld-ultracapacito...
That's what I did for a custom ~600Wh pack I made. From memory (that was ~3y ago) I've set the voltage to ~12V and amperage to 30A. If you weld super fast, you'll start to be rate limited by the capacitor charge rate, but then you can just slow down a bit and all is well. It seems like the creator of the project has since released this custom voltage regulator that you can hook to a server power supply:
https://www.keenlab.de/index.php/product/ksupply/
This would be useful if you don't have a lab bench powersupply that can't provide 30A at 12V, and you're impatient. The website looks like their stuff is all in stock, so you shouldn't have a problem. Although you already built your pack so it might be too late. :)
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> I traced it down to the several KA welding pulse that caused the ground fault interruptor to be EMP’d. Running the welder without ground took care of that.
That's a solution, I suppose. Not one that I would pursue, but I'm glad the author got the pack welded without any injury.
I know my way around electrical stuff, not having ground on the welder was ok given the work place setup, but agreed that if you are unsure about the possible consequences that you shouldn't do that.
Ironically, the only time I ever really got zapped was when I was connecting a scope to what I thought was the ground terminal of a very large high voltage power supply. The only slight problem was that it was a positive ground system...
Kind of strange that they build scopes with ground tied to mains earth, as it is the source of so many problems and hazards. Letting the entire thing float would be the proper solution.
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This is an interesting project, but if I needed long range transportation and didn't want a car, I'd get an electric scooter (the Vespa kind, not the Razor kind), or an electric motorcycle. It's built to handle higher speeds and can coexist with cars more safely.
For highways of larger roads perhaps. If you’re somewhere with good bike infrastructure you won’t be able to take advantage of those nice separated lanes.
I bought a Vespa instead of an e-bike a few years ago because I thought e-bikes would get cheaper with time and I figured I already have a bike, why get a more expensive one? Also because my SO could ride with me instead of having to have two bikes.
However I noticed that bikes can still be faster than sitting in traffic and trying to filter through to the front at traffic lights. Now I have an e-bike but have kept my Vespa for the wind-in-the-hair feeling of a scooter on nice summer days.
Unless you are doing some competitive riding, there is a reasonable limit for how long you want to ride per day. As a motorcyclist, I know well that distances of 350-600 miles per day are possible but taxing on your body. So for regular commute or light weekend riding (roundtrip), I would say 4-5 hours of battery life is sufficient. Depending on cruising speed, you can calculate the distance it will get you. Anything above that is just an extra unnecessary battery weight you are carrying.
This is true, modulo that if you charge your battery to the max and discharge it all the way that you are murdering it, so some spare capacity will very much improve your battery's life span, way beyond what you would get out of it otherwise.
I have a question for the author - what safety precautions do you take against theft for such an e-bike, especially when going to public places like supermarkets? I recently came to the Netherlands and have heard that bike theft is common, especially for expensive bikes. I would guess that such an e-bike would be an attractive target, so do you take additional precautions when parking in public places (like 2/3/4 locks), or simply not park in public places at all?
I park a similar ebike in San Francisco fairly often. I have a good U-Lock and only lock to secure bike rings on main streets but haven't had any trouble. I've left it for hours at a time, but never later than about 9pm. You can mitigate the overall risk with an insurance plan, which is only a few hundred bucks a year.
Get two different locks, one cable lock as well.
I would not leave it outside for more than a few minutes unattended. It's too expensive for that.
That makes sense, thank you. I assume you use a "regular"/beater bike for such activities (like supermarkets)?
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Do people steal the bikes by picking them up with a car, or do they try to ride them away?
I'm surprised I haven't seen e-bikes with an electronic immobilizer (that will either disable the motor or use it as a brake, unless unlocked with a code or physical token).
I have a specialized Vado sl. You can purchase a range extender and easily do over 100km with it, in reality closer to 200k. Any reason you didn’t consider this as it’s manufacturer supported?
I've looked at that bike now. It's a regular e-bike, not an s-pedelec so quite a bit slower, also the range is very small. I like the looks though, very elegant. But like I wrote in the article, I'm probably faster on my old non assisted racer than I would be on that bike even though it would give me more range because it's assisted. The battery on my bike is more than four times as large, and will do 180 km at maximum assist, far faster than that Vado SL bike will go, and it's a different class of bike entirely (pedelec vs s-pedelec).
Are you driving the s-pedelec on bike lanes in NL? It’s illegal to do so here in Finland although it’s not well enforced and no way am I riding in traffic here. You’re also required to have a license plate for the s-pedelec here also.
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I never even knew about the brand. The three that I looked at were Stromer, Bosch based systems and Klever. The Bosch based system won out because it doesn't use fancy one-off stuff, there is a fairly good source for spares (batteries, motors, controllers) and it seems to be the most reliable system on the market. The Stromers are a bit faster (higher powered motors), the Klever looks clunky and I've read a ton of stories about their reliability issues.
Will look at the Vado, thanks for the pointer.
Specialized is one of the most well-known bike brands among enthusiasts. Unfortunately also one most expensive ones.
But they have some interesting innovation going on, e.g. with the FutureShock system on rigid bikes, integration of storage in downtubes, their various suspension designs on mountainbikes, first dual-crown fork on an enduro bike, and their own e-bike system.
You can think of them as the Apple of the bike market.
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The Vado SL with the range extender still has a smaller battery than the Vado. If you want that kind of range all the time, isn't the Vado the better choice? At $450 for 160Wh, the Vado SL range extender is the worst deal in the Specialized catalog, and that's saying something!
The Vado is also twice as heavy. The SL is super light so that heavy battery is hauling a lot more weight around. The SL is for those who still want to cycle. The power of the normal Vado basically makes you redundant.
Great project. I have a 2018 giant quick e+ that is speed limited to 28mph for the US market - in reality gets up to 26-27. In general the push bike cycling technology is universal (SRAM, shimano, campy, etc kit works everywhere) but for e-bikes there are wierd oddities where all the enthusiasm of the international DIY community doesn't quite translate to different locations because of differences in the battery and motor. I wanted to add a supernova headlight to my bike and what seemed like it would work was really hard because the US wire harnesses were different, voltages were different, etc.
In order to support the weight of the motor and batteries these bikes tend to be really beefy and top out at around 50 lbs. Not sure how much your extra batteries weigh - but if you exhaust the batteries on a 50lb bike you need to make sure you have a super granny gear to get you home if you have hills.
Chances of depleting this battery in normal use are nil unless you end up driving to Berlin from Amsterdam or so :) It can go up to the country borders in every direction.
The added weight is 130 times 50 grams + the weight of the enclosure. 170 batteries in there, but the original battery already had 40 of those.
Agreed that you don't want to pedal it uphill without the motor running that would get old really quick.
I built a stretch cruiser ebike out of parts, including a bafang / 8fun mid drive and 52v “shark” style battery. It does pedal assist and straight up throttle to danger in lickety-split.
This is a cool project, however, I wouldn’t have gone this route because:
It isn’t a great idea to lock up an ebike, but there are circumstances where you might want to and you’ll want to take the battery with you when you do.
If you need added capacity, I’d recommend a second battery to swap in during a longer ride. This can limit the size of the extreme failure should that occur, and let’s you choose less weight for shorter trips.
Finally, there are some quality battery builds out there, in a variety of shapes that include enclosures offering some resistance to shock.
Besides all the testing and perfect wiring here, you can rely somewhat on the seller to back up their work.
If the battery isn't easily removed then I would say it's probably just as safe to lock up this ebike as much as any other expensive bike. It'd be really hard to flip/fence with a custom battery like that though
Batteries are stolen more frequently than bikes!
What's HN favorite fancy-ish ebike from the likes of VanMoof or Cowboy or something else? I saw one of the bikes sell for as high as $5k which, provided how many very nice-looking alternatives at 50% the cost there are seams unreasonable.
I bought this one second hand for half of what they go new for. It was sold as though it had 1800 km on it, deep readout of the controller revealed that I got scammed (it has done 11000 km), but I still think it's a pretty good deal, I'll just need to swap out some bearings a bit sooner.
The Stromer range is very nice, super pricey, Klever as well.
I haven't tried or looked at other s-pedelecs. Regular e-bikes there are so many types and brands that it is hard to say what works and what doesn't without just trying them.
This store has quite a few brands of s-pedelec:
https://www.speedpedelecs.com/
But I'd never buy a new one, I think they are simply way too expensive, it's just another bike with a small electric motor and these prices are ridiculous, you can buy cars for that kind of money.
Van Moof is my favorite, because bikes are stolen a lot where I live and Van Moof comes with an alarm and GPS.
Interesting reading this as a US resident that modded an existing bike with some parts from Grin and other places. The battery I bought has 17Ah which supposedly has ~50 miles of range which is more than enough for my needs. I'm also able to throttle control and pedal cadence control and hit top speeds of 30+ mph. It's unfortunate that modern e-bikes are so locked down and restricted because the DIY route is a lot of work and pretty expensive, but clearly mainstream e-bikes are arbitrarily limited and holding back the true potential these bikes have.
True potential for what exactly? How do you see them being used if the limits were removed?
> clearly mainstream e-bikes are arbitrarily limited
I don't know that I'd call laws ensuring that high-speed motorcycles aren't allowed on mixed bicycle/pedestrian lanes just because they happen to be powered by electricity "arbitrary"; seems utterly reasonable to me. YMOV.
Wow, this would have been perfect for me when I was younger. I hope this will become more mainstream, an off roader would really open up the places to explore on a day trip.
For anyone interested in e-bikes, that has a do it yourself attitude, I recommend looking at Grin Technologies in Vancouver. I met someone who built their own e-bike this summer while out riding, and he suggested them to me. The founder has a bunch of videos online about e-bike technology that I learned quite a bit from.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnhuoUrwhIw
> and besides a lot better for our precious climate, which is the main reason I wanted to cut down on the use of my car.
I'm sure building an e-bike is a lot of fun. But there must be plenty of other ways to help the climate if you'd like to use your car occasionally.
For example, people who bike a lot might still order a ton of goods online (say, from Alibaba?) to save money, which then has the double effect of encouraging the global trade + transportation routes that are not climate friendly, and encouraging the "emerging market" businesses which don't necessarily produce products in the most sustainable ways in order to lower cost.
I know somebody who refuses to turn on their central air conditioning lower than 77F "because that wastes energy so it is irresponsible", and another person who turns off their hot water heater in between daily showers. Really I'd just like some sort of website that compares people's ideas about what helps the climate, to what actually helps, and how to balance things out in one's life.
that seems unfair.. OP is a nerd doing nerd things with the side effect of a feel good environmental story/reward.. vs turning off a hot water heater between daily showers is more like a misunderstanding of thermodynamics(?) or some part of physics. or not running an A/C which, hey, if they're happy, who gives a shit?
> hey, if they're happy, who gives a shit?
They should, and the reason why is recycling.
Everyone believed the claims that recycling would help the planet. But it turned out that most (not all, but most) recycling was being burned or buried, because it was never going to be cost effective. Nobody verified the claims, but it "made them happy" to think they were helping the planet. And now we live in a world with just as much trash and even more microplastics, when we could have been making real changes to actually reduce our waste impact. Letting people blithely say "oh I'm doing it to help the climate" helps people be happy while exacerbating the problem they're pretending to be helping to fix.
Another example is people who say "hey I'm not racist! my best friend is black!" while their subconscious bias at work actively prevents black people from being hired or promoted. Or "I'm not sexist! I love women!" while speaking over them in every meeting and shooting down their ideas. It's not enough to just feel good about what we're doing. We need to verify we're actually helping, not just assume we are.
After reading this, did you ever consider using petrol, gas, oil or whatever you call it there for environmental reasons (against electric is Lithium battery manufacturing, power loss in AC transfer, dirty fuel used to make electricity, and battery degrading) weight, energy density, simplicity and would the fuel cost much more? It’s 2-3x more than in the US would that have changed your mind, and would you still find it cheaper to maintain? Here’s some motors https://boneshaker.bike/motorized-bicycle-kits/
Do you see a benefit in a using 2 battery packs, so one can charge and the other will be used and swapping them, you can mount them so you don’t carry them, or switch them since they don’t rely on high voltage.
For the Bosch is it easy to beat the DRM? If they’re at best using essentially voltage to turn a brushless motor, it can’t be that hard to beat can it?
I figured with the kind of mileage that I'm getting out of this and the cost of electricity it's a pretty good deal compared to firing up my trusty boxer.
I've used two packs, two times 500 Wh but I'd run them dry on my regular commute so that's what drove the decision to build this bigger pack. There are some advantages, but the Bosch system keeps a reserve so you'll end up transporting some idle capacity anyway and you're killing the batteries cycle wise.
The DRM I have not - yet - been able to crack. Not for want of trying though and I'll definitely have another go at it. The CPU is a 32 bit chip that can do all kinds of neat encryption stuff so it's not going to be easy. To my knowledge it hasn't been hacked yet.
Keeping them within a certain range is useful but not as much as preventing them from overheating, heat and fast charging is more dangerous, basically if you limit them to 80% it will prevent trickle charging, you can do this in hardware by monitoring the speed it charges at and shutting off when it lowers with wattage monitoring equipment. Apple has this as well, and every lithium charger has trickle charging at 80%, but not all of them are able to end charging at this percentage.
https://linrunner.de/tlp/settings/battery.html
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210512
The best implimentation from my understanding is this one under android.
https://github.com/VR-25/acc
By hack I mean a bypass versus your meaning of attacking the security and removing DRM, is there a reason you can't just use another chip or anything special its doing? Do you need the CPU and is the cryptography documented enough to make it easy or woth the effort? It may also be a passion project so I understand if you just want to do it to do it, and even share the information. If it is battery charging features if they're important are not special. The last 20% makes extra cycles and is the most stressful.
https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-409-charging-lithiu...
>Turn off the device or disconnect the load on charge to allow the current to drop unhindered during saturation. A parasitic load confuses the charger.
>Charge at a moderate temperature. Do not charge at freezing temperature. (See BU-410: Charging at High and Low Temperatures)
>Lithium-ion does not need to be fully charged; a partial charge is better. Not all chargers apply a full topping charge and the battery may not be fully charged when the “ready” signal appears; a 100 percent charge on a fuel gauge may be a lie.
>Discontinue using charger and/or battery if the battery gets excessively warm.
>Apply some charge to an empty battery before storing (40–50 percent SoC is ideal). (See BU-702: How to Store Batteries.)
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A city-wide charging network with standardized, user-replaceable battery packs would be the "holy grail" of short- and medium-range electric bike and moped commuting. Unfortunately, jury rigging a larger battery capacity is the only solution due to competing, non-interoperable solutions and outdated speed and distance regulations.
Regenerative braking may be able to help, yes?
https://radpowerbikes.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/36004517...
Regen will usually only gain you 3-5% total range, most of the power from biking is dissipated as heat through aero drag, even if you're biking up and down hills. Source – my company exclusively does ebike research and development.
The tech for that isn't there yet. Direct drive motors are impractical (can't disengage, heavy).
I love the idea of e-bikes and would love to be able to use them and not need a car (which i don't own), but i just don't feel safe using them in US cities... NYC has too much traffic, SF has too many hills, Seattle is too wet.
I wish there was more alt-transit for commuter scale transportation to get around without a car, but the autonomy of not using a bus. Scooters seem promising but they're a pain on the roads (with laws banning use on sidewalks), and i've heard horror stories of how unsafe they were.
I feel like the ideal form factor is a pallet dolly: You have a handle, its wide so its comfortable to stand without balancing, and you can ride in the road confident a car can see you and not run you off.
You can always come up with a million reasons not to do something. Plenty of people bike safely in NYC, SF, and Seattle.
You don’t have to wish for an alt-transit solution that’s not a bus. Bikes exist. The more people who ride them the safer and more normalized they get.
I’ve bicycled (conservatively) 7,5000 or so urban/downtown miles over the past decade or so in Portland, OR. I get wet, I get sweaty, I get tired, I get into the occasional close call with cars, I get scared.
My biggest tips are: don’t buy a bunch of gear at once. Buy 1 thing at a time once you figure out what you might like. Ride slower, it’s not a race. If you get too scared, pull of the road, walk your bike, and take a break — I still do it even after a decade of riding.
> Plenty of people bike safely in NYC, SF, and Seattle.
Oh i know and power to them. Personally, i'm very clumsy and not very balanced, so i don't feel like i'd be comfortable riding in the city. I've rode a bike around silicon valley a bit, and it was fine.. most of the time.
I used to bike a lot in youth, (mostly on bike paths for fun), and for sure i know that a mostly-bike/ped environment feels much safer.
> The more people who ride them the safer and more normalized they get.
This is why i've been keeping an Ebike in the back of my mind (and hoping for alternatives to emerge). I'm hopeful for a future where cars are second-class citizens on urban streets.
Maybe i'll try biking around my neighborhood this spring, and see if I can get used to it.
(BTW thanks for the tips :) )
> i've heard horror stories of how unsafe they were
Wait, scooters are not a thing in the USA? As in, obscure enough that the closest experience you have is "heard horror stories" and that's it?
I feel like every second person here (Netherlands) owned one, or perhaps rather, at least I would expect every teenager to know someone with a scooter. I personally never saw the appeal but then I also hate cycling (too much work, can't transport groceries well at all, and you get wet) so I consider myself an outlier anyhow.
Electric Scooters (the kind you stand on, like Bird) are very very common in US cities.
The small wheels mean it’s easy to get knocked around whenever you hit any small side walk bump.
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I used to live in Seattle and a personal scooter is where it's at. Plus, it's impossible to look like more of a dweeb than the tech people riding electric unicycles.
It's great for 8 months of the year at least.
Hills are the reason to get an e-bike! I live in the Texas hill country and that's why I've thought of one.
Great article. Bosch seems to be the go to for most electric bikes sold in london. My experience so far is OK; school run replacement has been brilliant. The range estimation is ridiculously bad! I find the battery bars are better estimator.
I this spurs on more entrants or drives more features. Recharging feels too frequent. There's no feedback on 'driving' style and impact on range. I'd love regenerative breaking. Silly things like a clock on the control pane would be hugely useful options.
As someone who lives in SEA this obsession with e-bikes is rather fascinating. Modern ice motorbikes are dirt cheap (you can get one for the price of OPs battery pack) , easy to maintain and are surprisingly silent. Finally it can carry the whole family - pets included! It's not that uncommon to see 4 people on a scooter around here.
Honestly aside from weather I wonder why the west has such terrible adoption for imho the best transport vehicle we've got.
ICE motorbikes in the west are usually ridden by hobbyists, not people using them for commuting. Where I live, it is cold and/or miserable for 7 months of the year, and its rare to see motorbike riders during that time. So they're bought by people who already have other modes of transport. The weekend rider crew. And they are usually quite expensive. On top of that, where I live they need special licensing, so add 2000€ for a driver's license. Also, you'd be pulled over so fast for having a child or pet unsecured on one of them, your head would spin.
> Honestly aside from weather
Also we are generally wealthy enough to afford cars and they fit a whole family a lot more comfortably. If you can afford a car, why by a motorcycle unless you want one for fun? Ebikes are nice in the west because they can travel in bike lanes which have a lot less traffic.
> Also we are generally wealthy enough to afford cars and they fit a whole family a lot more comfortably.
I'd disagree with comfort - sure sitting in a car is great but a motorbike brings it's own comforts like easier parking and faster commute. I think we can all agree that the worst parts about commute is the traffic and parking - getting rid of these does change your perception of the experience significantly.
> it barely discharges over a trip like that, which should help with longevity
Only if you don't charge it fully though, right? As in, charge to just below X% when the amount of charge you expect to need is X/2 percent-points, rather than to 100% and not use it fully. At least that's my understanding and how I've been treating my li-ion devices.
Very precisely: it goes from 40.5 (about 80% soc) to 37.5V (about 60% soc) over a 64 km ride.
So indeed, not charged fully. Just enough to stay in the 80 to 20 window, which still gives me about 100 km of range to play with which is plenty and if I need it I can always charge it up fully and run it down but I don't expect that to ever happen. But those would be expensive cycles life-span wise.
The innovation possible due to a customizable battery configuration, and the simple drivetrain of a electric motors, can lead to some very wild experimentation with all kinds of mobility assisted devices. While pedelecs are seeing the initial interest, but a rapid evolution of battery powered exoskeletons cannot be very far.
Everything about this is awesome, great work. Love the write up — the bits on safety in particular. The layout is also oddly aesthetically pleasing. Inspiring, though I’m so so far at the beginning of the road with hardware and electronics. Might attempt a solar powered pond pump and battery though.
The biggest issue I have with getting more than 20 miles out of my e-bike is the controller. The manufacturer of the controller set it to shut off when the battery pack hits 42v. (using a 52v pack) Sucks pushing a bike up a hill when you know you still have ~15% capacity remaining.
That's to increase the life-span of the pack. At 15% max discharge the pack will live much longer (orders of magnitude) than if you were to ride it down to zero. This is precisely why I over dimensioned my pack.
I still remember the author of of the post for making pianojacq, a free in-browser piano learning helper software Yet another interesting project! I wish I had the knowledge to dive into making the same bike. How about a crowd funding effort to manufacture some more?
What's the motivation in peoples mind between using an e-bike and just using a tesla? If the argument is that the tesla is still unclean since the energy might not come from clean sources, doesn't that apply for e-bikes as well?
According to wikipedia[1], an ebike is about 10x as efficient per passenger mile as a tesla. Also, an ebike is 2x(!) as efficient as a conventional bike.
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transpo...
E-bikes can be much faster than a Tesla in dense urban cities. The reason for this is that in places with dedicated bike lane infrastructure you can easily skirt city traffic.
A bike is infinitely more convenient and fun than a car if you live in a city. And only cost a fraction.
Cars requirements on roads, parking lots and traffic jams also add to environmental profile if that’s your thing.
It uses a tiny fraction of energy to produce and drive around with. Lower emissions if you're using dirty energy. More energy left to spare if you're using clean energy.
You should post this on endlessSphere if you haven't. Great write-up!
I haven't, I didn't even know it existed!
You've been hacking and building an e-bike without knowing about the largest online forum for exactly that?
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That's cool, but why not just carry extra batteries and switch?
Because the batteries have to ride somewhere, in a bag in the back it messes up the weight distribution of the bike and every time you make a turn all that weight bangs into the frame at the back. Another problem is that you get a silly little bit of range per battery, 30 km on a good day, so you end up maxing out those batteries. If you want to spread the load across four batteries (same weight) then you will have to swap batteries every 16 km or so. So this is far more practical and much better for the cells in the longer term as well as a safer bike to ride.
Awesome! What speed does eco mode mean? A 500km range is pretty impressive, possibly also longer than it would be comfortable to sit on a bike without needing to sleep!
The speed doesn't really change, it's just that you have to work that much harder to achieve it. In ECO mode I'd say you are going to get tired about twice as fast as you would at max assist.
The 500 km range in eco mode is something I never expect to even go near though it might be fun to once ride around IJsselmeer or so on a single charge.
My dream e motorcycle - https://www.zeromotorcycles.com/
I have the 2022 Zero S and it is a delight. Highly recommend it for anyone who would be interested to try a motorcycle but don't want to deal with clutches. First motorcycle as well. There is simply less overhead to getting started, it's more noise appopriate for neighbors, and I don't have to worry about silent operation since I try to avoid risky maneuvers with other drivers when I can. I don't plan on dealing with traditional motorcycles ever.
"Avoiding risky maneauvers" :) - reminded me of an insurance agent of mine who always quipped that motorcyclists are a claim waiting to happen... and his joke that there's only two types of motorcyclists, those who have been in an accident and those who will be in one.
People in general, at least in the US, don't really even register you as existing if you're on a motorcycle... it doesn't jibe with the typical car driver's frame of mind, which means - and you've already figured this out - the higher burden of staying alive/responsible is - sadly or not - on you.
Had a boss who rode his Harley every single day in Seattle to work and home, for 25+ years, no accidents. He was of the same mindset as you - no risky/stupid maneuavers and defensive driving. Turn your body/bike into a flashy/strobe thing if you have to, that gets attention... who cares if you inconvenience someone w/extra lighting as long as it saves your life and lets them know where you're at.
Take it out for a spin for me! :) Envy you.
That's pretty awesome. Amazing range.
Be careful on bikes Jacques :) Let me know in advance if you plan to cycle this way or code some statistics dashboard.
RB
Mail me!
Inspirational project!
I love it. This is "only" three times the size of the battery in a factory-built e-bike like the Specialized Turbo Vado 5.0, but at half the price.
Nice. What's the 0-60 time?
Infinity, unless you drop it off a mountain or out of an airplane :)
To get up to 35 Kph is slow enough that in traffic it irritates the hell out of drivers of cars.
I see you've played GTA5!
> S-Pedelec (...) top speed 45 kph (...) in many places you are forced to ride in traffic
Yes. This is the way. Thank you, Dutch government.
If somebody feels like wheezing an almost completely silent 200kg projectile, godspeed. But please gtfo from the urban bike paths, if at all possible.
It weighs half that, including me, and the average speed over a longer trip is about 33 to 35 Kph. In cities you ride just as fast as the rest of the bike traffic, there isn't any point in trying to go faster, and top speed is rarely achieved, you'd need a 100% full battery and a rider in very good condition. More usual you'll be around 35 to 38 kph in open country where there is very little other traffic.
My 'commute' is 64 km, it takes me two hours on the dot door-to-door.
Using my Stromer ST1X — which lacks the top of the line motor of the ST3 and ST5 — I can bike at 45kph at any battery % above 30.
I am probably 140kg with bike, battery, laptop, clothes, and stuff.
Outside the cities I can go in the bike lane, and I am absolutely twice as fast as most bikes.
I live in the Netherlands, so everything being flat helps.
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My concern at those speeds is traction. I prefer fat tires so a bit of loose gravel or a pothole doesn’t ruin my day.
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All the speed of motorcycles without the sound awareness, what could possibly go wrong? My overall experience is that E-bike riders generally have decent cycling manners, it's the scooter and unicycle riders that seem to think they can just crank their walking speed up to 30mph and go everywhere a pedestrian would. I usually just give them a firm "heads up next time" when I get buzzed by an electric motor whine at 20mph.
I used to ride a motorcycle, now I have an ebike. They seem equally safe to me, which is to say neither are safe at all if there are other people on the road. The only solution is extremely defensive driving/riding, assume no one (including pedestrians) can see you. This attitude has been embedded deeply in the motorcycle culture and is the best way to all-around responsible riders -- and it needs to be propagated to ebike riders. I don't think it's about having manners, really. Also, sound awareness is a myth propagated by Harley riders.
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> unicycle riders
You probably mean "one wheel" riders? (As in the electric, low profile, self balancing type, not the traditional large wheel, seated, fixed axle unicycle) Unless you live around an inordinate amount of rude unicyclists. In that case, I must see that as it sounds very humorous.
Scooters are a plague (and this bike is classed as a scooter, unfortunately, so I'm lumped in with the worst), but a bigger danger is mobile phone use by cyclists. That's roughly 1/3rd of all the adults and 2/3rds of the teenagers here.
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I have a class 3 and I don't feel safe riding in bike lanes at full speed, zipping by slower bicycles. There's no place to go if someone swerves. I will usually ride in traffic instead.
Riding in traffic here is suicide. Drivers get very irritated when you are not exactly at the speed limit and I've had more than one instance where someone essentially overtook and then forced me into the bike lane. And that's just here in town, where there is absolutely nothing to gain.
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We really need a terminology to differentiate better between pedal-assist only e-bikes ("pedelec") and electric motorbikes. A "bicycle" that can accelerate without the need to pedal at all is an electric motorcycle, no matter if you put pedal on it or not.
I see the two as totally different things: I've tried pedal-assist e-bike and they're great. But... Although I have nothing against motorbikes I'm not cool at all with basically motorbikes getting a free pass because they're disguised as bicycles.
BTW this reminds me of the old french "Solex / VéloSolex": basically a real engine put on top of the front wheel, and able to accelerate by itself without the need to pedal. But the thing still had pedals. I used to use one and still have one in a garage. But I didn't use it on the bicycle lanes...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A9loSoleX
And scooters, electric-scooters, and sit-down electric scooters. And electric wheelchairs, and non-electric wheelchairs and mobility assist carts with handlebars. We also have to delineate between a daydreaming cyclist who's top speed is slow, and a hard-core cyclist with a $3000+ bike that can hit 40 mph in the right conditions. Those cyclists should be banned from using the same paths as the first kind of bicyclist, and should be relegated to the same areas as 'electric motorcycles'. Because it's really about acceleration and top speed, and it matters zero whether the thing has pedals or not.
Or put it another way, if my 'electric motorcycle' is slower to accelerate and has a slower top speed than you could possibly manage on a bicycle, it's really not a 'motorcycle' in any way, no matter how many pedals it does or doesn't have.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but even a <$1000 road bike with drop bars and 25-32mm tires can hit 30-40mph in the hands of novice/moderately experienced riders assuming they have a decent baseline fitness and either some straight level road or a long downhill run. If you've got a 52x12 gear ratio and can spin up to a cadence of 90RPM you'll be traveling roughly 31mph. Spin up to 110RPM and you're pushing 40mph.
The only difference is the experienced, lycra-clad cyclists with expensive bikes just get up to speed faster, maybe with less of a tailwind or downward grade. However, unlike their speedy novice kin, they (should, in theory) have better bike handling skills.
Overall, I think a strategy of banning with people the highest cycling skills from bike paths seems like a bad idea. Sure, you got weekend warrior dentists with fancy expensive bikes but their mediocre fitness level doesn't allow them to really extract significant benefit from their high-end cycling equipment. Their fancy aerodynamic carbon fiber bikes are probably only getting them a few mph over a classic steel frame. For more serious enthusiasts and professionals, those seconds matter... for everyone else it's just a flex.
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Multi-lane bike ”highways” would be awesome. What matters most (imo) is that all these riders are unprotected, and should be kept far apart from cars. If the unprotected, single rider, narrow vehicles want do drive at vastly different speeds then multiple lanes seems like a good solution.
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Honestly I don’t know if more rules is it. I think better infrastructure that encourages separation is better.
I live in a bike (and very e-bike heavy) US city and the rules don’t really get followed too much.
And I don’t blame anyone, because while there are inconsiderate people, speed comfortability is really relative. Some of my friends find just being on a bike scary versus my friends who skate through traffic just fine. I can’t invite them to the same things.
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> We also have to delineate between a daydreaming cyclist who's top speed is slow, and a hard-core cyclist with a $3000+ bike that can hit 40 mph in the right conditions.
Surely even skilled cyclists should be permitted to use bike paths as long as they don’t tear by everyone at 40 mph. And I’m genuinely a bit unclear as to why no-pedaling-needed bikes shouldn’t be able to mingle with bikes as long as they follow the rules.
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Eh, this is just extending the argument into absurdity I feel.
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> We also have to delineate between a daydreaming cyclist who's top speed is slow, and a hard-core cyclist with a $3000+ bike that can hit 40 mph in the right conditions.
Are there not speed limits for bike lanes? Most cars have a top speed well above the freeway speed limit too.
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I'm totally ashamed that I forgot to mention electric skateboards with 4 wheels and electric skateboards with 1 wheel and electric unicycles (larger single wheel vs a 'one wheel' electric skateboard) and it's too late to edit them in.
A really important factor you didn’t mention is weight.
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This is a pedal assist e-bike. There are people that cheat and that install throttles so they can move without pedaling but that's a great way to get your vehicle confiscated.
A typical ride has me providing 40 to 60% of the Joules and the remainder comes out of the battery. If there is a very heavy wind up (not rare here) that might drop to 30/70 and if I have a tailwind it is the reverse. The bike has a nice stats display where it tracks all this stuff. Maximum assist is 350W (10A current out of a nominally 36V battery), at the wheel considerably less than that, this is only used when starting up from a complete stop. The rest of the time you're at a small fraction of that.
> There are people that cheat and that install throttles so they can move without pedaling but that's a great way to get your vehicle confiscated.
Note that this varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In the US e-bikes with throttles are legally classified as Class 2 electric bicycles and are generally legal for use in bicycle infrastructure as long as they don't exceed 20 MPH.
FYI, the US classes are as follows: (1) 20 MPH (32 km/h) max, pedal-assist; (2) 20 MPH max, throttle; (3) 28 MPH (45 km/h) max, pedal-assist.
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My wife just bought an ebike (from RadPower) that has both pedal assist and a throttle that doesn't require pedaling. You can also adjust the amount of pedal assist so you can "feather pedal".
Who's going to confiscate this bike????
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Looking at those power numbers, I can't help but wonder how much you'd gain by doing this sort of modification on a bike that is more efficient and/or aerodynamic even without the motor attached.
A touring bike frame with 700c wheels and a more stretched out position would likely allow you to travel at the same speed for lower total power output - and make your battery go further (or not require such a large battery).
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But why does anyone actually care if you technically need to be pedaling in order for the electric motor to engage? Surely an electric bicycle could still go arbitrarily fast while arbitrarily requiring the pedals to turn. Isn't this whole thing just a silly loophole in what is considered a "bicycle"? What if instead, bicycle lanes just had rules regarding top speed, weight, form factor, etc.
> This is a pedal assist e-bike. There are people that cheat and that install throttles so they can move without pedaling but that's a great way to get your vehicle confiscated.
I really need to understand what's the difference with a throttle and a pedal assist whose curve is basically so that it gives all power at a ridiculously low pedaling rate...
I object to the pejorative "cheat" as to suggest that non pedal assist is morally worse than pedalling.
Edit to say nice job on the project, this is awesome. Here in Texas, I would love to see a lot of people using these in the bike lane.
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> I see the two as totally different things: I've tried pedal-assist e-bike and they're great. But... Although I have nothing against motorbikes I'm not cool at all with basically motorbikes getting a free pass because they're disguised as bicycles.
Eh, it depends if you see pedal assistance being the defining difference between a bike and a motorbike.
From a safety perspective, speed may be a better differentiator.
Speed (or better, momentum) is important. But pedal assistance is definitely material to me. Switching from pedal-assist to throttle-controlled changes the proportionality between impulse and real-world results.
As a kid my first response to pretty much anything with a dial was to turn it up all the way and see what happened. That's a behavior I saw quite a bit during the brief plague of VC-funded scooters: novices at 100% motor output rocketing down sidewalks, etc. That's much less likely to happen it they have to pedal hard to get the top speed.
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I think something like average real world speed and weight are the two important metrics. Maybe this is the intuition with petal assist vs throttle controlled e-bikes. I do sort of think it should take some work to get a bike up to it's top speed so that riders don't just cruise at that speed.
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> From a safety perspective, speed may be a better differentiator.
Or perhaps momentum, which is far higher in motorised vehicles.
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> I'm not cool at all with basically motorbikes getting a free pass because they're disguised as bicycles
Why? Seems like a pointless distinction in regards to any sort of rules. Surely where they're allowed to operate, for example, should be based on things like speed and weight, rather than "whether or not the operator is moving their legs in a circular motion."
This. There's an element of snobbery often in this discussion where there's a disdain for people who haven't "worked for" the movement they're getting.
Which seems besides the point. The reason you can't ride a motorcycle in the bike lane isn't because you haven't worked hard enough to deserve it, it's because of the top speeds and mass of the vehicles presenting a danger to others in the lane. It's the same reason cars present such a danger to cyclists - the scale of kinetic energy going around is just too high.
I think fast e-bikes are a technologically interesting thing, but from a regulatory point of view I'm much more mixed. ~30 kph seems eminently reasonable for bike infrastructure, and I'm excited about the ability for that to displace car trips - both from a sustainability perspective and a road capacity perspective. Much faster than that though?
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Yeah that argument for forcing pedaling to me seems like a way of gatekeeping to keep something a little more "pure" without any actual reason.
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Read jacquesm's reply to my comment: there are people hacking their pedelec so that they accelerate without you pedaling and that's illegal. I think it's a good thing it's illegal. I do also believe only pedelec are allowed on bike lane in Belgium/Brussels.
A bicycle which you can use without using the pedals is, to me, not the definition of a bicycle.
> Surely where they're allowed to operate, for example, should be based on things like speed and weight, rather than "whether or not the operator is moving their legs in a circular motion."
speed / weight and acceleration. But I'm still not sure about that. Bicycle lanes were made, at first, for people cycling. In European cities it's part of an overall move to be "greener": what's green about a vehicle with can be used without doing any exercise at all? You basically took the ICE engine of a motorbike and put instead an electric motor.
KTM (motorbike company) is already in to e-bike game. These companies are going to come and game the system as much as they can if limits aren't set: they'll otherwise build ultra light full-carbon e-bike with crazy fast acceleration and the selling point is going to be "It's a motorbike you can use in a bicycle lane".
I do honestly think saying: "if you don't need to pedal at all, it's not a bicycle and hence cannot use the bicycle lanes" (like they're apparently doing in the Netherlands) ain't a bad rule.
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> I'm not cool at all with basically motorbikes getting a free pass because they're disguised as bicycles.
As long as they'r not causing problems for other cyclists, they're still a big win in terms of transportation: way less carbon usage and occupies less space.
> As long as they'r not causing problems for other cyclists,
They cause problems. Maybe not every e-motorcycle rider, but most of them take full advantage of the power to out-accelerate other bikers and double the top speed of everyone around them.
Bike paths were design with typical cyclist speeds in mind. It's not uncommon to see a young kid flying down our local bike paths at 40mph or more on a modded e-bike, forcing all of the pedestrian and other cyclists to get out of the way as fast as possible. Worse, two e-bikers flying toward each other at 40mph in opposite directions is the same as one of them crashing at 80mph. Those speeds aren't really appropriate for bike paths, yet here we are.
I frequently run into young e-bikers or e-motorcycle riders on my local trails who are flying at unexpectedly high speeds. They're also tearing up the trails at a rate much faster than normal bikes because the rider has less control over wheelspin and is more prone to throttle out of corners than someone with a direct connection to the drivetrain.
I was a fan of e-bikes when they first came out, but the current incarnation of e-bikers and e-motorcyclists is quite bad in the real world. Again, not every e-biker, but many of the most prolific e-bike riders on my local trails are the same ones running modified e-bikes with too much power and manual throttles.
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As long as they'r not causing problems for other cyclists
And if a frog had wings, it wouldn't bump its ass when it hops. "Other cyclists"? They're not cyclists, they're motorcycle riders, for starters. Now any jackass can zoom down the bike path at 25-30mph, but yeah, as long as that doesn't cause problems...
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> Although I have nothing against motorbikes I'm not cool at all with basically motorbikes getting a free pass because they're disguised as bicycles.
A free pass for what ?
You dont need a motor to reach 40kph on a bike, plenty of people can do it with only their legs. What we can do is limit the speed on bike lanes, but that means we could allow any vehicule on it. There is no reason a motorbike couldn't go on a bike lane if it goes slower than 20kh as most people on bike reach that speed.
It is not because you are on a bike that you have to go on a bike lane.
> What we can do is limit the speed on bike lanes, but that means we could allow any vehicule on it.
No, we can't because of momentum. We could never allow a car or a heavy motorcycle to drive on pedestrian/bike lines even if they are at low speeds.
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Speed limit on bike lanes in the city is 30 kph, outside it is 45. So those rules already exist (here, in NL).
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> A "bicycle" that can accelerate without the need to pedal at all is an electric motorcycle, no matter if you put pedal on it or not.
That sounds very American. Don’t we have Vespa scooters and mopeds in the USA as well? There are plenty of bike formats between bicycle and motorbikes.
In China most e-bikes aren’t pedal assists and no one would ever claim they were car road worthy vehicles, they got bike lanes or the side of the road, and are not allowed on the ring road. American bike lanes seems to be recreational, whereas in other countries that are oriented much more at daily life and more heavily used.
Vespa style scooters are motorcycles in many US states, but there are exceptions.
Mopeds with engines under 50cc and that have pedals are often treated differently than motorcycles but some states still require licensing and registration similar to a motorcycle.
If its got a motor and it looks like a bike...
An an American, I agree with your assessment. to me, Vespas and Mopeds are motorbikes. they burn gas.
Pedal assist ebikes are a new category to me, and I don't think any of the current rules make much sense for that.
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I would not feel comfortable bicycling in Chinese "bike lanes", they are basically just separate lanes for the mopeds.
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I never understood while we regulate on the mechanism to engage the motor instead of top speed or max power.
Agreed, 70mph but you have to pedal to keep the bike going = e-bike (although an illegal one)...
15mph and has a throttle = electric motorbike (and also illegal)...
But make that 15mph illegal electric motorbike 10mph faster and add extra hardware so users have to waggle their feet around in a circle to trigger the motors... SUDDENLY LEGAL!
I highly doubt there are any safety benefits from pedalling - it seems like an arbitrary limit.
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Pedelecs are regulated on all three: maximum continuous power of 250W, assistance only from 6km/h, top assisted speed of 25km/h.
The point of pedelec regulations (in europe anyway) is to be a baseline: anything which satisfies the pedelec specs must be treated as a bicycle by all member states, so if you have a pedelec you know that it will be usable as a bike throughput the union. Member states can go beyond if they want to.
The pedaling aspect is also not really what matters, because you can in principle reduce the load factor so much that the pedals also just become a fancy throttle, no?
No, there is a direct relationship between the power exerted and the power the motor will add. There is a nifty torque sensor built into the cranks.
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I've found this to be correct on most every e-bike I have rented. You can "feather pedal", just spinning the cranks without engaging any energy, and the e-bike will send power to "assist".
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The laws where I live do not see it this way. If it has pedals, and is under 750 watts, then it is an e-bike. This includes the ability to use a mid-drive motor that supplies 750 watts but makes full use of the bicycle's gearing system.
Where I grew up a bike with a motor and pedals was a moped and was legal to drive without license if under 50cc. They’re still considered bikes.
Here too, but today you would need a license for those. Ditto with my bike, you can't ride it without a drivers license.
> A "bicycle" that can accelerate without the need to pedal at all is an electric motorcycle
Most pedal-assist-only ebikes can run without you pedaling (and without a throttle either). You just need to pedal fast at first, and then take your feet off the pedals. (You can rest them at the center of the frame for example.)
Usually, if there is some friction in the system (but not too much) the pedals will keep on turning, making the bike think actual pedaling is going on. And then the system is self-sustaining (battery permitting, of course).
It's quite funny to do; not very practical, or elegant, but fun.
In my opinion the throttled e-bikes should be treated as bicycles as long as they have pedals and are under 25kg and 250W power.
That would legalize my e-bike that I have used for 14000km in city saving a lot of carbon emissions and not sacrificing much as I can park it in bicycle stand.
Of course going faster than 20-25km/h in pedestrian traffic (where bicycles are allowed) is extremely dangerous. But from my experience going fast in car traffic 35-40 km/h (where bicycles are allowed) is safer than chugging along slowly as cars don't have a need for overtaking between traffic lights.
Is that with or without the weight of the battery ;)
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Surely top speed matters more than pedaling?
No one argues that people in electric wheel chairs are really driving ATV quads.
This one is my first sight of a "bicycle with engine" ever (sorry article is in Italian). It was used in the movie "Bread love and dreams".
https://www.cronachemaceratesi.it/2017/04/18/il-museo-del-si...
That's a beauty.
The reality is that there is no useful bright-line rule to distinguish between bicycles and motorbikes. Historically, the two have been very distinct, so we haven't needed one. Now, we are starting to see more of the space between the extremes be explored.
We do absolutely need good laws and conventions here, for safety and fairness. But i don't think basing them on a classification is the way to write them.
Right, but there's a large question at least in the US as to what & who the bike lanes and infrastructure are for. There are commuters who travel via bike, casual bikers, and then there are also extreme bicyclists that compete.
There are bike lanes that are on normal streets and then there are bike paths that are often shared with pedestrians.
I think there is a solid case that bike lanes adjacent to streets are for commuters. The main argument is that the entire argument for installing bike lanes was to provide an alternative to driving.
The bike paths are a bit different. A lot of places in the US will have paths that ban anything with a 'motor'. In the past this just meant that motorcycles including small [sic] mopeds were banned as well. However, in recent years it isn't unusual for someone to use these paths wile riding a e-bike or e-scooter. IMO the main reason for banning motors was that those vehicles were loud and larger than a bike/scooter.
I think that since it's practical to use a e-bike/e-scooter at the normal non-assisted speeds the proper solution is to just have speed limits in places to protect pedestrians and other bikers.
A bike lane far from a city center could have the same speed limit as the road since the it's going to be mostly commuters using it. A bike lane closer to a university campus might have a speed of 15 or 20mph since those lanes will have a lot more traffic and a greater mixture of e-bikes and regular bikes.
A bike path that connects the bike lane to the bike parking area would be like 15mph. A shared sidewalk/path with pedestrians might have a max speed of <10mph.
I think the only group that might loose out is the pure-bicyclists that are used to using the bike lanes more like a gym so having to share the bike lanes with e-bikes could be an issue. But even then I think very few of them tend to ride during the peak commuter hours.
It used to be simple.. if it has a motor and pedals, it's a moped. But yeah, whatever you call it doesn't solve the regulation problem.
As a motorcyclist, I would call them e-mopeds ;).
I think that is the best name, since mopeds also have pedals that nobody uses.
Not sure where you are located but they already do have this. I have a class one pedal assist which cuts out at 20 mph. Allowed on most Mnt bike trails and to do 20 for any amount of distance requires substantial effort. I get passed on the paved bike trails all the time by road bikes with way more gears. Then class 2 which has a throttle and can go 30ish. Then class 3 with a throttle and speed is essentially whatever you can do. 2 and 3 are not allowed on any Mnt bike trails and depending on city, county, are crazy to ride on the paved bike trails, not legal, but do see every now and then. Most people that own them respect the rule.
The most important thing should be the speed, not the method. A fit enough cyclist could easily go fast enough to be dangerous to other cyclists with a normal bike on cycle paths too.
Sure for a while. But a e-bike can do it all day. They can be a hazard for hours every day.
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E-bike is basically the smaller version of electric cars, whose sustainability depends on how we power our energy (not that they have a circular manufacturing process of course).
Differentiating between pedal assist & throttled e-bike serves no great purpose.
There should be no distinction, legally, between a normal bicycle and an electric bike of any kind (throttle or otherwise).
Personal Electric (micro) Mobility is the answer to many problems, let's not add any roadblocks to adoption. Other than keeping powers-that-be comfortable and sparing the feelings of cycling puritans, the distinction is useless, bordering on harmful to the environment.
The recent explosion of high speed scooters has been a menace since my city recently allowed them and e-bikes on bike paths and the local bike rental places purchased whole fleets.
The problem is that tourists and knaves are constantly riding them on paths that are marked pedestrian-only (sometimes due to unfamiliarity with the path system, though often intentionally). Even when they stick to the adjacent bike lanes the scooters accelerate and go so much faster than bikes they are constantly putting pedestrians and slower cyclists in danger. If they stuck to bike lanes on streets it wouldn’t be so bad, but I worry there will soon be a raft of Bernie Goetz style vigilante clotheslining of irresponsible riders.
I don't think there is a meaningful clear demarcation between pedal-assist and electric motorbike. The throttle control just looks different.
On good e-bikes I've ridden, the pedaling is basically limited to telling the motor to go, no meaningful force involved. Sure, you can put "controls motor with button" and "controls motor with pedal" into different legal categories, but I doubt there is much of a benefit in doing so.
Why not just have reasonable rules for bike lanes, like a speed limit and perhaps size/weight limits? Cars with a top speed of 85mph and a 0-60 of 10 seconds are treated with precisely the same rules as cars with a top speed of 170mph and a 0-60 of 3 seconds. We don't really need separate terminology or separate lanes for them.
That's not the law in the UK. A throttle electric bike is still an electric bike, as long as it has pedals that can propel it:
https://www.gov.uk/electric-bike-rules
I see it more as a matter of power produced, I'd probably use 1hp or 750w brushless or something thereabouts as the line to draw. With most pedal ebikes you go faster by pedaling anyways.
I come across modern Solexes with regularity on the bike lanes here, never seen one in traffic.
And they're legal there? With the ICE engine running?
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They're simply called mopeds in my book. We don't call electric cars, e-cars.
Moped?
It's a giant fire hazard which can also take you to places.
So far so good :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCaDz_2YcGQ
I love it but I personally would be too scared to ride it with that many cells sandwiched between what seems to be just foam board.
That's trespa, very strong stuff, weather proof, 6 mm thick.
Oh... I worked with something really similar but only for decoration purposes. I guess it's rigged enough to give the construction stability but it's still very prone to punctures. Do you think it would withstand a rock chip at higher speeds also do you prefer the high mechanical stability for a battery package? I don't really know if I would prefer it to warp at impact or break like hpl.
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next project:
300watt solar panel charging the batteries as you go.
Can be used as roof or just panel above the rear tire.
Hehe, that's more like a sail :) I'd hate to ride around with that much surface but it's a fun idea!
How many times are you going to tempt fate? You already had an accident which makes it so you can't easily ride a regular bike anymore and yet here you are on an e-bike. I don't really want an answer, just more expressing my dismay. Good luck!
That was a pretty bad accident but the mechanics of it were - retrospectively - quite predictable. It's just that a low recumbent seemed very safe right up to the second that it wasn't.
Anyway, those two really don't compare, and I can ride a regular bike just not quite as easily as before. Those screws and the steel really should be taken out but between COVID and work there hasn't really been a 3 month gap where I figured I would chance it, because it's a full recovery after that again.
Thanks for the concern though, and I'll try to stay in one piece.
It’s worth saying that it’s not to hard to train up to being able to do 100-200km rides with no electronic assist. At such distance, the weight saving is probably outweighing the battery and you can use the space in the frame can be used for luggage such as extra clothing. At longer distances the ride limiting factor is comfort, not stamina / endurance - here the Ebike adds nothing
I can do 100K rides just fine, but not in the same time. An e-bike is much more convenient for that, we have this thing called wind here that can really get you. On my 10 speed (an elderly Guerciotti, very nice bike) my peak is 38 or so and I can average about 28 for a two hour ride, after that it drops and there is no way I could do a return after 65 km at that speed without slowing down considerably.
I've done many 10's of thousands of kilometers on bikes and there is no way to compare the two in practice, even the very best racing bike can't keep up with an e-bike over a long distance unless the rider is tour-de-France level.
E-bikes add range, compared to what you would do on your own in the same time. That is what makes them viable replacement for a car, suddenly 60% or so of your car trips are within the range of the e-bike, and with this large battery for me that is more like 95% or even more. Since getting the second battery for the e-bike I haven't used the car more than twice (that's a few months). Car ownership has gone from being a 'must' to 'uneconomical' and no regular bike that I've ever owned had that property.
And that's before we get into the fact that without the assist I have a hard time to get started at all.
The author provided a compelling reason for this long-distance ebike: they have an injury and the acceleration assist allows them to cycle without aggravating the injury. I don't think it's fair to assume that every person who wants to cycle 200km can do so without electrical assist.
This has got to be a troll comment. On an ebike on the top assist levels you can pedal leisurely at ~50watts and get 300 watts of output to travel at 30kph plus, and tackle any climbs with no issue, while not getting your heartrate up all that high. Sure 100-200km is still far and not everyone will want to go that far even on an ebike, but it's undoubtedly much easier than a non-assisted bike. You have to train pretty seriously as a cyclist and be in really good shape to ride 100+ km like it's no big deal. And you have to make sure you plan out water stops and plan enough food for the ~5000+ calories you will burn.
And "the weight saving is probably outweighing the battery", is completely untrue. The increased weight of an ebike is probably adding like 5-10 watts of drag on flat ground and maybe 20-30 watts on hills, while the motor is providing 250 watts of output. It's not even close to canceling out, that would be insane.
Well I can do 100-200 km rides with no electronic assist but I am quite tired and hungry as all hell after that. And it takes time (I don't think I've averaged over 30 kph on a long trip so yeah that's 3-6 hours of cycling plus breaks).
I would like to be able to make these trips 1) faster 2) with less effort.