direct drive #eBikes motors don't much mind being rusty, with water and bits of metal rolling around inside of them. 🤯 Or just drill huge holes in the side of it and let the water come and go as it pleases.
You know, if those trips were going to be taken on bikes without motors, they already would. #eBikes are the bikes that don't gather dust in the back of the garage, that actually replace car trips. Some people don't need them, but the people still in cars clearly aren't those ones.
It's not going to get someone into shape to feel defeated on the way home from the grocery store, trudging up the last hill with a laden acoustic bike. Many people are not going to go ride it just for exercise. An easy car replacement, even if you barely pedal, is going to get you more active than sitting in a car. I've heard plenty of these stories from people who were able to gradually get in shape thanks to the assisted moderate effort of regular e-bike use. It just removes barriers.
Once I'm on the e-bike it's easier for me to convince myself to turn off the assist and get my heart-rate up than it would be for me to convince myself to commit to a whole round trip on the acoustic (?) bike.
Hey nerds! Join me and @bikeloudpdx for #HackNight this Thursday at 7, back online for the winter (or maybe it is online/hybrid if you invite friends over.) We've got maps-vs-reality updates, #open311 data and budget analysis projects, #eBikes experiments, all kinds of tech fun to dig into if you want to help make #Portland a better city for everyone.
@enobacon They should ask couriers who deliver food, how best to carry a cake. There is no guarantee that a cake will arrive intact, if carried in a car. It's all about the container and the care taken.
@Tooden also many people could very soon live much closer to a cake shop and grocery and piano teachers and whatever, besides having more frequent transit options and that associated reach.
Lots of errands today, finishing with full panniers from grocery shopping topped off with a case of wine. 🍷 (UPS missed me a couple times, so I had them hold it at a nearby store)
Verkehrsministerium: Fahrradblinker sollen für alle erlaubt sein
Egal, ob mit Motor oder ohne: Das Verkehrsministerium will künftig flächendeckend Blinker an Fahrrädern zulassen. Bislang geht das nur für spezielle Modelle. Eine Pflicht soll es aber nicht geben.
@tagesschau solange es nicht Pflicht wird, halte ich das für eine gute Idee, weil bei normalen Fahrrädern erhöht das unnötig das Gewicht und das muss nicht sein. Aber es gibt sicher Leute, die schneller fahren (20 km/h und mehr) und deshalb eher nicht die Hand vom Lenker nehmen sollten.
Charging the #eBikes battery by pedaling down the hill after taking kid to school. (sorry about volume) you can hear where my brake switch bounces (I'm trying not to engage the mechanical brake but have to squeeze the lever just slightly for #regenBraking.) You can also hear where I had to stop pedaling because the hill got steeper than 300W (why isn't it 700, GRIN, because I'm the only person on earth with this problem? IDK, give me the source code.)
@cdamian as range extension, particularly for a loaded touring bike, you would get up to 20% iff there is some place where you're just burning through brake pads. Some lighter and smaller motors might make sense, whether hub drive like a modified EZ motor, or some kind of gearbox with a fixed gearing to the wheel. I'm going up and down hills in a city with cargo & kids, so until now, have been regularly making tiny expensive brake pads into dust with about 500-1000W for 1-2 minutes per hill.
Now that's what I call a Cargo Bike - this CaGo from Denmark is now available here - if #ebikes are the future for #urban travel, then this must make a strong showing for the #delivery part of that idea.
@ChrisMayLA6 In my youngest preschool they had a kind of ebike buss. They went for 5 km trips into the library in the centre of town for example in that.
Similar to this.
@Krux_22@ChrisMayLA6 In Manchester we have actual cargo bikes for hire on street corners. The bikes, painted bright yellow, are unlocked for hire with an app and the bin portion includes kiddie seats. I often pass them with two or three children seated whilst Mum pedals them to the local shops.
#regenBraking on #eBikes can save you the cost of your first replacement battery in brake pad maintenance (assuming that your max regen amps setting correctly limits the current into the battery so you don't destroy it... 😖 why is it that mine is set to 12A but the CA says we're only doing 6A, 250-300W instead of 700? The energy is there, it just quits resisting, we keep picking up speed until I engage the mechanical brakes. Best advice was to set it at 24A!? 😬)
Need some kind of rectifier and two-way fuses, or just trust the battery's BMS to keep it safe? The last battery pack I got had a fuse under a rubber cover. Another route to go (wish I could buy it off the shelf) would be supercapacitors plus the battery pack, like enough to take 1500W charge for a minute or two. I'm pretty sure 700W isn't going to handle Corbett unless I hold it at ~5mph, and the motor charges less efficiently below the 10-20mph range.
@enobacon there's probably some way to set up a resistor that you can dump any excess power into so that you get more effective braking, but ideally you would be putting all that into the battery
Today I realized that if I could ever figure out how to get my #eBikes' #regenBraking to work right (currently can't get over 300W), I could be pedaling hard to get down the hill, which should give me extra points with the piously sweating club that likes to grouse about how e-bikes will make us dependent on motors and don't you know lithium and cobalt mining are incredibly damaging to the environment sorry what I can't hear you over the CAR traffic.
A few years ago, I predicted car and motorcycle manufacturers would get into the e-bike market given the high demand, decent margin, and ability to differentiate with established design and manufacturing capabilities.
Harley-Davidson’s fugly and overpriced Serial1 did not prove me right.
However, Mini announced its E-Bike 1. It’s beautiful and priced appropriately within the high end range.
"they're too powerful", said someone who tried a radrover (750W hub motor 48V 70lb fatbike, with a twist throttle + cadence sensor) ... Are you 140lb? It's 1hp, a horse. I wouldn't say they're for everyone, but that is probably the least forgiving setup vs e.g. a torque sensing 350W mid drive, but it's still in the realm of a (big) cordless power drill, not really the sort of thing to clutch pearls about IMO. #eBikes
@eastbaynian it will only do 8mph up some hills though, with larger riders, where 350W might be a lot to handle for a 120lb rider, but sub 1000W is barely enough to stay moving with cargo on 10% slopes. The twitchiness of controls is a problem
@enobacon I agree - I ride a non electric bike now but started biking by commuting on a powerful ebike. I am large and a large motor was needed to keep me and the 75lb bike going but it would esily do 25 while it is really only safe to go 15 on bike lanes shared with pedestrians. I moved to the street if I wanted to go fast. Personally I think discussions about the power of ebikes is a distraction from the lack of agreement or enforcement on how fast people using bike infrestructure should go.
if you want to do 28mph, the 62lb HSD costs $5k and comes in only one color. #eBikes#BikeTooter The 11-36 cassette seems quaint though, having the same range as the $4300 P10 which is just speed limited to 20 (try 11-42t at least, what year is it in your cassette inventory?)
to get to a 52V #SuperCapacitor with 20 x 2.7V 3000F capacitors at 5.35 x 2.36 inches each, $30 each and $50 in balancing boards, like $750 maybe all in a case 24 x 5 x 6in and they're 3Wh/each so 60Wh, 3.6kW*minutes! 1kW for 3.6min, etc. the cargo #eBikes would zip but that's overkill for a personal bike. I have no idea what I'm doing or what it weighs.
Or is it more like four-to-eight of these 6 x 2.7V 500F deals for the car battery booster for $40 each, 2.6x1.5 x 9in each (48.6V for 3, 64.8V if 4) $160-$320, $400 for 2x46 = 64.8V 1000F wait now with capacitor calculator telling me that's 480 (at 59V) to 580Wh... 28.8kWminutes great scott half of that would be fine?
Hooked up a new controller from Amazon to my dual motor 500 watt bike. I’m a rookie so I just hooked it up to the rear motor. My commute is about 45 mins x 2 per day. It worked great for 2-3 weeks for a total of about 400 miles....
This trip reduction seems to be about the 10 largest cities, so the numbers are out of scale with the US, but the bigger factor might be the factor of ~3x car miles per #eBikes mile, in my experience, due to changing which trips you take, taking even shorter ones because you couldn't park a car there but it was too far to walk. There's also a couple more factors (exponents?) in the bigger picture with the impacts on future housing density and trip generation.
@enobacon A huge factor for many folks is that they have no place to park and charge an EV overnight at home. But pretty much anyone can carry an ebike battery inside and charge it. Ebikes will be crucial to electrificaton.
@neverbeaten also on-street parking hangars or oonee-like pod/sheds can have charging available. If we ever take bikeshare and shared scooters seriously, a standard lock+charge port could be made available for personal bikes too, so you could charge while at work, etc.
A big advantage of bikes over e cars, is that they can slot into existing space and budget for many households, just leave the gas car at home and only drive it for longer trips or with multiple passengers.
