DJI announces an electric mountain bike drive system
dji.com
dji.com
The screen/computer part seems to be significantly nicer than competition.
Bosch makes excellent motors, but they're ripping people off on accessories (a dumb charger costs 89 EUR in the "compact" variant that can do 2A or around 80W and weighs 600g, needing over 10 hours to charge a large battery), and enabling this with aggressive DRM (which also means updates can only be done by a repair shop). They're also trying to make your bike a subscription, of course.
So even if all DJI does is become competitive, that's already a win. Bonus points if they actually let you tune (some) motor parameters yourself. The hard part seems to be reliability (a bike that gets mud, water and washing together with constant vibration is a pretty harsh environment) and many Chinese motor brands have a less than stellar reputation there, and because this is not something easily testable, building a reputation (and gathering the experience needed to actually build good products) takes time.
Air isn't perfectly clean or dry, either. I would bet that DJI has some clue as to how to protect the most sensitive components in a way that can survive _lots_ of vibration.
Clearly not unsolvable but I'd wait for some 1 year use reviews before even thinking about it.
This is a solid strategy for just about any new company/product-line.
Even with years of experience in drones, DJI had an insane amount of (mostly positive) change between the first and second generation of mavic drone.
e-bike power is limited by regulations. If they created a higher power system, it wouldn't be allowed to be called an e-bike. 250W continuous is the limit, and therefore the target.
Battery pack size is a weight versus range tradeoff. Again, not going to see much difference from competitors.
The difference would come from the efficiency, the GaN fast charging (mentioned in the article), the control unit, the display, the app, and other features.
Hardcore DIYers will turn their nose up at the other features and try to turn this into a specifications races, but people who don't want to DIY and fiddle with things all the time will appreciate the cohesive package.
seems like more and more players popping up.
As a Bosch+Rholoff owner and a Pinion C.12 owner... I'd _loved_ it if R&M were doing Pinion in their cargo line. If something happens to your rear wheel you have to rebuild around your Rholoff. This might be hard to do on a tour compared to buying a new wheel if you had a Pinion. This assumes that your motor and electronics are not at risk of failing, which may be only reasonable if you're using Bosch...
I'm happy to see Pinion being picked up by R&M. I'd assume this is an excellent sign for Pinion as R&M's _schtick_ seems to be the customer experience (e.g. performance and reliability). This obviously signals that they are in some reasonable partnership to support this configuration for a long time. It would have been really nice to see Pinion offered in at-least one of their cargo platform though.
We just got a Load4 and I noticed that the Bosch+Rholoff dual battery configuration lagged in availability pretty significantly behind the other configurations. I presume this probably made R&M product management a bit irritated as the products form Bosch seem to be announced about a year before things are available. Anecdotally I believe I received 725wh batteries on my order when there is open discussion about how these batteries are not even in production by Bosch anymore as they've moved on to a higher density. Seems like with Bosch there is a big lag between announcement of a market disrupting product and when integrators get it on platform. Pinion may be faster?
Above there is a comment about Bosch being a ripoff (e.g. high margins), certainly it is but they are likely the only company you can build a product off unless you're going into race to the bottom price range. Propel has an interesting post [1] about going Bosch only. Now there are major providers in Germany also providing solutions: Pinion, ZF. I believe propel also started a thing called bloom [2][3] where I bet the "after sales support" portion of starting an e-Bike business is often times a discussion of why Bosch is safe.
[0]: https://www.rohloff.de/en/products/speedhub
[1]: https://propelbikes.com/bosch-only/
There is of course a bunch of poo-pooing in an HN thread.
The problem with the e-bike sector is a misalignment:
what people say they want: a cargo bike, a fixie, a mountain bike, a folding bike, a... etc.
what people actually want: a moped that is emotionally and aesthetically a bicycle
Nobody cares about mountain bikes, or grams saved, or whatever. That's like, some hobby. We might as well be comparing fine German violins. I know this is what is advertised, but who knows what they are thinking when they depict so and so bicycle in their press release.
I'm excited about this bike because it is basically a Stromer ST2: a semi truck of a bike that can sort of do everything. It's a moped with the emotional energy of a bicycle.
What is the ideal e-bike? It is basically a step through Pinion MGU, which Kettler makes. Unless there is more competition, such as with bespoke drive trains, that incredible bike will continue to cost $9,000.
There is a lot of confusion in the sector. VanMoof continues to experience significant financial difficulties, but in all other senses they are a colossal success: they were the first to deliver a moped that emotionally and aesthetically feels like a bike, and a ton of people bought it, and then those people put 10x-100x more miles on those bikes than any owner of any Sturmey Archer bicycle ever has, and VanMoof doesn't bite the bullet and recall for recurring issues like breaking boost buttons, and they run out of money ad-hoc fixing issues over and over again. Stromer also uses proprietary parts and they are reliable, it isn't so black and white. People here are talking about Bosch. Bosch motors break. People are abandoning them. They were put into bikes that were more and more frequently replacing cars, which meant people ride them 10x more than a mountain bike or whatever artisanal or hobby use they would otherwise put on their bikes, and suddenly, the things are breaking all the time.
Every time someone sells something that actually meets the real need for a moped that is emotionally and aesthetically a bicycle, they either price it too high to reach a large enough audience used to prices 1/10th as high on Amazon for the same keywords, or they price it too low for the huge increase in failure due to the huge increase in miles. DJI gives me some confidence they will not misplay this.
The entire sector needs disruptive pricing on reliable sub-components. What it's been getting is disruptive pricing with unreliable products that fail silently/annoyingly (e.g. firmware) or catastrophically (e.g. fire).
> what people say they want: a cargo bike, a fixie, a mountain bike, a folding bike, a... etc.
> what people actually want: a moped that is emotionally and aesthetically a bicycle
This is most unimpressive. I have an 2019 3000w LunaCycle e-mountain bike (based on the Giant Anthem) with similar drive system weight specs, which includes the ginormous 40ah battery.
Why can't DJI compete with something nice from 5 years ago?
I suspect DJI is aiming for legal bikes that established bicycle manufacturers can sell.
Fun trail bike though (helpful on the uphills, for someone who doesn't typically enjoy that part).
Large portions of the casual bike segment don’t care about weight - other than lifting it on and off their bike rack.
I tried riding the steel thing with no battery and it was not pleasant at all. Compare that to my LunaCycle, even at 50lbs total it's not that bad to ride with no power.
Is it mostly clueless people (like my bro) falling for "It has a battery so heavy bike weight will not matter"?
These are popular with a subset of DIY builders because the laws aren't really enforced, so they can get a small electric motorcycle that passes as an e-bike while not adhering to the requirements for a vehicle that powerful.
Some will try to claim that if you set the bike to the lowest power then it's legal, but of course they'll quietly switch the power to whatever they want when riding.
Many high power ebike enthusiasts (for example “High Voltage DIY Electric Bikes” channel on YouTube) argue that these low legal power limits actually make e-bikes less safe, as you need a good 2-3kw to actually ride with the flow of traffic. At US or worse UK power limits, you don’t get enough of a boost for that and you’re more likely to get hit from behind.
In my case 1500 watts feels like a good low range of what I would want. Luckily for work I’ve been developing my own open source brushless motor controller for a few years now, and we’re finally maturing past the self-immolation phase of motor controller design. I’m going to try to outfit my bike with it eventually. Later on I would like to make a 72 volt version (84v peak, so 100 volt parts).
https://youtube.com/@highvoltagekits
https://github.com/Twisted-Fields/rp2040-motor-controller/tr...
https://github.com/Twisted-Fields/rp2040-motor-controller/tr...
Those "High power ebike enthusiasts" are actually "small electric motorcycle" enthusiasts.
The point of the regulations is to keep the power levels within the range of what's expected for a bike.
I'm fine with a separate class of regulations allowing higher power, but only if those vehicles are easily disallowed from bike trails. If the goal is to ride around with cars in traffic all day, it shouldn't be a problem to be banned from bike trails. There's a real problem of overpowered DIY or hacked e-bikes tearing up trails everywhere and getting out of control.
3kw is 4 horsepower. It's more than even the world record for peak human power output and far more than any human can sustain.
I think it's cool that people build these high power machines, but let's be honest about what they are: Electric motorcycles, not bikes.
Iron Man participants regularly ride at an average speed of 24mph+ continuously for 112 miles in extremely harsh conditions (Hawaiian heat).
Also, over the course of many thousands of miles I've never observed any cyclist riding past vulnerable children at these speeds. What is the problem exactly? People going "fast" on a 50lb bicycle with nobody else around? How is this a threat?
Most people aren't out to get you, especially bicyclists.
If you want to direct energy towards something, please send it towards the inconsiderate cars vectoring a 3ton+ vehicle at 25-75MPH even when they see a person in the road ahead. It's sad when a human is struck by a vehicle.
*I usually don't respond to comments like this one but after being hit by a car while I was in the bike lane on Veterans Blvd in Redwood City, CA in 2018, who didn't bother stop (or even notice they'd hit and knocked me down?), it's a bit of a sore spot. The difference between a car and a weapon is what, exactly? Even an overpowered e-bike is nothing compared to any of the tens of thousands of cars who kill and maim cyclists and pedestrians in the U.S.A. annually.
We can make a legal category for "electric motorcycles with pedals" or we can call them high powered electric bicycles. I don't care so much what we call them as long as we recognize that this type of vehicle is extremely valuable in fighting climate change and building more walkable cities with less need for automobile infrastructure. If everyone could legally ride a 2kw ebike around town with some nice panniers or a rack for cargo space, so many automobile trips could be eliminated.
> I'm fine with a separate class of regulations allowing higher power, but only if those vehicles are easily disallowed from bike trails. If the goal is to ride around with cars in traffic all day, it shouldn't be a problem to be banned from bike trails.
When you say trails, I could agree on dirt trails where erosion and environmental damage is an issue. But as we build out better bicycle infrastructure around the country, we have more and more dedicated paved bike paths. It would be absurd to me if bikes like my 1.5kw ebike were barred from paved bike paths. And note, it already is! Most of the paved bike paths around Oakland and Berkeley are legally restricted to class 2 ebikes. My bike is beyond class 3, and so illegal both generally and on these paths. But I don't think it should be! I have been bicycling for almost 40 years, so I am extremely respectful of other people and I don't want to blow past anyone. Maybe there need to be more fine grained laws around etiquitte, or maybe we need to expand our notion of bike paths to include 3kw ebikes. There must be some middle ground between surface streets with 4000lb vehicles and bike paths that are only for low powered or human powered bicycles.
But my broad point is, these vehicles are extremely important to a world with reduced carbon emissions. They are much more useful than a regular bike (which I also ride quite a lot) for transportation purposes, and so better as a car replacement. They take less resources and emissions to produce, they use less energy to move a person, they are safer for pedestrians than automobiles, appropriate infrastructure takes up less space, etc etc etc.
The attitude of "that's a motorcycle! you had better keep that as far away from me as possible" is a negative-focused view on what can be an extremely transformative technology.
I know there are assholes and irresponsible people, and actually a good friend of mine broke their leg in an ebike-on-ebike collision in the UK on a legal 250w ebike, so I understand that injuries can still happen. And I absolutely do not want assholes blowing past old ladies or parents walking their kids in strollers.
But we MUST consider the real value this new type of machine has to offer, and genuinely take time to consider how they should be used. The knee-jerk claim that it is just a motorcycle is missing that in reality they are a new class of vehicle. Similar to a bicycle and similar to a motorcycle, but lighter than one, easier to handle, and I would argue much more useful.
So sure, let us create regulations around them. But let us make sure we allow them on appropriate bike paths, and build the right infrastructure to take advantage of such a useful new type of machine.
P.s. parent has heavily edited their comment to not resemble the original comment. For whatever it's worth, I don't have any particular agenda except to share information. I'm logging off for the evening, because this is peak nonsense.
The Amflow PL bikes lists in the press release as 43lb which isn't "revolutionary" but 850W and 600Wh battery is way more than the other really light MTBs. And those other ones are really expensive.
I'm looking forward to seeing price. I wish they had shared some specs regarding noise, it sounds like they have put some effort into optimizing that as well.
I like my 1500W LunaCycle, but would eagerly trade for a bike that weighs 2/3 as much and is a bit quieter
But the numbers make sense, without the battery and motor, the bike should be around 15 pounds, which leaves ~35 lbs of battery + motor.
*p.s. Apparently I was mistaken up in the thread - the battery pack is only 21AH, not 40.
Reorient yourself, the frame has shifted.
And this looks like a competitor for the Bosch systems that power many e-bikes, needing a similar frame design - and not a kit to install on non-electric bikes.
Nobody cares about grams on a mountain bike. The environment you’re riding in is so hostile that you really can’t tell the difference.
Spending hundreds to thousands to shave "grams" is not a thing among real trail riders.
Actual trail riders are generally pretty smart about the tradeoffs. If they see a product that is "hundreds to thousands" more expensive and brings no benefit other than shaving a few grams, nobody will buy it.
Even tour de france folks have a minimum weight they can't go under, and they frequently weigh several kg over anyway.
For casual riders, you could save several $k equivalent on your super-lightweight-bike by just losing a few pounds or trading jeans for shorts.
personally, I would love if all the bike lights had a standardized bus and connector so headlight/taillight/etc could power off the bike battery. (I know some bikes have an output but think more like a standard USB connector and maybe a dashboard setting, not running bare wires under the hood and using a proprietary app to set things up)