Long Range E-Bike (2021)
jacquesmattheij.com
jacquesmattheij.com
The really neat thing is that at the end of a long ride the cell groups still track to within 2 mV of each other, which is a strong sign that all cell groups are discharging equally fast and that there are no cells or welds that are causing problems. Of course with 17P the cells are only mildly exercised compared to what they would be going through in a regular pack.
Obviously if the e-bike requires no pedalling at all it wins but then that is not legal everywhere.
For a normal human, a "legal" 250w motor is easily doubling or tripling their normal power output, so hauling around an extra 20kg on top of the existing ~100kg body + bike is not a big deal.
I built almost exactly the same size pack (2 kWH) as Jacques in 2020 on a hybrid road bike and hated it so much that I only rode it 20 times or so. The battery still sits in the corner of my house doing nothing.
As for those videos: beware, there are also fake ones (there are about anything that gets clicks these days), but also many genuine ones. Not for the faint of heart.
Hayden Pucker did ~500. But more or less, yeah.
On flat roads, I usually ride on 3rd or 4th gear (out of 7), now i ride in 2nd or 3rd.
But where i ride, the road isn't even and has a lot of steep slopes. There I'm on 1st gear all the time anyway and the assistance i get totally saves my knees, and ensures I'm not all sweaty when i reach my destination. Even compared to the light weight regular bicycles i rode before, this is better.
What's interesting is that the duct tape is still the same, it never even cracked or tear. I don't particularly care about the looks, it just needs to work.
(1) a few years old now, but keeps up with my buddy riding the new-new version https://upway.co/products/specialized-turbo-levo-comp-carbon...
Presumably bike frames are designed to carry larger riders? 22 pounds is well within the normal range of "adult". Apparently most bike frames are designed for riders up to 120kg - so the OP could easily be 40+kg below that.
Did this ever happen?
Balancing wires and physical damage to the pack because of insufficient rigidity of the shell and a lack of shock absorbing material are the main causes of pack problems, water ingestion and bad materials / manufacturing defects are also a real problem.
The balancing wires, shell rigidity, shock absorbers and seals are all on the manufacturer, how you treat the pack and monitor it is on the user.
The worst are the pannier mounted ones, I personally think these should all be recalled and replaced. I've seen more than a few of those that had internal signs of fire damage and that must have come within a hair of thermal runaway.
E-bikes with throttles should not be refereed to as e-bikes
E-peds, e-motos, electric motorycle, whatever. Just don't call them ebikes.
The problem is people (especially kids) getting what are essentially electric motorcycles, thinking they are ebikes, and then causing all sorts of chaos on roads and bike paths. This inevitably leads to the public hating "e-bikes" and the government passing totally confused laws about "e-bikes". This also leads to kids getting killed because mom and dad bought them an "e-bike" and let them loose on the roads with it.
Pedal assist ebikes are incredible, and really just turn weak cyclists into strong cyclists, while still providing exercise. It's a revolution for society, but we have to be careful to not totally fumble it with electric motorcycle death machines.
I’m fortunate enough to live around a lot of walking and mixed use trails for bikes and pedestrians. Recently they’re unsafe to use in the evenings because you have to be ready to jump out of the way of groups of kids (plus a few adults who should know better) going 45mph on electric bikes with throttles. They don’t even pretend to be e-bikes any more.
The big problem is that there is zero enforcement. If there was at least a chance that someone breaking these laws could lose their bike or have to pay thousands of dollars in fines I think we’d see a lot less of it. Right now everyone knows that they’re not going to get caught, so it’s a free for all.
It’s an enforcement problem.
The riders know they’re riding where police cars can’t get them. They also know that the bike cops aren’t allowed to ride ultra powerful electric motorcycles. They also know they can just drive off across some grass into a park if anyone tries to stop them.
It’s a hard problem.
> I suspect that as time passes, we'll find ways of allowing ebikes to flourish.
Electric bikes are flourishing here. Electric motorcycles on bike paths are the problem.
I think the electric term is confusing the issue. If it helps, imagine that these were just really quiet but powerful gas powered dirt bikes riding on the pedestrian path. That should give you an idea of what’s going on.
Has any legislation been passed or was this only a proposal?
Crazy legislation gets proposed all the time with no possibility of passing. Some times no intent of passing, either.
Because some people think laws only ever exist to restrain as a show of power over others and something is only illegal if you get caught.
And some people just want to be contrarian and acting against the law is the ultimate punching-up.
Some laws are just a good idea, and provide benefit, or even just expectation/predictability, to everyone.
https://pasteboard.co/IlXSlFUOgULW.png
I'm not sure how I feel about them. I like that the made a way to get you off your bike. I dislike that the path seems plenty wide enough to accomodate bikes and that it would be a useful bike path or 1/2 bike path, but they want it to 100% pedestrian path, even though it's not remotely crowded.
[1] https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2025/06/03/12-year-old-boy-dies...
Setting aside the question who is to be blamed, using motorcycles to pursue kids on bikes will cause the deaths of more kids. Is that a price worth paying? No.
In what world do you think it is OK for a 12-year-old boy riding an e-scooter to die after being chased by police? Before you respond: Ask yourself how you would react if it was your son (or close relative). Any parent would devasted.
I could hop my bicycle over curbs that would bring a police motorcycle to a halt, or even toss a bike over a fence and then pick it up on the other side if I wanted. Or I could dip into the trees near the bike path where a police motorcycle has no chance of maneuvering.
They have great utility, with their power, weight and size. They can be fast for sure, but it's also not on the same level as even a 300cc motorbike either - should they really be put into the same basket? How can that be enveloped by law - if it really has to be - without taking their utility away?
If the law is too restrictive, current users won't bother following, since the enforcement is so rare.
- Having a license plate and back mirror
- Be insured
- Wear a helmet (not a bike helmet, a moped/motorcycle helmet)
- Drive on the road, not on bike lanes
Nobody is arguing they're equivalent to a 300cc motorbike.
>> Starting January 20, 2026, all e-bike riders in New Jersey need three things: a license, registration, and insurance. You have until July 19, 2026 to get these sorted out.
as far as i can tell most full time riders didn't switch to "pedal assisted e-bikes" but probably went looking for other work. we're back to students riding their private bicycles to make some money on the side.
And I’m seeing more and more fuckwits ride fast on side walks and accelerate to jump of the sidewalk and into traffic. Almost hitting unsuspecting people on the sidewalk.
Community needs to police itself. Otherwise it’s just going to be waiting for a critical mass of deaths.
I'm going to respond every time I see this: not ebikes; these are electronic motorcycles.
And this is from someone who thinks ebike are pretty stupid; justified for old and disabled people but only ever seen ridden by fat dentists.
the problem is recklessnesss and speed, restrict and enforce those things, don't just let the bike makers shift the product 10% and re-create exactly the same issue, but "legally"
The bikes with throttles are not legally e-bikes, so the products on the market ignore all of the other e-bike restrictions too. They have much more power and higher top speeds.
Even if they were fully limited, pedaling ensure more rider engagement and changes how people ride them. When you have to put some effort, however small, into moving the bike around you ride differently than if it's an effortless throttle input.
It's power and speed that matters, as you point out, so make regulation built on that. Heck, arguably pedal assist is a throttle, it's just a different mechanism vs a twist handle.
You either ride responsibly or you're a selfish asshole. The vehicle doesn't matter as much.
The more useful case ime is turning cyclists with reduced mobility into regular cyclists.
In particular quite a few elderly people seem to have picked it up in my city, they aren't quite strong riders but definitely seem able of adapting to normal traffic. It also seems like a significantly safer option for individual transport than cars (especially in regards to the other traffic participants).
You mean, turn weak cyclists into strong cyclists, like GP said? :-)
Don't be smarmy.
That's exactly my use case. I've got a bad leg and this thing made all the difference for longer rides.
Being younger than him, I feel that I need to stick with 'naturally aspirated'.
I am interested in going the other way to get a dynamo with that switchable between lighting and USB power, for my phone and speakers. There is 3A at 6V to play with.
Ultimately I would want mild hybrid, with regen so all assistance is pedal powered.
Be careful with what you've got... I wish every day that I could do the day I messed up my leg again without making that particular mistake. I rode a low racer recumbent at speed and had a nasty case of leg suck when hitting a (new to me) speedbump.
I’d never heard of this and looked it up. It sounds awful.
Motorbikes need training, a license, insurance, registration, a minimum age, etc - and you’re competing with small petrol motorcycles which are cheap new, and plentiful on the used market.
E-bike makers aren’t going to volunteer for that - it’d destroy their business.
Arguably, complete bans will be even worse for business.
Basically anything that has two wheels and a non-human energy source drive is now a motorcycle, requiring a license, registration (including a license plate), insurance, and a DOT approved motorcycle helmet, as well as This law came on the back of two teens being killed on ebikes last year.
This is the exact kind of idiotic knee-jerk legislation that will come from the public and governments general ignorance on the state of electric tandem wheel transportation.
So now in New Jersey, Betsy with her class 1 250W pedal assist ebike must get her license and don her motorcycle helmet while only riding on roads with her insured, registered, and license plated 15 mph bicycle.
Lawmakers aren't going to do their homework, they will just kneejerk appease the general public.
I don't know if there was an existing attempt at regulation in NJ specifically but that's happening all around the country.
The problem is that, while ebikes have a ton of really good use cases, the big market for them is basically kids who want to drive a motorcycle before they're allowed. Ebike companies are going to try to sell to that market any way they can.
One that prevents consumers from buying an electric motor and some batteries to run around their own property on? Good luck with that!
but because that would indeed kill their market because most people don't have motorcycle licenses, no one gets them approved, or countries won't allow them.
They could go ahead and make "fast electric bikes" and "slow electric bikes" or something as categories and that would make sense - but hinging the decision on whether your legs or your wrist is turning is illogical. I think it is actually morally charged - like you have to put in the work if you want the privilege.
We can focus on clamping down of "faux pedal ebikes" when the time comes, but for now it looks like we'll be throwing out everything to just to stop teenagers on surrons.
How much riding does it take to twist your arm 30 degrees?
You don’t see a difference?
The point in distinguishing the different classes is about where the bike should fit into the ecosystem. Should it ride on the shoulder, interacting with pedestrians and slower bikes, or should it ride on the road, interacting with cars and motorcycles.
It doesn’t matter how much riding it takes, it matters how fast and controlled it is moving compared to the other traffic in that class.
No it's not, it's recognizing the psychology between "big push with foot makes go fast" and "pressing button makes go fast".
Besides, if the only thing that matters is speed, then logically you'd have to require normal pushbikes to register as well, once cyclists are able to pedal sufficiently fast.
And what is the psychological difference? As far as I'm concerned when I'm using torque-sensing pedal assist, I'm just pressing the button with my foot. The distinction between throttle and pedal assist is non existent in my eyes: pedal assist is just pressing the throttle with your foot.
Motor wattage and top speed is what matters.
Because you're directly engaged in operating them. Electric handcycles are also legal, the problem isn't which body part it is, it's whether you're moving muscles to move your bike - and, perhaps more importantly, that your bike will stop accelerating when you stop your body.
That said, I think the e-moto versions have more potential towards alleviating traffic or being an alternative mode of transportation as most people don’t want to peddle at all. E-bikes are great, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to assume that would ever be on the average Joe’s list of feasible alternatives.
Most people don't want a two-wheeler, period. Otherwise everyone would be riding motorcycles. People want a vehicle that will keep them dry, comfortable, and safe. Two-wheelers of all types fail at all of those things.
People I know and pretty certain a huge percentage of the US start their day getting dolled up. Hair, makeup, clothes, etc each and every day. Even without the physical excursions of peddling, people don’t want to be exposed to the dirty outside air and especially dealing with the elements. The want to move from one climate controlled setting to another including their transportation system.
The Netherlands where biking is common has a completely different norm for style, dress, fashion and even hygiene because they’ve become so used to biking. The rest of the western world has some work to do in those areas or some realities to face if they ever wanted to actually get on board with bicycling as transportation.
Physical exertion of pedalling :-)
Also, ebikes. Going slow. In non-hot climates people don't really sweat on bikes. Especially if the bike infra is good (so distances are short due to bike overpasses, bridges, tunnels, etc) and safe (so no stress due to having to avoid getting hit by cars).
> people don’t want to be exposed to the dirty outside air
Said "dirty air" is only dirty because of cars. Vicious cycle, catch 22.
> The rest of the western world has some work to do in those areas or some realities to face if they ever wanted to actually get on board with bicycling as transportation.
That's the real problem, and it's even worse, and it ties in with this:
> The want to move from one climate controlled setting to another including their transportation system.
Laziness/convenience. People don't really realize that convenience kills. Life is too comfortable and our bodies aren't made for being bored and comfortable 24/7. They can go crazy and do stuff like increase autoimmune attacks (and many other things, a lot of our internal systems function worse when not used).
People get e-motos because it is effectively a motorcycle, except it doesn't have any road legality requirements. People treat them like bicycles that can just magically go 50mph.
Motorcycles already did that. E-bikes or E-motos do not bring any advantages compared to normal motorbikes, so you shouldn't expect many people to switch.
Yes, there's a few extra hundred bucks in cost, and there's an electricity bill for charging it, but frankly that's nothing. You can buy an ebike for 3 digits, and you could include the power bill in that figure and not notice.
Of course not, since motorcycles are much much cheaper than cars.
One of the major problems with ebikes is the existence of cars and related infra.
Motorcycle culture is something you choose if you participate in. If you're a lady commuting to work on a scooter, few people will expect you to participate in that.
I think e-motos have a better chance of replacing cars than e-bikes ever do though. The scale of our cities and distance people travel almost necessitate the higher speeds. It will become more popular as economics force it, if the average car keeps costing more and groceries too, while wages stay pretty flat, well groceries will eventually win.
Actually, the economic forces being what they are, have average car age at an all time high in the US [0]. It is likely that once these old cars die off; a large portion of people simply will not be able to afford new cars and at some point the supply of used cars will be insufficient and people will be forced to entertain cheaper alternatives.
[0] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/average-u-s-vehicle-age...
However as a cycle commuters I’m not sure it saves much money over driving if done wrong. I’ve got a glorious bike. I chew through parts and consumables at an expensive rate.
This is simply wrong and does a disservice to the growing eBike interest. The US-federally defined classes are proper and while IMO overly limiting (max speed should be 60kph and still classified as an eBike as it’s simply safer in traffic), they adequately classify what is an eBike and what is not, and having a throttle does not make something not an eBike, but max speed and power.
People have this urge to classify their limited version of what something is by how they use it with some desire to belittle others, and want to limit everyone else who have completely different requirements and capabilities and desires. eBikes in most US states can be ridden on sidewalks, in bike lanes, in traffic, on trails, and across a grassy meadow. There is no justifiable reason to require someone to have different eBikes to be able to do all those things with comfort and safety and capability and utility when a well engineered eBike can do all of them. That they might be safer with circumstantially restricted speeds, such as overtaking pedestrians, etc. again does mean multiple eBikes should be mandated to be able to do each of them.
In the US, hopefully the next administration will buy a vowel and realize they need to set federal standards and eliminate this hodgepodge state and county and city and park and street and neighborhood capricious variety of who can ride what when and where, and with what gear and at what times and for what reasons. If decisions are made that no one under 13 can ride an eBike, and then only to school until you’re 16, and you must wear a helmet until at least 19, then at least there will be consistent rules for people to argue for and against.
But I don’t want to downplay speed, as you noted it’s probably the key: most motorbike death are because speed or loose of control without involving any other vehicle. Also small cylinders (< 50cc) are almost absent in the death toll. If suicidal motorbikes with good helmet are allowed, so should be the bicyclists (with good helmet).
I think that's the logical line between e-bikes an electric motos: at what power or speed do you want to start requiring some kind of licensing or insurance?
Not sure how that works in the US but in France (and probably Europe?) everyone supposed to get a "civil responsibility insurance" that will cover many thinks including accidents on non-insured (legal) vehicle.
Maybe those should be more tightly regulated.
EBikes are popular and growing like crazy, especially outside the US. There’s somewhere over 30 million in India alone, estimated to double in five years. Their presence is not going away, even in the US, but it takes serious time and desire to get protected bike lanes built. Where I live there’s 6 grocery stores within 3 miles in either direction - and all on the other side of a 4 lane road. You end up riding in the road for part of the trip, and it’s more dangerous from relatively heavy traffic if you’re going 15 instead of 35 for even that short distance.
It's closer to 3mph than 5mph, and as such needs some slow-riding skills, but it works.
I built an ebike and hell yes I put a throttle on it because it enables me to ride more technical trails. This bike has dramatically increased my quality of life. Please leave me alone and if someone uses a throttle bike in an illegal manner give them a ticket.
Why is having a license plate even relevant here? Most traffic enforcement is done when an officer sees something happen.
Don't victim blame.
If you cannot control yourself enough to slow down around people, you need to get out of the driver's seat. If you cannot stop before a potential crash, you were going too fast. 100% of the time. It literally does not matter if someone jumps in front of you. If you're going to choose the statistically most violent mode of transportation by multiple orders of magnitude, that is your responsibility.
As for license plates, I'd like both cars and bikes to obey the law. The only way I see that happening is cameras and scanners. For that to stop bikes requires the bikes to also have plates.
The license plate issue is that cities can, and are, adding more and more license plate scanners to catch cars. Those won't work for bicycles and ebikes (who drive like cyclists) unless they require license plates on bikes/ebikes and enforce. Yes, and enforce more on cars too.
Also, you can ask Google AI for more sources and info using this prompt:
japan when does a bike require a license plate?And I don't need to ask AI, I used an e-bike (without a licence plate) last week in Tokyo.
> I used an e-bike (without a licence plate) last week in Tokyo.
Well in most jurisidictions just the throttle is an "illegal manner", and if you're riding technical trails because of it I have no sympathy for your condition or improved quality of life; you're screwing it up for the rest of us. Maybe you should be the one who leaves.
All that said, I do agree the term is overloaded. The bike lines in NYC often have people riding electric mopeds in them and that feels dangerous. Their max speed is clearly way above 20mph and they’re bulky. They belong on the road with other mopeds. So IMO the definition of ebike should factor in max speed more than it should throttle vs not.
(And also, seconding the awesomeness of ebikes. My kids love riding on it and it’s allowed us to take so many trips that would have been difficult otherwise. It’s also allowed us to avoid buying a car, for now at least)
I don't know what the solution is tbh.
I can guarantee that if I asked 10 random cops what the restrictions are of a Class 2 e-bike not more than 1 could answer, but if I asked them to stop people who were going over 30mph on the bike trail they could figure it out.
But anyway that's nothing to do with the problem of ebike hooligans. The law is also defined in terms of maximum speed. Anyone going over 15.5mph (without pedaling really hard) is breaking the law.
It's not ambiguous when this is happening; it's just impractical for the police to do anything about it.
99% of the people whinging about ebikes have no idea what they're talking about.
There are people claiming in this very thread that kids are modding their "e-bikes" to go "45mph."
The power levels required to push a hybrid bicycle to 45mph is north of 3000W and thus well beyond the capabilities of the motors and battery packs in nearly all electric bicycles. Even the e-motos struggle to hit those speeds; you need a pretty high end, expensive one to do so.
That can readily double your speed on flat or downhill terrain if normal torque is sized to give good acceleration from standstill.
> The power levels required to push a hybrid bicycle to 45mph is north of 3000W
Yeah, 45 mph is hyperbole. 45 kph is very easily doable on a standard 750W e-bike motor with <$1 of additional electronics. At that point it's all aero, so going even faster is mostly about rider position and bike geometry (those scooter looking things are going to be slower than a proper bike on 29" wheels).
Speed limits are universally based on measured speed - either at the wheel or motor.
Banning throttles just makes manufacturers install token pedals on the motorbikes.
Class A: Bikes that can not go over 10mph via a throttle. And can’t go over 28mph with pedal assist. Or set the pedal assist limit at 20mph if you’re feeling especially conservative.
Class B-Class infinity: These aren’t considered bikes. Class A is the only class of e-bike.
>Class A: Bikes that can not go over 10mph (16km/h) via a throttle. And can’t go over 28mph (45km/h) with pedal assist. Or set the pedal assist limit at 20mph (32km/h) if you’re feeling especially conservative.
In Australia, the pedal-assist limit is 25km/h (~15.5mph). And frankly, that's plenty.
If you take away their legal reasons for overtaking you while you go as far as the bike let's you and there's nothing ahead of you, you've already massively reduced the amount of dangerous overtaking, and you can aggressively police the remaining overtaking for speeding without having to prove they are overtaking in a dangerous manner.
That doesn't seem _that_ conservative, honestly. Lots of places have a 20mph/30km/h limit for _cars_ in urban areas.
Kids riding out of spec motorcycles has always been illegal and always will be. The only problem is that they are a lot cheaper than they used to be.
Many e-bikes don't have torque sensors and instead use a cheap rotation sensor so the motor engages almost randomly at certain points in pedal rotation when moving at slow speed.
Today, those are mostly limited to Walmart-tier quality e-bikes. Even the very next step up (still big box store bikes) usually come with torque sensors.
The quick e-bikes aren’t motorcycles, not even close. Something in the Sur Ron class (30-40MPH) would be equivalent to a 50cc 2 stroke which you can ride with nothing more than a drivers license. Even then hopped up Talaria’s are a pit bike and don’t remotely approach a low end sports bike.
Fast e-bikes aren’t bicycles but they aren’t motorcycles. We already have a term for that, mopeds and scooters. Instead of banning everything the clear solution would be to treat them the same as mopeds (Have to be 18, wear a helmet, may or may not need a license) and call it a day without all the drama.
The whole throttle vs pedal assist distinction makes way less sense than delineating the difference based on power.
If regulation based on power was drafted, it'd be a simple matter of using a voltmeter and galvanometer to see if a bike is compliant with power limits (arguably motors have different efficiencies, but electric motors are close enough to 100% to use this method).
Somewhere like Shanghai, you'll see ~70% of traffic in "bike" lanes are what appear to be electric mopeds.
But if you look closer, all of these mopeds technically have tiny attachment points for pedals. Government regulations allowed e-bikes to be driven unlicensed (but with a special green license plate, unlike the US!) and wherever bicycles are allowed. At the same time, the delivery industry and commuters wanted something stable, capable of carrying cargo/passengers. So the form factor adopted was that of mopeds, while vestigial pedal attachments were provided in order to pass as "e-bikes" under the regulatory criteria. Example. [0]
In practice, using pedals on these made for a clunky experience so they were not usually attached at all. The other main regulatory criterion was that these have to be limited to <= 25 km/h, unlike true mopeds/motorcycles. In practice, these speed limiters were also removed, setting up a cat-and-mouse game between police and riders.
The rule requiring the vestigial pedals was finally removed a few months ago, meaning that the ontology of "e-bikes" is pretty different in China now. [1] (Pedal-assist traditional bike frames also exist, but they share space with the larger mopeds in bike lanes and bike parking. True electric mopeds and motorcycles also exist, but they are effectively regulated out of existence in big cities.)
At the end of the day, top speeds are more determinant of whether different modes of transportation can coexist than pedals or form factor.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/r4HAUJDQT1w [1] https://chinamotorworld.com/chinese-e-bike-new-standard/
Like drones, 3D printing, and now the simple pleasure of building your own e-bike. It seems like a certain demographic of NIMBY/Karen has taken over and is hell bent against makers and anything remotely cool, DIY, that could even be slightly more dangerous than a game of Pickleball.
But as a morally righteous big brained HN edgelord, feel free to live your anarchist life on a seastead in the middle of the ocean running drones into icebergs and enjoying the whiz of throttling your exquisitely powerful ebike on the deck of your boat if you please.
Replace e-bike with bike or tricycle and you still have a smushed baby.
Gotta keep on the edge if you want to enjoy things or be successful.
> And I dont think I would want to share cycling lanes with people doing more than that either
The regulation I wish for is for speed pedelecs to be allowed to use cycle paths whenever the street has a speed limit > 50kmh. Being on a 70-100kmph road as a 45kmph bike is needlessly dangerous when there's a usually idle bike path next to it.
Some pedicab folks in Austin used to use them.
Hill climbing video YouTube https://share.google/iLrHXvjAKMO4esAux
Design info https://share.google/iLrHXvjAKMO4esAux
Even at the European street legal limit of 250W it makes acceleration trivial.
This is somewhat overstated. Bafang middrive conversions fit on most frames with a BSA bottom bracket.
Mine sits between the pedals. That means I can just go down in gear and the motor helps with going up the hill.
But generally it's not the motor itself that's weak, it's just got a weak power supply (and potentially weak battery BMS. Some controllers tie phase amp output to battery amp input by some 2 to 2.5x multiplication ratio.)
Going from a generic KT 22A controller to a 35A KT will give over +50% torque. Up till the motor hits magnetic saturation, torque scales linearly with the amps. The thinnest kind of direct drive (27mm magnets) can hit 80-90nm too. Most of those are 30mm nowadays and can push 100nm tho.
On the geared hub motor side, the G062 (most 750w bikes use clones of it) can push 90nm before there's a risk of stripping nylon gears. Smaller ones like the G310 may strip gears earlier. These generally need less amps to produce torque than direct drive, so they work better with poor electrical systems.
Worth mentioning that wheel size matters for torque on hub motors. Larger wheels need more torque to climb (thrust). And also motor wattage doesn't mean much for torque (phase amps from the controller and gearing affect that even on bikes sold with the same wattage rating).
I also find the throttle gatekeeping or wattage gatekeeping a bit silly. Going 25kmh by throttle or peddling has no difference in how dangerous a cyclist is on the road. They should cap top speed and acceleration on throttles, but banning them outright unless someone is doing a minimum cycling motion on the pedals is a wrong regulatory approach and limits accessibility.
Throttles above 6kmh (walk assist) are banned across the whole of Europe. Judging by how heavily the Netherlands pushed for the EU-wide throttle ban, and putting my tin foil hat on, I can assume this was done as regulatory capture to ban Chinese ebikes from local stores, as they come with throttles and aren't usually capped at 25kmh on pedal assist. Netherlands produced ebikes are all pedal assist only, mid-drive, and have very poor batteries and electrical stuff for the (over 2x) price they're sold for. And now they have less competition. EU also has a 45% tariff on "e-bike part" imports...
I would also like a regulatory framework to register and insure a faster e-bike (as imo they should not cap wattage and cripple the hill climbing torque, only speed/acceleration) for adults. Right now you can only register one that has a license in EU. If you build your own, it can never be legal, even if you have a motorcycle license and want to insure it. This class of e-bike is impossible to drive legally right now.
L1-b class registration can technically do this, but it needs the bike to be registered in Europe. No e-bike has this. No manufacturers sell class L1-b e-bikes registered in the EU. Only some electric motorcycles afaik.
Pro of derailleur’s e-bikes: their price.
[waited long time to do that] - a former bike mechanist
edit: the problem with faster wear isn’t the risk to break but the decease in efficiency which will affect your motor health (heating) and batterie capacity. If you’re on a budget there’s a compromise: find your favorite gear and replace the derailleur and cassette with a single speed front and back sprockets (and chain). Beware that might not be adapted to hilly roads as GP environment.
This gets repeated a lot, but isn't true. Cheaply made single-speed and 6/7/8 chains aren't any more robust than nice modern 10 and 11-speed chains. Shimano CUES (11-speed) works fine for ebikes.
Belts are fine, but less efficient than well-maintained chains. And they require special frames with some way of breaking the rear triangle.
As for the chain you might be right, but a well maintained chain over time needs more work that many wants to invests. It’s an option for the hobbiest and sportmans but not for most of daily commuters which want something that just work, days after days and years after years.
Also, e bike users tends to user the higher speed way more than others so that sprocket wear off faster than others, accelerating wear even more. I’ve replaced many cassettes with all the speeds almost brand new and the faster one totally destroyed.
I covered 1 speed in my earlier comment (“single-speed”) too. There are some nice graphs at https://zerofrictioncycling.com.au/chaintesting/ (although that testing doesn’t cover single-speed chains).
> As for the chain you might be right, but a well maintained chain over time needs more work that many wants to invests.
Right! Totally reasonable to prefer not to maintain a chain.
That is a flaw in your ebike. Weird and dangerous.
Because of the assist, I find myself more comfortable in a wider range of weather conditions:
* If it's hot, I use more assist and there's an instant cooling effect. Much better than climbing into a hot car.
* If it's cold, I dress up to be warm outside and if I start to warm up on the ride, I use more assist. I don't have to try and balance staying warm and not getting sweaty.
* Same thing if it's wet out: I can wear heavier waterproof gear and not get sweaty.
Food, beer, and cat litter would be too heavy for a bike.
None, because noone wants to bike 5 miles for 3 bags of groceries.
At the same time, I don't need to go 5 miles for groceries, so you might be picturing using a cargo bike in sparse suburbs. If your built environment is car centric then almost definitionally using any other mode of locomotion is going to be subpar.
Also, my grocery stores are 0.7, 1.1, and 1.6 miles away, not that it matters. 5 miles is just not very much time at 20-28 mph. I think theft and weather/comfort are bigger obstacles to most people than distance.
Is the goal post a few groceries you get for a few days?
I have never seen one of these ridiculous looking bikes in any city or anywhere.
Where do y'all live, a Dr. Suess book?
I will not bike them in the rain, With soggy bags and squishy pain.
I will not bike them up the hill, When every pedal feels like drill.
I will not bike them when it’s hot, With sweat that pours and cheese that rots.
I saw them every day in Chicago. I see them every day in southern Ontario. I saw them whenever I visited Boston or NYC. Where do you live that you don't?
> I will not bike them in the rain, With soggy bags and squishy pain.
> I will not bike them up the hill, When every pedal feels like drill.
> I will not bike them when it’s hot, With sweat that pours and cheese that rots.
Given that other commenters have addressed basically all of these concerns (waterproof bags, electric assist, insulated bags) it seems more like you just want to be contrarian rather than cite specific problems and discuss if they can be solved.
I don't want to risk having an injury on a bike either. A car is much safer.
Sure, an automobile will pretty much always win out in raw capacity, but I'd argue it's a policy problem that makes us reliant on automobiles for day to day life. If people only needed a car for their weekly grocery trip but could bike to work or school or the doctor's office that would still significantly reduce our reliance on automobiles, with benefits in health and energy.
> I don't want to risk having an injury on a bike either. A car is much safer.
Also a reasonable concern, but again more of a policy problem: we prioritize cars over pretty much every other form of transportation to the detriment of everyone else in public spaces. If we had more protected walkways / bikeways then everyone would be safer.
In general I don't think we regulate the safe use of automobiles nearly as much as we ought to in the states. Leaving it as an individual concern makes it a race to the bottom, with everyone buying bigger and bigger cars in the name of safety, all other externalities be dammed.
You realize everyone has different needs right? I stated that in a GP.
I do get kitty litter with the car on the occasional trip to Costco because I'm not set on using the bike for every last thing. Just that the eBike makes a lot of things a lot more convenient.
Beer and cat litter alone are the heavy items, and don't fit stable in a bike, especially in bad weather.
Plus 2 weeks of groceries, depending on what you need can really add up.
On a bike? Fah-get-a-bout-it. Guess I'd be biking my ass to the store every day.
Or I could live in the present and drive an actual car.
Clearly GP buys 1 day worth of food if he can bike groceries for a family of four.
I had Uber drivers struggle to bike 1 MEAL for my family.
Important note: if you put a beer in the bottle holder, give that one away and take another for yourself.
I buy 2x 24 packs every 2 weeks, not going to work.
But great, I'll bike that home then go back for groceries. Maybe the "snack" I can fit will fuel me.
Sure I could cut out something I love, my one vice. But that's not very American, a car that can fit all of my stuff is.
I have my motorcycle license and have been considering getting something that I can ride all day. Only problem is that if it's classified as a motorcycle license I don't think I can take it in the train like a bike if I run out of juice far away.
But something about travelling in crowded and closed space like train with a fully charged diy (or even commercial) battery pack sounds risky.
This is one of the reasons I didn't go for a diy replacement of TWS pair with dead batteries.
The welds on this pack are very good, I have checked and re-checked all of them, inspected the pack using a FLIR while running at maximum charge / discharge just to make sure there is no hidden jump in resistance or a bad cell. The whole thing is wrapped in shock absorbent foam but it still is a massive pack and if it were to go into thermal runaway there is just too much energy there to be dealt with.
It stays outside and is charged outside and I'm monitoring the cells groups to mV precision to make sure that they're not misbehaving. I'm not taking any risks with 170 charged 18650s, if I would so much as drop or bump the bike I would discharge the pack and dismantle it.
I know it was not your intent, but when people hear this stuff about the fragility of EVs, it really makes them feel safer with a gas motor and a tank of liquid that can take a few dents and whacks without completely exploding.
Quite common for Bosch powered cargo bikes to allow fitting two 800Wh batteries and you can always carry spares. They’re just horribly expensive.
I’m very glad my US spec e-bike is 28mph/45kmph rather than 15mph/25kmph limited as I feel much more comfortable taking the lane closer to car speeds on residential roads even if I rarely go above 20mph.
The off-the-shelf pack I was looking at if I had to make an ebike for commuting (if my employer ends WFH) was about 1100 Wh (about half the homemade pack in the article): https://www.ebikessentials.com/collections/batteries/product...
Show HN: Long Range E-Bike - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29198205 - Nov 2021 (615 comments)
Not to say that _you_ shouldn't do this ... just be careful out there!
There are a bunch of youtubers that go out of their way to give massively dangerous advice to people and I always wonder what their liability situation is.
I'll look up his name tomorrow, it's been years since I last looked at that (it's 5 am after a night of hacking so I'm off to bed).
https://www.youtube.com/c/HBPowerwall
I like the simplicity, I don't like some of the wiring choices but I'm not sure if that is to be code compliant in Australia. Enjoy!
I’m looking for a replacement BMS (52V, 14S5P) but can’t figure out which would be more reliable. I would prefer to avoid buying a replacement from them because I dont think they should have failed so early and with such a light use.
How to find a suitable BMS that does Bluetooth and will fit the existing connectors, including the SoC indicator and power button? That’s an 8 wires daughter board that uses actual SoC information to display the value rather than voltage alone.
I'm a total sucker for ebikes and built my first ebike around 2006, powered by 40lbs of lead acid motorcycle batteries.
I recently outfitted a trailer with a large battery made for an efoil (my other obsession) where the non-battery components went bad, the company went out of business, and "Hey, this would make a bitchin' ebike battery.
Here's me cruising around the Oregon back country with said setup last summer: https://imgur.com/a/lmvJSBW
Speed restrictions are somewhat better in the US -- class 1 is allowed to assist up to 20 mph, and class 3 is allowed to assist up to 28 mph. Both are higher than 25 kph (15.5 mph).
Okay, a quick google and this seems somewhat moped-ish but 200 mile range, 28mph top speed: https://aniioki.com/products/aniioki-aq177-pro-max-electric-...
Crazy price, but a real bike with 300 mile range and 36mph top speed: https://shop.optibike.com/shop/r22-everest/
Speaking of R&M, I have wanted to get one of their bikes that has the child container area in the front. I saw one guy with one and it looked pretty awesome. A large bike like that would benefit from some larger battery pack. And those have a flat area in front on the frame where you can host a few parallel to the floor (hard in a normal bike frame).
One annoying constraint is that it’s hard to find a place here in America where people won’t tacitly kill children. As more people here become online only child-free characters driving large EVs they don’t think too much about killing children and will only delay someone’s license for a couple of years for doing so.
The hard problem seems to be other people.
I'm planning to buy one of these (Load 60 or 75). I think they can mount two battery packs (2x 800Wh = 1600Wh) on the frame.
I lived right next door to the guys that developed it and in the Groningen country side you could see them zoom by with some regularity. But where I live now I think I've seen exactly one in five years and that was after it had bowled into a mom on a cargo bike... the stigma roughly identical to driving a Canta on the bike path.
The term of art here is "velomobile."
New recumbents are expensive, but used ones are very cheap. Afyer seeing several within an hour's drive of me for $300, I got a Rans Rocket for $100. Appparently it had been available (but poorly advertised) for two years.
A little while after I became "the guy who rides a recumbent", I was given a Rans Vivo for free, because the owner hhad determined that the expected sale price wasn't worth the time and effort to sell.
I don't know what the difference is with what op has, but for me it's no extra issue to drive above the top speed. It's a gradient transition.
I use mine daily and charge it every two or three weeks.
* Goes about as fast as a horse
* Goes about the same distance as a horse
* Sitting on a saddle like a horse
* Out in the weather like a horse
* But no feed or vet bills
* No need for lots of land or infrastructure
* Little ongoing maintenance
* Little skill needed to ride :-)
And this is borne out in the statistics -- there's no reason to believe motorcycle riders are any better or worse than cyclists at bike handling / driving skills, but the motorcyclists certainly die more on average. I suppose if you're an amazing motorcyclists but a shit bicyclist, stick to motorbikes, but that seems pretty far-fetched.
(Safety gear like armored jackets, pants, gloves, and boots -- available to motorcyclists but impractical for cyclists -- certainly helps at the margin. Nevertheless, the stats are worse for motorcycles. I'm not saying don't ride motorcycles -- I have in the past and will again. More speed just doesn't make you safer.)
What? 55km with a 500Wh battery? Was he not pedaling at all? Why does he even have range anxiety on an ebike? You can just pedal if the battery is low.
The range on this thing is not that large even when you are pedaling strongly, it just uses a lot of power. As you probably know the power consumption of a bike goes up considerably as the speed increases, this is NL and while we don't have hills we do have wind, and plenty of it. Add in a 40 to 45 kph top speed and you can see the battery dwindle in real time.
As for pedaling if the battery is low: I have a bad leg, which is why I ride these to begin with, they help me to get started at traffic lights, which we have a lot of. Once at speed I can ride just fine but getting up to speed really hurts.
Anyway, if you use high power settings due to your bad leg, I understand. With assist set to low or even medium, you can get a lot more than 55km out of a 500Wh battery.
With assist set to low or medium I would end up with a hospital visit after a single ride. I have half an Ikea in my right leg, two 40 cm long pieces of steel and a massive number of screws to hold it all together so I really can't risk another fall or overloading it.
My friends who have e-bikes go through a lot more "consumable" parts such as chains, tires, brakes, cogs, and bearings.
You: “Yes.”
Right after the pandemic of 2020, I joined an “outside squad” of OneWheel enthusiasts, PEV daredevils, and E-bike low riders. We would ride around the city in 70 man packs. It was the most fun I’ve had as a grown up. :) Even broke my olecranon in a nose dive but rode my wheel out of the hospital. Best money spent.
Very cool experimentation but in term of making the practice sustainable best to rely on the infrastructure. It's a bit like in sports having to use the big muscles, e.g. you climb with your legs, not with your fingers no matter what super strength grip you have.
That being said, IMHO sadly, most cities do not invest enough on mass transit infrastructure. That's what politics is for though.