Long Range E-Bike(jacquesmattheij.com)
11 pointsby birdculturea day ago4 comments
  • jdboyda day ago
    In my city, travel habits and condition, I find I wish for more torque and lower speed. Every place I want to go has significant hills that the motor can't handle, and easing climbing hills is the main reason I want an ebike. My ebike's minimum speed for the motor is 15kph, which is ok by myself, but my family likes to go slower, so I have to go fully manual with them. When I look at ebike ads it feels like nobody else cares about these two areas of performance. When I talk to local ebike shops they are unprepared to talk about torque and minimum speed.
    • pmyteh15 hours ago
      I fitted a Bafeng mid-drive motor to my city bike and it's fabulous for hills. Because the power goes through the existing drivechain you can get high torque simply by switching to first gear. No minimum speed, power kicks in after half a turn of the pedals. Coupled with hub gears you can change at rest it's a marvel.

      Even at the European street legal limit of 250W it makes acceleration trivial.

    • rsingela day ago
      It was too early and a bit of a dangerous design, but the StokeMonkey was built for torque and worked great at low speeds.

      Some pedicab folks in Austin used to use them.

      Hill climbing video YouTube https://share.google/iLrHXvjAKMO4esAux

      Design info https://share.google/iLrHXvjAKMO4esAux

  • golson_kindminda day ago
    Respect: that's a beautiful pack.

    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

  • stevenhubertrona day ago
    It does feel like this is such an untapped market. Think commuters, credit cart tourers, tourism around a spread out city. Something that is safer than a motorcycle and faster than a bike.
    • nicbou13 hours ago
      In Germany at least the routes are a lot prettier because they go through forests and villages. It's what got me to cycle more and ride my motorcycle less.
    • adrianNa day ago
      It’s only safer than a motorcycle if you have bike friendly infrastructure.
      • tim333a day ago
        The fact they are kind of slow and you can take them on trains helps compared with motorcycles.
  • adrianNa day ago
    I would be a bit worried that the extra weight compromises the structural integrity of the frame. 2kWh are heavy
    • elcapitana day ago
      I would be more worried charging that huge home built battery pack. I'm sure OP knows what he's doing, but I wouldn't want to bet my house on it.
    • BizarroLanda day ago
      high quality heavy 18650s weigh about 2 oz. 190 of them would weigh about 24 lbs. Throw in another 6-10 lbs for bms, wiring, casing and errata and it's not that bad.