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Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

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Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#201

Post by aidenn0 »

mikepurvis wrote: post #115
hendersoon wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on your country, really. Throttle ebikes are legal in the USA so long as they don't go faster than 20MPH on throttle alone. And really speed is what matters here. Who cares if it's pedal-assist or throttle so long as you aren't going markedly faster than normal people without any motor at all? There's no safety concern.

At a certain point, you've added enough extra mass to the vehicle in terms of batteries, motor, beefed up brakes and frame, etc that you need to start asking questions about how much kinetic energy it's carrying and what happens to it all in case of a crash. Silly comparison, but we wouldn't let a car drive on the sidewalk even if it had a special module that limited it to 5km/h.

I have a fairly large cargo e-bike; it weighs 75lbs. I weigh 200lbs. I'm sure you'd feel a difference being hit by me that rather than me on my 18lb road bike, but I go faster on my road bike except when climbing.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#202

Post by jacquesm »

user_7832 wrote: post #190

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 loc…

I would not leave it outside for more than a few minutes unattended. It's too expensive for that.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#203

Post by jbluepolarbear »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #27

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…

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.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#204

Post by pdog »

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.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#205

Post by Closi »

masklinn wrote: post #150
Closi wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

> it seems like an arbitrary limit. Of course it is, all limits are arbitrary, even if informed. Lawmakers probably picked limits which would be reasonably achievable by average healthy humans over long distances.

> all limits are arbitrary

I should have really said purposeless!

Usually limits have a purpose - for instance limiting the speed of cars by law is because of accident reduction.

Unless the argument is that pedalling makes it safer, it seems to be a limit for no particular reason.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#206

Post by thrashh »

fragmede wrote: post #179
TacticalCoder wrote: post #27

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…

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…

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.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#207

Post by wing-_-nuts »

jacquesm wrote: post #48
phreeza wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I am saying you could hack the power to torque factor to be so high you don't really have to exert very much force at all.

You can't. These bikes are DRM'd to the hilt and any attempt at hacking them will cause the bike to brick itself which you can only reset at the dealership. You can do that three times and then it's permanent. The penalties for having such a hack detected on your bike - assuming you would get away with it - is confiscation. I would strongly advise against such tricks. You can see how much work just changing out the b…

>but they're all illegal and you are uninsured when using such a device. My bike is perfectly legal to ride.

Plenty of people 'technically' break the law in small ways every day. If your bike looks like a normal bike, and you're not doing outlandish speeds, I'm not sure it matters whether or not your bike is 'technically legal'.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#208

Post by seanmcdirmid »

abakker wrote: post #143
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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.

Pedal assists were the original e bikes back in the early 2000s. But the Chinese found that just making throttle only e bikes was more economical, so that’s what came to dominate the biking ways in China (for people there, biking is more about practicalities and economy than recreation).

I’m sure most American heads would explode if they ever saw how moped, scooter, small motorbike traffic mixed with cars in Southeast Asia.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#209

Post by mynameisvlad »

iso1210 wrote: post #136
mikepurvis wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a certain point, you've added enough extra mass to the vehicle in terms of batteries, motor, beefed up brakes and frame, etc that you need to start asking questions about how much kinetic energy it's carrying and what happens to it all in case of a crash. Silly comparison, but we wouldn't let a car drive on the sidewalk even if it had a special module that limited it to 5km/h.

> Silly comparison, but we wouldn't let a car drive on the sidewalk even if it had a special module that limited it to 5km/h. We do in the UK - it's perfectly normal for cars (including police cars) to mount and drive along the pavement, before being left there

Same in practically every European country I’ve been to.

And it’s not like it doesn’t happen in the US either. Most residential streets don’t have sidewalks in the first place so technically parking in front of a house without a curb or lane is the exact equivalent. Just because it isn’t explicitly marked as a sidewalk doesn’t mean it isn’t treated as one when it’s the only option.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#210

Post by jacquesm »

Closi wrote: post #193
jacquesm wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the safety perspective that drives the legislation, but trying to create meaningful classes of vehicles that then can be used to drive safety. The classification comes first. And s-pedelecs are a bit of a weird in-between thing. From a technical perspective a bike, from a speed perspective potentially as fast as a scooter (but rarely so in practice), a bit faster than a normal bike or e-bike and a lot lighte…

Why would classification come first? That's entirely backwards. Surely we should understand what characteristics of a vehicle make it safe or unsafe, and then build the classifications around that to legislate against. If both are the same safety, why make one illegal? It seems like a law which restricts liberty for no reason (other than legislative convenience, or because 'the government decided to tie it in with pe…

Classification comes first because that's what governments need in order to split traffic into different sets so they can create an environment that works for everybody.

S-pedelecs, and e-bikes are a new development and so fall between the cracks. Riding them on the bike paths may endanger other cyclists, riding them on the main roads endangers the users of the s-pedelecs and e-bikes. There isn't really a 'third class' and legislators all over are struggling with this classification problem.

Tieing in s-pedelecs with pedalling rather than with throttle based systems is a legal hack, but in practice the hack works quite well. The only situation where it doesn't is when you ride an s-pedelec in city traffic where you are forced to ride between the cars, who get irritated because you are measurably slower than they are. Plenty of towns are re-considering this now and are making explicit allowance for s-pedelecs to use the bike paths. But there are already so many 45kph scooters that break the law that the difference is likely negligible.

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