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Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

jacquesmattheij.com

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Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#301

Post by conductr »

jacquesm wrote: post #14
nousermane wrote: post #11

> S-Pedelec (...) top speed 45 kph (...) in many places you are forced to ride in traffic Yes. This is the way. Thank you, Dutch government. If somebody feels like wheezing an almost completely silent 200kg projectile, godspeed. But please gtfo from the urban bike paths, if at all possible.

It weighs half that, including me, and the average speed over a longer trip is about 33 to 35 Kph. In cities you ride just as fast as the rest of the bike traffic, there isn't any point in trying to go faster, and top speed is rarely achieved, you'd need a 100% full battery and a rider in very good condition. More usual you'll be around 35 to 38 kph in open country where there is very little other traffic. My 'commut…

My concern at those speeds is traction. I prefer fat tires so a bit of loose gravel or a pothole doesn’t ruin my day.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#302

Post by bjourne »

nybble41 wrote: post #153
twodave wrote: post #38

Awesome project Jacques! I saw a comment of yours on an article a day or two ago and was hoping to see this pop up soon. I've found the most difficult thing about riding an e-bike is the other motorists have no idea how to react to you. You're not really a regular bicycle anymore due to your speed, but you're also not a motorcycle that deserves its own lane. I have at least one car turn in front of me almost every tr…

> You're not really a regular bicycle anymore due to your speed… The top speed (with assist) for class 1 & 2 e-bikes is well within the speed range of a regular bicycle. 15 MPH is considered a reasonable average speed for beginners, and 18-22 MPG is not out of the question with training. I've ridden my own e-bike past 20 MPH with no assist on occasion, and being a foldable model designed for electric assist it has a…

22 mph = 35 kmh. The average speed of Tour de France is 40 kmh: https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/tour-de-france/2016/gc/...

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#303

Post by whimsicalism »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #295
whimsicalism wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not feel comfortable bicycling in Chinese "bike lanes", they are basically just separate lanes for the mopeds.

In China, the rich drive while the poor make do with e-bikes. Yes, you wouldn't feel comfortable in those lanes, but people still need to live.

Oh I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing at all - just that it is definitely not the case that you can comfortably comingle normal bikes with those lanes.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#304

Post by DonHopkins »

aidenn0 wrote: post #201
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.

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.

I'd love an Electric Hot-Tub Bakfiets, but the batteries don't last long, they aren't very maneuverable, and they spill a lot around corners.

Those things are amazing. Here are a few photos I took of a dude in Amsterdam riding a bakfiets carrying an outdoor urinal.

https://imgur.com/a/nq2rnBW

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#305

Post by rnotaro »

Torkel wrote: post #219
fragmede wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Multi-lane bike ”highways” would be awesome. What matters most (imo) is that all these riders are unprotected, and should be kept far apart from cars. If the unprotected, single rider, narrow vehicles want do drive at vastly different speeds then multiple lanes seems like a good solution.

In Montréal, Canada, we have the Réseau Express Vélo (REV). They are uni-directional bike paths that are 3 meters wide. They easily allow 3 cyclists to be side by side.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#306

Post by nybble41 »

jacquesm wrote: post #181
nybble41 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize the article is yours, but you responded as if you were talking about all pedal-assist electric bikes (as the comment you replied to undoubtedly was), not just your particular model.

Read again: the claim is that these bikes can be hacked. Believe me I tried and reverse engineering is not something that I have a moral block against or so. Every s-pedelec that I'm aware of is legal to buy and drive on the roads here is locked down. The Bosch system is the one that I now have extensive experience with and the handshake between the controller, the motor and then battery is of a complexity level that…

> Read again: the claim is that these bikes can be hacked.

"These bikes" as in pedelecs in general. Not just ones with Bosch parts, and not just the ones that are available legally as regular "pedelecs" rather than "s-pedelecs" in NL or the EU. In most cases you wouldn't even need to hack them; this is how they work from the store.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#307

Post by GhettoComputers »

After reading this, did you ever consider using petrol, gas, oil or whatever you call it there for environmental reasons (against electric is Lithium battery manufacturing, power loss in AC transfer, dirty fuel used to make electricity, and battery degrading) weight, energy density, simplicity and would the fuel cost much more? It’s 2-3x more than in the US would that have changed your mind, and would you still find it cheaper to maintain? Here’s some motors https://boneshaker.bike/motorized-bicycle-kits/

Do you see a benefit in a using 2 battery packs, so one can charge and the other will be used and swapping them, you can mount them so you don’t carry them, or switch them since they don’t rely on high voltage.

For the Bosch is it easy to beat the DRM? If they’re at best using essentially voltage to turn a brushless motor, it can’t be that hard to beat can it?

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#308

Post by nybble41 »

bjourne wrote: post #302
nybble41 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're not really a regular bicycle anymore due to your speed… The top speed (with assist) for class 1 & 2 e-bikes is well within the speed range of a regular bicycle. 15 MPH is considered a reasonable average speed for beginners, and 18-22 MPG is not out of the question with training. I've ridden my own e-bike past 20 MPH with no assist on occasion, and being a foldable model designed for electric assist it has a…

22 mph = 35 kmh. The average speed of Tour de France is 40 kmh: https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/tour-de-france/2016/gc/...

I wasn't talking about a long-distance race like the Tour de France. This is average speeds over a one-hour period. If an ordinary cyclist can reach those speeds, even for just a few minutes at a time, then cars need to be equipped to deal with it. The fact that an e-bike can sustain such speeds over a longer interval doesn't fundamentally change anything.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#309

Post by leetcrew »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #135
jimmaswell wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most important thing should be the speed, not the method. A fit enough cyclist could easily go fast enough to be dangerous to other cyclists with a normal bike on cycle paths too.

Sure for a while. But a e-bike can do it all day. They can be a hazard for hours every day.

the ebikes I'm familiar with cannot travel at top speed all day. more like slightly more than an hour.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#310

Post by [deleted] »

gtirloni wrote: post #247
polote wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Although I have nothing against motorbikes I'm not cool at all with basically motorbikes getting a free pass because they're disguised as bicycles. A free pass for what ? You dont need a motor to reach 40kph on a bike, plenty of people can do it with only their legs. What we can do is limit the speed on bike lanes, but that means we could allow any vehicule on it. There is no reason a motorbike couldn't go on a bik…

> What we can do is limit the speed on bike lanes, but that means we could allow any vehicule on it. No, we can't because of momentum. We could never allow a car or a heavy motorcycle to drive on pedestrian/bike lines even if they are at low speeds.

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