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Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

jacquesmattheij.com

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Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#371

Post by jacquesm »

ulnarkressty wrote: post #255
orforforof wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to ride a motorcycle, now I have an ebike. They seem equally safe to me, which is to say neither are safe at all if there are other people on the road. The only solution is extremely defensive driving/riding, assume no one (including pedestrians) can see you. This attitude has been embedded deeply in the motorcycle culture and is the best way to all-around responsible riders -- and it needs to be propagated to…

I find the e-bike that the article talks about (S-pedelec) to be the peak of unsafeness for two wheeled vehicles. A colleague had one and let me try it - I quickly noped out. He's doing 40mph in traffic with his bike shorts and a flimsy helmet. The power to weight ratio also gives him enormous acceleration, so he can jump from the red lights in front of everyone. Other drivers often misjudge how quickly he can move a…

I'm doing 40 kph, not mph, big difference there.

Power two weight is very modest, it's only a 350 W motor in there for this one.

My history with accidents is simple: I was cycling on a low racer recumbent and hit a traffic obstacle at a very unfortunate angle. Shit happens. But this bike is about 100x times safer than that recumbent. And a lot slower too, in spite of being assisted, low racers are very fast for unpowered bikes.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#372

Post by 908B64B197 »

DonHopkins wrote: post #297
masklinn wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who's going to confiscate this bike???? Most european cops if they catch you: some countries may treat s-pedelecs as bikes, but in most it's a moped, you need a driving license, insurance, a license plate, and all the legal equipment of a moped (e.g. lights, rear view mirror), and commonly type approval (which is going to be very, very expensive). Also can't use cycle paths. Over the last few years many (but probab…

On the day that daylight saving time changes so it's dark an hour early, the Dutch police sneak out all around the city, hide behind bushes, and jump out to surprise unsuspecting bike riders who don't have their lights on yet, and write them traffic tickets.

This has to be a joke right?

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#373

Post by kmtrowbr »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #366
rjbwork wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an e-bike and I disagree with your assertions. I'm a fat asthmatic and I have absolutely no problem maintaining 40kph for long stretches of time on my bike. The fastest I've done on it (on a large hill but still) is 42.7MPH (~68Kph). Average cruising speed on flat land can easily be 30-33mph(48-53kph). Not all e-bikes are capable of this, but they are certainly not some kind of rare expensive impossibility - m…

If something has that average speed capability, why is not licensed, registered, insured and held accountable as any vehicle would be? My 50cc scooter appears to have comparable speeds (maybe 10kph higher), and I wear proper armour & helmet, took the classes passed the test, am registered, licenses & insured. That's my massive pet peeve & safety concern: I WANT to love e-Bikes, and all those sorts of things; and like…

I drive, walk, and bike often in San Francisco. I rode a 650cc motorcycle for 10 years when I was in my 20s.

In the Panhandle, for example, there is a mixed use bike / walking path. It is very dangerous for the walkers even with normal bikes, as the bikes are whizzing by the walkers at 20mph. However one day I was walking, and a HUGE mutant E-bike with massive fat tires & very heavy frame, flew by me at what seemed like 30-40mph -- and to me, it felt exactly like a near miss from a motorcycle.

There are other safety concerns with recent trends, with the Slow streets. Everyone walks in the middle of those streets & the pedestrians treat them as their exclusive domain: kids playing, etc. But the drivers long ago stopped respecting the "slow street" concept, and whiz around the traffic cones, and then go 30mph down the street. The city is still treating them as an experiment, which is a part of the problem.

I love both E-Bikes and the Slow Streets, and they should be a huge part of our future: * Cities should make the Slow Streets official and modify them to make them impractical to use for driving a car (perhaps making them have a single curving central lane). * Likewise the E-Bikes need a bit more regulation and limited strictly to bike only lanes, not the mixed biking / pedestrian paths.

As it is currently the progress of society and technology has created a bit of a dangerous situation.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#374

Post by jacquesm »

samstave wrote: post #331
buran77 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a A novice rider will have a very hard time hitting 65km/h without going downhill or a strong back wind, even on a light bike. It's a challenge even for trained cyclists. So you won't see this on a city's streets but rather on open road. But stopping fast and safe at those speeds is even harder than reaching them because you can't take your time to do it. A bike that can make it easy to reach them shouldn't share a…

As someone who has biked for decades and puts on nearly ~1,000 miles per month - August I did ~850 - Sept/oct was less due to some rainy days... (All on a 29" x2.1" hard tail mtn bike) But I used to bike from Alameda into SF for nearly a decade. I even biked occasionally from Alameda to Menlo Park... That being said, while I really want an E-bike, I am also cautious: I have fallen a lot, and I used to get my bikes up…

It has walk assist if I need to move it uphill while walking next to it, I wouldn't want to move it up or down a flight of stairs but if that would ever be a requirement I'm pretty sure there will be a law mandated elevator nearby as well.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#375

Post by jacquesm »

tshaddox wrote: post #335
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…

> 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. Are there not speed limits for bike lanes? Most cars have a top speed well above the freeway speed limit too.

Yes, absolutely. 30 kph in town, 45 kph outside of town.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#376

Post by hackerkreise »

rjbwork wrote: post #291
user_7832 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you would assume the author is being disingenuous. Your bike is almost certainly very different from the author's, and a more powerful motor is going to get you faster. Fun fact/side note - power requirements generally scale with the cube of speed due to rapidly increasing air drag, so going at 50km/h is much harder (and requires a much stronger motor) than going at 30km/h.

I specifically did not choose the word disingenuous. I asked him to be more ingenuous. His assertion was "there is absolutely no way you are going to sustain 40 Kph+ for anything but a very short period". I disagree, and I think minimizing the capabilities of these machines in the rhetoric is counterproductive to converting skeptics. In the US it's 100% legal to go 28MPH on them for as long as you can - which for me…

The full sentence was: “ The problem is that s-pedelecs are technically lumped in with the scooters, even though there is no throttle and there is absolutely no way you are going to sustain 40 Kph+ for anything but a very short period.” He is explicitly talking about S-Pedelecs which are the fastest legal E-Bikes in most of Europe. He never said that you are generally not able to sustain 40+ MPH in general.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#377

Post by aftbit »

m4x wrote: post #238
rjbwork wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an e-bike and I disagree with your assertions. I'm a fat asthmatic and I have absolutely no problem maintaining 40kph for long stretches of time on my bike. The fastest I've done on it (on a large hill but still) is 42.7MPH (~68Kph). Average cruising speed on flat land can easily be 30-33mph(48-53kph). Not all e-bikes are capable of this, but they are certainly not some kind of rare expensive impossibility - m…

I'm curious - what ebike do you have that can easily cruise at 48-53 kph for extended periods? In most countries that would be far above the legal limits imposed on ebikes. As a result, the ebikes available for purchase are all limited to 25-32 kph max and typically have power limits of 250-300 W. Since ebikes are a lot heavier, exceeding 32 kph for more than a few seconds is generally very difficult. I don't think G…

Class 3 limits in the US (pedal assist only, no throttle allowed) are set at ~28 mph (~45 kph). Class 2 limit (throttle allowed) is ~25 mph (40 kph). I've also ridden some DIY'ed ebike conversions with unlocked controllers that'll happily hit 40 mph (65 kph) if you're feeling particularly suicidal that day.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#378

Post by goodpoint »

jacquesm wrote: post #175
gquiniou wrote: post #167

I am surprised velomobiles are never mentioned: they are much faster than traditional bicycles, have some protection from the weather and can be electric assisted too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velomobile

They are super dangerous too. Very low to the ground, nearly invisible from the perspective of a motorist and far harder to overtake with on narrow bike paths than regular bikes. We have a couple of them near here, also a few battery assisted ones. The velomobile would be an ideal vehicle if everybody rode one.

> Very low to the ground

That makes recumbent bikes safer (actually the safest) during falls. Less height - less kinetic energy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recumbent_bicycle

> nearly invisible from the perspective of a motorist

Usually solved by bright colors and adding a flag on top.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#379

Post by lima »

moralestapia wrote: post #61

Love it, glad to see you keep doing nice stuff, Jacques. Also glad to see there are still real makers in the world. Makers do, period. Another type of person would've asked for 10M of seed funding for "a revolutionary way to commute to work, target market: the whole world" and would've delivered nothing after 2 years of "working really hard on it".

> Another type of person would've asked for 10M of seed funding for "a revolutionary way to commute to work, target market: the whole world" and would've delivered nothing after 2 years of "working really hard on it".

... and yet another person would've bootstrapped a company off it :-)

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#380

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

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…

Do people steal the bikes by picking them up with a car, or do they try to ride them away?

I'm surprised I haven't seen e-bikes with an electronic immobilizer (that will either disable the motor or use it as a brake, unless unlocked with a code or physical token).

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