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Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

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Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#471

Post by vineyardmike »

paulcole wrote: post #469
vineyardmike wrote: post #468

I love the idea of e-bikes and would love to be able to use them and not need a car (which i don't own), but i just don't feel safe using them in US cities... NYC has too much traffic, SF has too many hills, Seattle is too wet. I wish there was more alt-transit for commuter scale transportation to get around without a car, but the autonomy of not using a bus. Scooters seem promising but they're a pain on the roads (w…

You can always come up with a million reasons not to do something. Plenty of people bike safely in NYC, SF, and Seattle. You don’t have to wish for an alt-transit solution that’s not a bus. Bikes exist. The more people who ride them the safer and more normalized they get. I’ve bicycled (conservatively) 7,5000 or so urban/downtown miles over the past decade or so in Portland, OR. I get wet, I get sweaty, I get tired,…

> Plenty of people bike safely in NYC, SF, and Seattle.

Oh i know and power to them. Personally, i'm very clumsy and not very balanced, so i don't feel like i'd be comfortable riding in the city. I've rode a bike around silicon valley a bit, and it was fine.. most of the time.

I used to bike a lot in youth, (mostly on bike paths for fun), and for sure i know that a mostly-bike/ped environment feels much safer.

> The more people who ride them the safer and more normalized they get.

This is why i've been keeping an Ebike in the back of my mind (and hoping for alternatives to emerge). I'm hopeful for a future where cars are second-class citizens on urban streets.

Maybe i'll try biking around my neighborhood this spring, and see if I can get used to it.

(BTW thanks for the tips :) )

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#472

Post by lucb1e »

> it barely discharges over a trip like that, which should help with longevity

Only if you don't charge it fully though, right? As in, charge to just below X% when the amount of charge you expect to need is X/2 percent-points, rather than to 100% and not use it fully. At least that's my understanding and how I've been treating my li-ion devices.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#473

Post by lucb1e »

vineyardmike wrote: post #468

I love the idea of e-bikes and would love to be able to use them and not need a car (which i don't own), but i just don't feel safe using them in US cities... NYC has too much traffic, SF has too many hills, Seattle is too wet. I wish there was more alt-transit for commuter scale transportation to get around without a car, but the autonomy of not using a bus. Scooters seem promising but they're a pain on the roads (w…

> i've heard horror stories of how unsafe they were

Wait, scooters are not a thing in the USA? As in, obscure enough that the closest experience you have is "heard horror stories" and that's it?

I feel like every second person here (Netherlands) owned one, or perhaps rather, at least I would expect every teenager to know someone with a scooter. I personally never saw the appeal but then I also hate cycling (too much work, can't transport groceries well at all, and you get wet) so I consider myself an outlier anyhow.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#474

Post by tapland »

cycomanic wrote: post #405
bjourne wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The average speed over the TdF is completely irrelevant, they cross the alpes. Generally on a race bike riding at 40kph if you have a slight tailwind is very doable over extended periods. If you are riding in a group of riders riding along at 40 is very straight forward, you can easily go over 50 (the fastest TdF stages are around 50 average over more than 180km distance. I can easily ride 30km/h on a regular commuti…

30 is pretty easy to do, 35 is significantly harder and 40 is insanely much harder.

People saying regular bicyclists do 40-45 kph seldom have much experience on bikes. And someone going that in city traffic, like a lot of ebikes do, is just not a thing =/ too much stopping/starting and with dedicated lanes you still have to slow to traffic. O ly ebikes get up to those speeds in that encironment

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#475

Post by GhettoComputers »

jacquesm wrote: post #367
GhettoComputers wrote: post #307

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…

I figured with the kind of mileage that I'm getting out of this and the cost of electricity it's a pretty good deal compared to firing up my trusty boxer. I've used two packs, two times 500 Wh but I'd run them dry on my regular commute so that's what drove the decision to build this bigger pack. There are some advantages, but the Bosch system keeps a reserve so you'll end up transporting some idle capacity anyway and…

Keeping them within a certain range is useful but not as much as preventing them from overheating, heat and fast charging is more dangerous, basically if you limit them to 80% it will prevent trickle charging, you can do this in hardware by monitoring the speed it charges at and shutting off when it lowers with wattage monitoring equipment. Apple has this as well, and every lithium charger has trickle charging at 80%, but not all of them are able to end charging at this percentage.

https://linrunner.de/tlp/settings/battery.html

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210512

The best implimentation from my understanding is this one under android.

https://github.com/VR-25/acc

By hack I mean a bypass versus your meaning of attacking the security and removing DRM, is there a reason you can't just use another chip or anything special its doing? Do you need the CPU and is the cryptography documented enough to make it easy or woth the effort? It may also be a passion project so I understand if you just want to do it to do it, and even share the information. If it is battery charging features if they're important are not special. The last 20% makes extra cycles and is the most stressful.

https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-409-charging-lithiu...

>Turn off the device or disconnect the load on charge to allow the current to drop unhindered during saturation. A parasitic load confuses the charger.

>Charge at a moderate temperature. Do not charge at freezing temperature. (See BU-410: Charging at High and Low Temperatures)

>Lithium-ion does not need to be fully charged; a partial charge is better. Not all chargers apply a full topping charge and the battery may not be fully charged when the “ready” signal appears; a 100 percent charge on a fuel gauge may be a lie.

>Discontinue using charger and/or battery if the battery gets excessively warm.

>Apply some charge to an empty battery before storing (40–50 percent SoC is ideal). (See BU-702: How to Store Batteries.)

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#476

Post by femto »

boogies wrote: post #457
femto wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One wonders whether there is a place for "Active Crumple Zones"? Instead of a car having to weigh more that the opposition, it carries an explosive charge in it's nose, which is used to provide a burst of forward momentum to the leading edge of the car during a crash, preventing it from being forced back into the passenger compartment. One can imagine refinements, such as inertial sensing and a feedback loop to contr…

How powerful and effective could that be without launching the lighter vehicle backwards with dangerous force?

From a purely theoretical point of view, if there was a perfect feedback control loop the energy of the explosion could be controlled to bring the front of both vehicles to a perfect stop. Both vehicles would then crumple about that stationary point.

From a practical point of view ...

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#477

Post by lucb1e »

jacquesm wrote: post #30
fnord77 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a class 3 and I don't feel safe riding in bike lanes at full speed, zipping by slower bicycles. There's no place to go if someone swerves. I will usually ride in traffic instead.

Riding in traffic here is suicide. Drivers get very irritated when you are not exactly at the speed limit and I've had more than one instance where someone essentially overtook and then forced me into the bike lane. And that's just here in town, where there is absolutely nothing to gain.

> forced me into the bike lane

hold up, forced your bike into the bike lane? Why were you not there in the first place? (Not meant accusatory, I must be misunderstanding or missing something; I don't even know where "here" is.)

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#478

Post by nynx »

leeoniya wrote: post #451

> I hope this article will inspire people to look at e-bikes as potentially commuter car replacement, to send Bosch and other e-bike technology manufacturers a message that if they won’t supply what people need that they are going to have to live with people hacking their stuff and to get people to comment on the way the thing works, what they would do with it and how it could be improved or how I could work better/s…

I think an open-source onewheel equivalent would be totally doable using VESCs.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#479

Post by vineyardmike »

lucb1e wrote: post #473
vineyardmike wrote: post #468

I love the idea of e-bikes and would love to be able to use them and not need a car (which i don't own), but i just don't feel safe using them in US cities... NYC has too much traffic, SF has too many hills, Seattle is too wet. I wish there was more alt-transit for commuter scale transportation to get around without a car, but the autonomy of not using a bus. Scooters seem promising but they're a pain on the roads (w…

> i've heard horror stories of how unsafe they were Wait, scooters are not a thing in the USA? As in, obscure enough that the closest experience you have is "heard horror stories" and that's it? I feel like every second person here (Netherlands) owned one, or perhaps rather, at least I would expect every teenager to know someone with a scooter. I personally never saw the appeal but then I also hate cycling (too much…

Electric Scooters (the kind you stand on, like Bird) are very very common in US cities.

The small wheels mean it’s easy to get knocked around whenever you hit any small side walk bump.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#480

Post by rjbwork »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #370
rjbwork wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a JuicedBikes CrossCurrent X. They only made my particular configuration for a short amount of time around early 2018 - it has a massive battery, a 52v system, a 750W Bafang hub motor, and location tracking within the battery (though I stopped paying for it since I moved out of the city). Their newer models are just as, or even more capable. Yeah, that is the legal limit but I turned it off in the bios. When c…

OK, so you disagree with assertions because you ride an illegal vehicle. And want...what? Your use case to be taken as standard? Or for people to understand there are lunatics on the road? We know :) (to be fair and charitable: I agree that moving with traffic is, everything else equal, safer than not moving with traffic. But everything else is NOT equal - I am not convinced you have the weight [i.e. centre of gravit…

No. I disagree with his assertion that one cannot go >~24MPH indefinitely. The legal limit here is 28MPH. I can certainly do so indefinitely.
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