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Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

jacquesmattheij.com

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Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#601

Post by llampx »

wraptile wrote: post #515

As someone who lives in SEA this obsession with e-bikes is rather fascinating. Modern ice motorbikes are dirt cheap (you can get one for the price of OPs battery pack) , easy to maintain and are surprisingly silent. Finally it can carry the whole family - pets included! It's not that uncommon to see 4 people on a scooter around here. Honestly aside from weather I wonder why the west has such terrible adoption for imh…

ICE motorbikes in the west are usually ridden by hobbyists, not people using them for commuting. Where I live, it is cold and/or miserable for 7 months of the year, and its rare to see motorbike riders during that time. So they're bought by people who already have other modes of transport. The weekend rider crew. And they are usually quite expensive. On top of that, where I live they need special licensing, so add 2000€ for a driver's license. Also, you'd be pulled over so fast for having a child or pet unsecured on one of them, your head would spin.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#602

Post by chrismorgan »

jacquesm wrote: post #537
chrismorgan wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So that’s 7kg extra for your 2150Wh, over the original 500Wh battery? So around 250Wh/kg? I’ve been planning a velomobile that I can live out of, and I’ve been interested to observe that by the time you get to one kilowatt hour, I can’t find any Li-ion batteries at all: they’re all LiFePO₄. https://au.renogy.com/renogy-smart-lithium-iron-phosphate-ba... is then about 1280Wh (12.8V/100Ah) for 11.8kg, 110Wh/kg, around…

Yes, LiFEPO4 would have been preferred but the Bosch BMS doesn't know how to deal with that chemistry. There are some interesting developments, have you looked at these? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYx097cVR48 If I had free pick of chemistry I probably would have gone with those. 250 Wh/kg sounds about right, I'm running the cells in a very conservative regime though, topping them up to about 80 SOC and dischargi…

LTO definitely sounds very interesting, and I’ve noted it down for further investigation, but on brief examination it’s not sounding particularly compelling for my particular use case over LiFePO₄: I probably wouldn’t actually benefit from any of the places where it’s superior. Life span, for example: sixty years of daily discharge is nice and all, but LiFePO₄ should already easily last me a decade or two (time will kill it, not cycles), and I don’t think it’s useful to forecast beyond there. And I don’t need its more rapid charge or discharge. And so the main thing that’s left is its lower specific energy, and I’m not fond of the idea of lugging around an extra dozen kilograms per kilowatt-hour. (Its lower energy density wouldn’t be a problem; I can readily allow a few extra litres in the design, which you couldn’t do on an e-bike.) Stack all that on the more restricted range of options unless you’re willing to deal with unknown Chinese entities and AliExpress, and I expect I’ll end up staying with LiFePO₄.

For typical off-grid house power needs, on the other hand, LTO sounds extremely compelling.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#603

Post by chrismorgan »

jacquesm wrote: post #539
chrismorgan wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t yet ridden a velomobile (though I may purchase one soon and am planning on building one for riding round Australia and living out of for a year or so), but I’ve been riding a recumbent tricycle (Greenspeed GT3 Series II) since 2014, including various touring in Australia (Victoria and some South Australia), America (through California, and from St Louis to Philadelphia) and New Zealand (Auckland to Kaikoura…

That sounds like an amazing thing you are doing there, do you have a write-up somewhere?

My velomobile plans? Not yet, but when I get a little further along I do plan to write about it publicly at some length (including during the build process, and after).

It’s even going to have a trailer, built in part to house a digital piano (which will be a dozen kilograms or so well spent).

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#604

Post by rjbwork »

CRConrad wrote: post #521
rjbwork wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

1) That's a pretty high legal limit... And doesn't feel all that relevant, given that you report riding at such a ridiculously much higher speed. 2) "Moving with the speed of traffic for my safety" is a... "Nice" (that was sarcasm, I mean egocentric) attitude. 3) "The speed of traffic" may be higher for you now that you live in the countryside, but A) sounds like you rode / ride about as fast in the city, too?; and B…

I commuted by bike along Peachtree Street in Atlanta for 3 miles each way for just under a year. Going too slow ends up with motorists making aforementioned risky maneuvers. I don't think I would have done so for so long had I been riding a normal bicycle. There aren't too many people who commute by bike there, and for good reason.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#605

Post by JoeAltmaier »

leetcrew wrote: post #309
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

OK, but there are endless numbers of e-bike idiots. Super-athletes doesn't scale like that.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#606

Post by effingwewt »

jacquesm wrote: post #578
effingwewt wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well thanks to both of you then! I browse by active when I have the time, and likely would have lost this article had it not still been at #1 when I woke up. I love Jacques' posts, his lego sorting was legendary and I still share it often. As with another commenter, I had seen Jaques mention he was in the process of another article, and was waiting patiently. The last few years have been really heavy, with some great…

Wow, that means a lot. My silly projects usually just serve as me scratching some itch, the last couple have been out of the ball-park successful in the kind of response they generated and how people started using them as jump off point for their own stuff. HN seems to be more for lawyers than for makers these days judging by the bulk of this thread (or fantasy cycling sports fans ;) ), I like to stick to the practic…

My absolute pleasure- you, sir, are my hero and just wanted you to know some of us rely on you for inspiration in our own lives.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#607

Post by goodpoint »

jacquesm wrote: post #408
goodpoint wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yes, that's what I thought. I had fallen many times with recumbents and never the slightest problem, because you're so close to the ground. And then my foot hit the ground, ever so briefly. And that's a failure mode I never really considered but what happened next went pretty quick and irreversible once it starts: your foot hits the ground, the bike moves a little bit forward, this puts more pressure on your foot, so…

I think it's called "leg suck". I wonder if there are taller city-oriented recumbents where your legs are far enough from the road.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#608

Post by dheera »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #288
Bootvis wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're exerting yourself you tend to pay attention to what's happening around you. I noticed that folks that go very fast on their two-wheeled vehicle without too much effort get distracted quite easily.

I think it may not be the exertion per se, as much as the perception that something is working hard to give the speed you have. I have been a very very fast cyclist in the past, and when I'm down on my aero bars and doing 40-50kph under my own power, I'm very aware that I'm (a) working hard (b) going fast. This makes me not want to crash, if only because I'd lose all that hard-earned speed. But I've seen the same eff…

I mean you could just play this on loop while driving the Tesla

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFHqh7Rv2TI

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#609

Post by swarupberia »

The innovation possible due to a customizable battery configuration, and the simple drivetrain of a electric motors, can lead to some very wild experimentation with all kinds of mobility assisted devices. While pedelecs are seeing the initial interest, but a rapid evolution of battery powered exoskeletons cannot be very far.

Re: Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

#610

Post by jacquesm »

markvdb wrote: post #599
jacquesm wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I live you can't legally cobble together your own s-pedelec, you need type approval.

The EU is large. Did you or anyone else by any chance do any research on EU countries with a fairly flexible certificate of conformity approval procedure for L1e-B/speed pedelecs? I'm starting to research my options for a twice weekly 2*65km commute. Most of it is ideally suited for speed pedelecs, along a canal and an old railway converted to cycle highway. The commercial offerings don't suit my needs. I wouldn't re…

Stay tuned for that one.
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