If you’re in a relatively urban area and your destination is within a reasonable distance, it’s hard to argue against riding your bike rather than taking a car. It’s a positive for the environment, and great way to exercise and keep active. But some of us, say folks who write for the Internet full-time, might appreciate a little electromechanical advantage when the going gets tough.
In an effort to make electrifying your bike as easy as possible, [Shushanik] and [Aram] are working on a product they call BikeOn which they’ve recently entered into the 2019 Hackaday Prize. Thanks to some very clever engineering, this small unit can clamp onto the frame of a standard bicycle and transfer the energy from its 350 watt motor directly into the rear wheel; all without any tools or permanent modifications.
In the video after the break, [Aram] demonstrates how the user can install the BikeOn motor assembly in literally just a few seconds. Naturally there’s a beefy battery that needs to get attached to the frame as well, but even that has been made modular enough that it can attach where many bikes have their water bottle holder.
The attentive reader will likely notice that there’s no obvious control mechanism for BikeOn. Instead of having to fumble around with it manually, BikeOn uses a combination of torque sensor, accelerometer, and gyroscope to intelligently determine when the rider could use a boost.
BikeOn nabbed Editor’s Choice award at Maker Faire 2019, and now that it’s in the running for the Hackaday Prize, we’re excited to see more information on the product as it moves towards commercial release.
It’s a really neat idea. It appears that you lose the ability to shift the rear derailleur into the larger cogs though- it’s hard to tell from the video how much it affects chain line clearance.
It also looks like it’ll only fit a specific size of cassette. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have different adaptors, but it kind of kills the chances of using it on multiple bikes, unless they happen to all run the same size cassette.
Comments on the hackaday.io say that it will work with almost any bike, but that one is set up for hybrids.
Presumably there’s a different sized mounts that can be screwed on to match different sprockets, but I do expect it’ll still be stuck with one size for a given setup (and require tools to change it to fit other bikes).
NickW,
If you have different sprocket sizes on your different bikes (the largest sprocket is the important one), you will have to change adaptors, which are mounted on BikeOn. It can be done very easily.
You’ll have to tell us which sprocket you have on your bike and we’ll ship you appropriate BikeOn, which will fit your bike.
Thanks!
Yeah, I assumed that’s how it would work. It’s good that you can make it work, but it’s also something that you wouldn’t want to do on a daily basis if you wanted to use it on multiple bikes.
I’m not sure how much that’ll matter anyway. For my purposes, I don’t think a bottle mounted battery would be sufficient anyway, so the quick swapability of the motor is kind of moot.
Agreed, neat idea, but at > $1000 and looks like it may limit any or most shifting, seems to have a pretty limited audience. If you can’t shift up or down, that pretty severely limits ‘human powered’ operation of the bike. Hopefully I/we’re wrong about the shift limitation, but from the minimal bit you can see of how it looks they’re reading ‘torque’ via chain tension/deflection by a spring-loaded roller, shifting may be altogether out.
Batteries are pretty expensive especially if they are good quality cells, so the price isn’t necessarily unreasonable for what you’re getting, but I think you’re probably right on the limitations.
Actually, what looks worst to me, is that you’re locking out the lowest gears, which will be making it harder to climb hills, and that’s the main time that a lot of us want the assistance.
I expect in my case, that being stuck a couple gears higher would probably give me less speed over some of the short steep hills on my commute. It’s somewhat dependent on how the 350W is calculated. (Input, or mechanical output power?)
Yep, I don’t disagree on good battery cost. For what you get, cost might not be inappropriate at all. Seems loosing upper and lower gear ranges takes it to a ‘comfort bike’ market as even relatively avid bikers would not want to loose all or even significant gear range for hills (up or down – and I could be wrong…), and coming in at over $1K on top of a bike cost goes to the ‘affluent comfort bike’ market at that. And then if you do run out of battery, the drag added between the motor and roller seems it would not be that insignificant…
Yeah. That’s my feeling as well. And in general “pedal assist”, or “pedalec” is a bit of a joke anyway. Typically it’s used exactly as shown in the video. The bike is in a high gear, the rider puts in a minimal effort, and the bike does (almost) all the work. It’s essentially a sloppy foot-controlled throttle. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I just have a problem with the idea that idly turning the pedals somehow makes it okay or somehow safer than a manual throttle control. I’d rather skip the pantomime and gain the versatility of hand controls. I can still pedal when I want, but I have much better control over my throttle and regenerative braking all the time.
Regarding drag, they mention on one of the hackaday.io comments that it will produce drag if it’s used without power. Seeing as it’s a pinion gear on a small motor turning at high speed, both the hysteresis and friction losses will be pretty bad.
Even my old direct drive bike motor had pretty significant drag. (probably roughly equivalent to the difference between knobby mountain tires and slicks on the road) A motor like this, which I expect is running a pretty steep gear ratio is going to be much worse. If I ever got stuck with a dead battery, I would definitely take advantage of the quick removability.
So yeah. Seems like an odd middle-ground that I’m not sure many people are looking for.
I don’t think most cyclists would miss the high gears much unless they’re riding well in excess of the 32km/h limit, or they’re riding at way too low a cadence, but I wouldn’t want to be without my lower gears unless the motor was putting out a heck of a lot more power. If the motor’s current limited to 350W at the input it’s going to be super weak at low speeds, and you’re going to have to still put out significant power to climb. Being a gear or two higher, you’re probably going to have to push the pedals just as hard to not lose speed and stall it (but if you do, you’ll get up the hill a little faster) If the “350W” is in the typical air-quotes, and peaks more like 1000W (at the battery), or they’re regulating on an actual mechanical 350W at the output (calculated from torque and RPM) it might be alright.
Power limits are actually pretty pointless, though. They don’t accomplish anything. People equate power limits with slowing down ebikers but due to the way the motors work, the only real impact is on acceleration, and usability for people without sufficient leg-power on hills, etc. The same motor driven with a 10A current limit (around 350 watts), or a 50A one (around 1750) will actually get to the same top speed on the flats or downhill (and both should reach a 32km/h speed regulator anyway). The only difference is how long it’ll take to get there.
I’ve never heard anyone complain about an e-bike or e-scooter accelerating too quickly. If anyone complains it’s going to be because of an obnoxious rider passing without warning with a high speed differential. The problem is the rider, and lots of road cyclists do this on leg power too. It’s just too easy to blame the bike.
Hi NickW
Yes, with BikeOn you’re locking out 2-3 lowest gears (depending on the bike model and setup), but what you’re gaining is up to 40Nm of additional torque. That is pretty serious help and you feel it immediately. So it is actually much easier to climb hills and not harder, as you’ve commented. You gain much more than you loose.
350W is the mechanical output.
Thanks!
Hi jeromekelty
Thanks for your comment!
You’re right: with BikeOn you’d loose the ability to shift into 2-3 largest sprockets (depending on your bike model/setup). But instead you gain up to 40 Nm of torque in addition to your own contribution. That thing moves, and you feel it instantly when it kicks in.
Like a diesel train where a diesel generator drives an electric engine with no transmission: max torque from the beginning.
Lazy, lazy, lazy. Push those pedals. All this talk about the obesity epidemic is wasted breath. Not exercising is as bad for you as smoking. In other words, what we have here is a solution causing a problem.
Easy for you to say. I used to commute by bike when I lived in a major urban center, but the hard biking (keeping up with traffic) ruined my knees. Now I live in a different city, but there’s a very large river valley between the two parts of the city. Doing that hill/valley is brutal, and if I could have a little electric assist, I’d be a lot more inclined to try biking to work again.
If something ruins your knees you’re doing it wrong. My money’s on too high gears and too low cadence possibly combined with bad alignment.
Or it’s just a pre-existing condition. Even if the bike isn’t the direct cause, some people with bad joints just don’t do well climbing hills or trying to ride fast on bikes.
I’m not disagreeing with you, though. I find that regular riding actually helps my knees, but I don’t assume that everyone’s in the same boat.
i always advocate for a proper analysis of the opportunity costs. riding an e-bike is less exercise than providing all the power. but it’s a lot more exercise than driving a car. so you have to look at what kind of trip is being displaced, which of course this article can’t tell you.
in hilly places, a regular bike can be pretty daunting and electric assist really expands the set of people that are plausible on two wheels.
I’m lucky enough to have a mostly downhill commute to work. This means that I can make decent time without getting sweaty in the morning, and get some exercise on the way home. For people who aren’t so lucky, an electric bike can do the work of gravity.
Of course, with an electric, you have to turn off the boost on the way home for it to work :).
The people who bike are often young and fit, and work in an office doing jack s**t.
When I was working construction, cycling to work would have meant an hour of extra labor a day for the same pay. Not a good deal.
>”a lot more exercise than driving a car”
In terms of GHG emissions, cycling to work produces more climate-warming gasses than driving a car. It’s simply because nearly all the food is produced with fossil fuels, transported with fossil fuels, processed with fossil fuels, and then converted at a very poor efficiency to work by your muscles.
In terms of health, you’re better off maintaining a lower average metabolic rate in the first place (eat less), because the oxidative stress of physical effort ages you faster. Some amount for basic health is good enough, but the more energy you push through your metabolism, the more you wear yourself out.
It depends on where you live and what you eat: if you’re eating asparagus from Africa that’s been flown to your home by jet, then you’re roughly as efficient as a car that gets 6 miles per gallon. If you eat food you’ve grown at home (as I do, with no petroleum-based fertilizer, just yard waste) you get more like the equivalent of 4000 miles per gallon, if my math is right. Even eating locally sourced food or bananas and riding to work is still an order of magnitude less greenhouse gas released than cars, according to https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jun/08/carbon-footprint-cycling
This shouldn’t be surprising: it’s extremely rare that people exercise enough to double their caloric intake, but moving a car that has 20x a person’s mass would require that cars be 20x as efficient at converting chemical energy into motion than people are, and “A human being traveling on a bicycle at 16–24 km/h (10–15 mph), using only the power required to walk, is the most energy-efficient means of human transport generally available” as Wikipedia puts it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_performance) and if you don’t like Wikipedia there are many, many other sources providing the same information.
Human muscle efficiency is about 25%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle#Efficiency That’s comparable to cars, but again, a bike is moving 1/20 of the mass of a car.
The problem with that kind of math is that it assumes that there’s a direct correlation between how much you eat and how far you ride, and that definitely isn’t the case. I’m a pretty big guy, and I ride pretty fast on my commute around 6 miles each way. I expect I’m over the quoted 50 calories per mile, but even if we go with that conservative number, that’s an extra 600 calories per day.
I’m fairly certain I don’t eat an extra 600 calories when I’ve biked to work daily, vs some times when I’ve been lazy and taken transit instead for a couple months.
That’s like 2 extra mccheeseburgers a day, a half dozen bananas, or 4 cans of coke.
The point stands that if you want do have a lower carbon footprint, where you get your food, and how it’s grown have a huge effect, but even with a relatively carbon-expensive diet, I would bet that the _difference_ between a cyclist’s consumption and a driver’s doesn’t outweigh the added CO2 footprint of the drive. (It’s not like your metabolism drops to zero when you’re driving)
There’s a bit of a problem with the assumption that a car takes 20x the energy because it has 20x the mass. Aerodynamics are actually a much bigger energy sink for either vehicle. A heavy vehicle takes a lot more energy to accelerate to a given speed, or to climb a hill, but in constant velocity travel aerodynamics matter a lot more. Also, given that cars typically accelerate more quickly to much higher peak speeds, you definitely can’t boil it down to any direct relationship. I don’t have actual numbers, but my hunch is that in stop and go traffic or steep hills, the car is far worse than 20x, and at steady state some cars will be better than 20x
It doesn’t change the fact that I’m still confident that driving is _way_ worse from a CO2 perspective (Don’t forget the costs of extracting and transporting fuel, if we’re counting those costs on food).
Lol, you’re being ridiculous. I might not want to bike to work if I was doing manual labour either, and it’s certainly not for everyone, but how can I possibly be creating more CO2 than I would be if I drove to work.
A cycle-commuter doesn’t eat that much more than non-cyclists if at all, and they’re not burning the fossil fuels in addition to their base metabolism.
People have a fairly significant GHG “footprint” if you include the production of their food, but it’s not like driving your car removes that. You probably eat a couple percent less calories, and burn more fuel, and fossil fuels to transport those fossil fuels which were mined/drilled using energy from fossil fuels, at quite poor thermal efficiency at every step of the way.
+1,000,000 – Sorry, comparing bike CO2 to vehicle is pretty ridiculous. Maybe if you twist the numbers and what you factor hard enough you could make some kind of comparison, but seems laughable… Efficiency doesn’t mean squat alone. Take the energy to accelerate 2000+ lbs to 60mph in a relatively short distance, continued energy expenditure at that velocity with wind resistance, and quite possibly rinse/repeat for stop and go traffic or lights/roundabouts/etc, and there is no way that compares to calorie expenditure above human resting rate for riding a bike. Especially with city driving. And if you’re trying to factor food transportation or production, you better be factoring energy to extract crude oil, transport to refinery, refine it, transport to a station, etc, etc.
– And lastly – I just finally googled it – a gallon of gas has 31,000 calories of energy. I’d like to see a car that can get as far on a single gallon of gas as a person with 31,000 calories to burn on biking above their usual burn rate. Granted that energy density might have some interesting effects on human food to vehicle food production and transportation, but I still can’t see it even being in the ballpark.
These are some terribly unsubstantiated arguments. I would love to see your math on the emissions calculations, but I doubt you could produce any, much less a half-ass news article that would support it.
In terms of exercise intensity vs. life span, it’s hard to get much lower intensity than riding a bicycle to work. I doubt you have anything concrete that could support your argument against that either.
Human muscles are 18% to 26% efficient, from food to mechanical output. Good modern cars are roughly 25% efficient, from fuel to crankshaft. Car plus human weighs more than 10 times as much as bicycle plus human, although the car has better aerodynamics. Overall, the advantage of having to move much less weight dominates the added inefficiencies of shipping and processing food.
Sure, you can exercise too much and wear out joints and other places, but if you aren’t doing at least 5 minutes every other day at 85% of your age-adjusted maximum heart rate (approximately, YMMV, etc.) you’re just begging for cardiovascular trouble.
Finally, claims of significant human-caused global warming are lies propagated by two groups: fools and misanthropists.
Lets not forget that petrol has likely been shipped from the Middle East via some of the worst polluting and efficient ships imaginable, then trucked, refined with huge flare offs, trucked some more blah blah blah. Sorry, most of my food comes from market gardens in my state. Usually less than 100km away and some much less including my own garden. I buy mostly organic so that should mean no crude based fertilisers.
Sorry but your argument is seriously delusional.
Worry about your own health. Getting people out of cars and onto bikes, electric or not, is good for everyone.
Not those getting run over by cars on their bike it isnt.
Maybe we should deal with those cars running people over.
+1
Couldn’t have phrased it better.
@Joel B
Cycling does not ruin your knees as long as your bike/frame/saddle position fits remotely your size.
Rather is biking a recommended way to excercise especially for people who suffer from osteoarthritis.
A lot of people never learn what gear they should be riding in, and constantly grinding steep hills at 40-50RPM certainly can do some damage, even on a bike that fits perfectly.
A lot of them also just don’t know how their bike _should_ fit them, and judging by the bike fits I’ve had done (or seen on friends’ bikes) in bike shops, anyone whose size or proportions are far from average are unlikely to be set up correctly either.
And while I agree that biking can be good for bad knees in many cases (I am one of them), there are definitely lots of people out there who can’t ride because of knee problems.
There are also lots of people somewhere in between, who would like to ride but may find steep hills hurt too much, or who can’t put out enough power to integrate properly with traffic on their commute.
For those people, an e-bike is definitely a better alternative than driving a car.
>>Cycling does not ruin your knees as long as your bike/frame/saddle position fits remotely your size.
You clearly are making assumptions that are incorrect.
I had a custom built, made to measure bike and my knees are trashed. Guess what – if your knees are perfect, it shouldn’t be a problem, but if your knees aren’t, problems can arise. Misalignment of the patella can cause serious problems for knee cartilage to the point you can’t ride any more. There’s no cure and some surgical treatments are expensive or minimally effective (reduce pain but can’t get you back on a bike).
My only option now is an electric bike, but I don’t like what’s out there. This current project is also a non-starter for me.
This would generally increase the amount of exercise people get, not decrease it.
You could at least read and comprehend whats written before posting:
“The attentive reader will likely notice that there’s no obvious control mechanism for BikeOn. Instead of having to fumble around with it manually, BikeOn uses a combination of torque sensor, accelerometer, and gyroscope to intelligently determine when the rider could use a boost.”
Which means that the pedals are being pushed! this is just a booster to help in certain circumstances. Heck, one cursory look at the thing and you can tell that it is not possible for it to be the sole propulsion method of the vehicle.
Mike,
Yes, BikeOn converts your bike to pedal assist. In many places (including Europe) regulations become very stringent if it is anything but pedal assist, by the way. BikeOn is definitely a booster to your daily commute.
That’s a common misconception about ebikes. Even ones with throttles let you pedal as much or as little as you want, so you can, and likely will get a decent amount of exercise.
I converted a bike to a longtail electric cargo bike around 12 years ago, and it made me into an every-day cyclist. After riding that for a couple years, I decided to get a road bike, and funny enough, all the ebiking had gotten me into pretty good shape.
Now I mostly ride my road bike when the weather’s good, and I ride the electric when the weather’s bad, or when I want to run quick errands around town. Groceries, etc.
I injured my ankle a couple weeks ago, so I’ve been able to just ride the electric, instead of driving or taking the bus.
It’s easy to poke fun at ebikes being for lazy people, but I think that’s often pretty far from the truth.
They actually open up cycling to a lot of people who wouldn’t or couldn’t do it, and extend the capabilities of a lot of avid cyclists too.
Even the fat lazy guy you allude to may want to ride, but doesn’t have the strength or stamina to actually do a daily commute. Maybe the assistance is what’ll get them there.
which problem is it creating? it’s sure as hell isnt going to make people any fatter.
He’s just trolling if you didn’t get it.
Pretty sure his question was rhetorical.
“Not exercising is as bad for you as smoking.”
Hyperbole is the new honesty. Lies are the new truth. Elitism is constant though.
That means if I exercise I can smoke again! I really miss the intense concentration from nicotine.
I have a rather sporty friend who likes a fag after exersize.
20 points for first callout!
I live in one of the most humid areas of the country. I ride mountain bikes for fun, but I couldn’t commute to work by bike because it’s just too hot most of the year and I’d be a sweaty mess in a professional office environment. I’d be able to consider biking for parts of the year with an assisted bike.
Using a roller on top of the chain to detect pedalling strikes me as a really clever way to do it. I don’t know how original that is, but it had me making an audible comment at the screen.
An early commercial power meter used the coupling efficiency between a coil and the chain, measuring chain sag, to calculate power. They could also derive cadence.
How would chain sag measure power? I’ve considered measuring power using a sprocket and strain gauge on the top (tensioned) run of chain using rpm for cadence, and upward force for torque, but only on a 1x drivetrain, as positioning the pulley to work with multiple chainrings seems impossible (or at least very silly/inefficient)
– Something like this would be a more of a relative torque calculation (as I’d read into it anyway) – self-calibrating of sorts for a ‘percentage effort’ based on tensioner arm movement. So chain deflects most with applied roller tension and no input torque, and less as more tension/torque is applied.
– A bit of trig against the angle of deflection/roller arm and you can probably get a reasonable tension/’torque’ out of it. Not an absolute power value, as you don’t have RPM (which you could maybe derive from tension surges), but even if you did, you’d need some other variables (bike dependent – like front to rear sprocket distance, and absolute sag amount rather than relative), to try to back into any absolute power measurements. In my view anyway…
I was wondering about what he was talking about with a power meter based on “sag”, and whether it was something different, but similar to what this bike is using.
It’s a bit of a tangent, but yes. In the case of this motor I assume it’s a spring and a hall effect sensor or pot to sense the deflection, but it could also be a simple strain gauge setup in the arm which should have no visible deflection, but still would measure a force. You could do some trig easily enough to get the chain tension if you know the angles, and you can read the linear chain speed simply from the roller.
Unless I’m screwing up the math in my head, you should be able to calculate power from the amount of force on the chain, and the speed that it moves at. (force*distance)=work. work/time=power.
Since we don’t know the angles unless we know the gear, we can’t calculate absolute power, but in any given gear, the vertical force from the strain gauge (or deflection if it’s sprung) should be fairly linear, and can be used to calculate power relative to a specific gear. No cadence sensing from surging, etc, should be necessary.
With my theoretical plan for my power meter, I would actually be measuring tension using a strain gauge on an idler between my chain ring and another idler, so the angles will be known and I can calculate chain tension using trig, and chain speed using either a rpm sensor on the idler, or a cadence sensor on the crank (because it’s only a single chain ring). I shouldn’t need anything else to calculate power.
@NickW since I can’t reply below – Might be off in my head also, but even if you did know the gear, I think you’re still up a creek for an absolute power calculation, without custom programming specific to the bike geometry and gear sizes (not likely an option for the audience of this anyway).
-The strain gauge idea is good if you’re going for absolute – keeps angle of deflection consistent in a given gear while measuring force, but to get power out of that, you’d need to know the angle of the chain at the force measurement point from what ‘straight path’ would be. And unless you have data of radius of front and rear gear in use, along with roller point relative to the chain point of contact with those two radius (including distance between rear dropout and bottom bracket center), you can’t ‘draw the triangle’ between the gear tops and your roller point to work the trig out to solve for absolute tension, let alone power. Then again my mental calculations and trig may be rusty :-)
– And afterthought – I was thinking you might at least know tension roller contact position given front-to-rear distance and all gear sizes, based on it’s distance/angle of mounting with the bottom tube attachment of the gizmo. But since rear dropouts vary and the tube mount point for the gizmo may not be directly inline between rear axle and crank/bottom bracket center, even that is an unknown from chainline without custom measurement or programming per bike model. Oiy…
@my2c Yeah. In my case, I’ll be measuring between a known front chainring and a known position idler sprocket, so it should be doable. But you’re right, that wouldn’t work with an unknown angle between different sprockets without some other measurements AFAIK.
This is brilliantly simple which makes it brilliant ² – I wonder if there are problems with the hub to ring gear connection since that’s where all the force from the motor is transmitted. Also crud in the ring gear teeth. Beyond that, if this looks even remotely useful look for copies from the usual points of the compass in short order since it’s going to be much less expensive to produce than the current front-crank systems and even maybe the wheel-hub systems. Certainly it’ll be the better retrofit.
I like how these posts bring out the True Bicycle Purists™ who think things like hills, infirmity, injury, and age (as well as a cargo bike with two kids on it) can be overcome with True Form™, True Dedication™ and whatever True Equipment™ they’ve been sold this week. Matching Spandex extra.
So much for disc breaks.
Why? The disc is almost always on the other side of the wheel.
Almost? I’ve never seen discs on the same side as the derailleur?
It’s a really clever design, but in my experience the bigger hassle has always been figuring out how to mount the battery to the bike.
The only apparent benefit to this is that it’s really easy to install on the fly, so it doesn’t really make sense on a bike with a frame mounted battery like in the video.
It could be cool to be able to put it on different bikes, but you would need to either have mounts that fit your battery on every bike, or back-pack it instead.
If you commit to having a rear rack on all your bikes, there are quick-disconnect systems for attaching bags to the racks. (Pakrak is one semi-standard.) You could load up a rackmount hard case with batteries and have a cable hanging out. All I own are racing bikes with no rack mount hardware on the dropouts, but I have custom soft bike frame packs for one of my cross-country offroad bikes, and I suppose that’d work too.
yeah. I’ve carried batteries in the bags on my cargo bike, or mounted them on my frame with a triangular frame bag (mounted with velcro and/or zippers).
It’s certainly doable, but I wonder if there’s that many people for whom mounting the motor was the deal-breaker. Unless you’re planning to use it on multiple bikes, swapping in a front wheel with a hub motor and torque arm isn’t difficult either. It’ll take more than the 30 seconds he takes in the video, but it’s not like a new user is going to be able to just slap it on their bike and go either.
Unless you have an easy to swap battery, and want to use it on many different bikes, a conventional hub motor and controller probably makes more sense for most people.
Hi NickW,
What you see on that video is one of the prototypes (including the battery pack). We’ve experimented with the battery pack and it is different now. You can visit our hackaday page https://hackaday.io/project/165754-bikeon to see how the battery looks now: it is much more compact and does not require assembly.
Thanks!
In the UK have a chat with the specialists – Powabyke and conv-e to convert your existing bike to electric and be even more env friendly https://powabyke.com/product/conversion-kit/. Proven products for many many years and I know Keith and Frank from then – when converting the battery from Lead to Lithium for weight and range.
I comute on a recumbent bicycle every day, ant the thing is : I get a great quality free endorphin and sometimes adrenalin twice a day, adrenalin is, of course because I can get smashed by a car, a truck or a motorbike, and also bicycles and pedestrians that don’t look around when moving could be seriously damaged if I hit ’em.
And most people I know who don’t ride a bicycle don’t because they fear the trafic ! (the others are already too fat car riders and shit food eaters ;o)
Motors make people mad, endorphin make people happy, you know what ? I’m happy .o)
A common predjudice.
I ride both, depending which makes more sense on a given day. I hurt my ankle a few weeks ago, and have been glad to have the ebike to keep riding until I felt better. Today I’m back on the road bike.
E-bikes can be just what’s needed to get your “too fat car riders” out pedaling on a bike (with assistance), as it’ll let them keep up better with traffic. Many do eventually get into riding fully human-powered once they build up some fitness and experience.
Even if they don’t. I’d rather have a bunch of people out riding electric bikes, or even scooters everywhere than have those same people driving cars.
Warning!
E-bikes are a proven gateway to getting (or getting back into) pure-human-powered biking.
Love the concept.
Wish it could drive the small sprocket so I’d have the taller sprockets available (but that’s likely just my old&slow wanting that). But, I might need the small sprocket for pedalling so my legs can keep up with the motor assist…
I didn’t find what the bluetooth is for. I assume for setting the % assist?
What else does it use the bluetooth for?
Once configured, does it need to be tethered to a bluetooth device while operating? Each time you start your trip?
Braking: I believe most jurisdictions require that braking (brake levers or brake lines) when activated must trigger the controller to remove power from the motor. I’m not seeing where/how this setup accommodates that requirement.
Hi Canoe,
The BLE connection is for setting up the assist %, but besides you can see some useful info on your phone as well (speed, your cadence, etc.). If you don’t want to use your phone while riding, BikeOn can work without, after the initial setup.
Thanks!
FYI … it seems electric bikes are not that good for keeping slim https://road.cc/content/news/244732-study-cycling-daily-reduces-obesity-unless-its-e-bike