[Pedro Neves] has a mid-drive e-bike, but he doesn’t own it — not truly, since he can’t repair the motor unit. For a hacker to be in that position, there are only two options: crack the old one and make it your own, or build your own from scratch. [Pedro] built his own and is open-sourcing it on his website for everyone to play with. Right now, that’s .step files and a BOM, so you’ll need to watch the design/build video on YouTube below to get the full picture.
His choice of a motor from an old battery-powered angle grinder is both thrifty and environmentally friendly, so we approve. His goal of 25 km/h seems like a reasonable speed limit, but may still be too fast for some countries’ regulations— so do check the local rules if you’re going to build this. Making the most of 3D-printed components is also a choice that makes the project more accessible, but don’t worry — the bearing surfaces are all metal. That includes the clutch bearing that will let you pedal home if the battery dies or the motor craps out. Well, unless the printed plastic axle gives up the ghost, but that got replaced with a CNC version, so it’s all good. Unless you’ve got legs like Hercules, it ought to hold.
If that’s not DIY enough, you could always build the motor yourself. This mid-drive is also part of a larger project [Pedro] is working on for a whole cargo bike, as he details in his video, which is a worthy project we’ve seen other examples of before.
Open-Source Mid-Drive E-Bike Motor-Article has too many hyphens! :-)
https://opensource.org/blog/is-open-source-ever-hyphenated
Great project and i can see why you want to do this, but i think we use different definitions of “owning”. Nevertheless curious where this goes.
Ah, so you subscribe to the John Deere definition of ownership.
i see what you did there…
Looks DOA to me due to the puny motor.
Well, as stated, it depends on your definition of ownership. Do you mean the legal meaning that gives you the right to do with something as you please, or is it about open source, open hardware or right to repair?
Most people here install different firmware to overcome the restrictions built in, so they can go faster, have more power, or get support without pedaling. That is of course within their rights, als long as they don’t use their ebike on public roads…
BTW there is apparently a firm doing a right to repair investigation on Bosch https://classlawdc.com/2026/07/13/bosch-ebike-systems-right-to-repair-investigation/