E-bikes can replace car trips for some people, and adding a solar panel can make the fun last longer. [Luke] did some heavy modifications to his RadWagon to make it better, stronger, and faster than it was before.
The first step was replacing the stock 750 W controller with a 1500 W model to give the motor twice the power. [Luke] plans to replace the motor if it gets fried pushing too much juice, but is planning on just being careful for now. To stop this super-powered ride, he swapped the stock mechanical discs out for a hydraulic set which should be more reliable, especially when loading down this cargo bike.
On top of these performance enhancements, he also added a 50 W solar panel and maximum power point tracking (MPPT) charge controller to give the bike a potential 50% charge every day. Along with the OEM kid carrier and roof, this bike can haul kids and groceries while laughing at any hills that might come its way.
There are few challenges more difficult or dangerous than trying to get around the majority of North American cities by bicycle. Not only is the bicycle infrastructure woefully inadequate for safe travel (if it exists at all), but it’s often not maintained to any reasonable standard, either. This goes double in colder areas, where bike paths can essentially become abandoned in the winter after a snowfall. [Phil] found himself in this situation recently after a snowfall in western Canada and decided to DIY his own bike-powered snowplow to help keep his bike paths cleared.
The plow is built around an electric-assisted cargo bicycle, which is almost as rare in North America as bicycle infrastructure itself, but is uniquely suited to snowplow duty. It has a long wheelbase and a large front cargo area that can be weighed down if needed to ensure the plow makes good contact with the ground. The plow itself is built out of sections of plastic 55-gallon drums, which have been cut into two scooping sections and attached to the bike with a wooden 2×4 frame. The plow can be raised or lowered with a ratchet strap mechanism, and the plastic scoop skips over bumps in the path with relative ease.
With this relatively simple mechanism attached to his bike, [Phil] can make sure the trails that he frequents around Vancouver are more suitable for bike travel in the winter. Riding a bicycle through the winter, even in the coldest of climates, is not that difficult with the right support and investment in infrastructure, and this build is the best DIY solution we’ve seen to bicycle infrastructure support outside of adopting something like this remote-controlled snowblower to the job.
We’re all familiar with how regular bikes work, with the pedals connected to the rear wheel via a simple chain drive. This setup is lightweight, cheap, and highly efficient. It’s not the only way to drive a bike though, and there’s plenty of buzz around the concept of “digital drive” bikes.
Look, ma – no chains!
These drivetrains rely on electrical methods to transfer power in place of mechanical. The pedals are used to turn an electric generator, with power then sent to an electric motor which drives the rear wheel. The concept may sound overly complicated, but it does offer some benefits. The generator can change its operation to keep the rider pedalling at their most efficient, consistent rate. There would also be no chain to fall off, get snagged on clothing, or require regular maintenance.
It would make integrating regenerative braking possible, too, allowing the bike to harvest energy when going downhill too. This could be achieved with a storage battery or supercapacitor. As a bonus, it would be very easy to integrate power assist for the rider when tackling tough hills, for example. The lack of requirement for direct mechanical power transfer also means that there’s far more flexibility to design a bike with interesting geometry.
Such drive systems do give up some efficiency, however. All the power conversions between mechanical and electrical energy mean that a “digital drive” would likely only be 58% efficient. This compares poorly to the roughly 95% efficiency of power transfer in regular mechanically-driven bikes. There’s also a weight penalty, too.
Presnetly, there’s only one “digital drive” bike on the market – known as the Mando Footloose. It’s a swooping, folding, futuristic design, that has some feel issues when it comes to pedalling. And, given the added complexity and expense of these systems, it’s unlikely regular bikes or e-bikes are going away any time soon. Regardless, it’s fun to think about the potential for other drivetrain concepts to change the way we cycle. Video after the break.
What do you get when you throw all accepted bicycle designs out the window and start fresh? Well, it might look a bit like [Saukki’s] velomobile.
Most bikes come in a fairly standard, instantly-recognizable shape which has been popular for over a century now. While it’s a vast improvement over its predecessor, the penny-farthing bicycle, there’s no reason that a bike needs to have this two-triangle frame shape other than that a pretentious bicycle racing standards group says they have to. If you want to throw their completely arbitrary rulebook out of the window, though, you can build much more efficient, faster bikes like recumbents or even full-fairing velomobiles. And if you want to go even faster than that, you can always add a standard ebike motor kit to one.
This is a lot harder than putting a motor on a normal bicycle. Bicycles tend to have standardized parts and sizes, and [Saukki]’s velomobile is far from the standard bike. First, he needed custom mounts for the display and also for the battery, which he needed to make extra wide so its weight wouldn’t rip through the carbon fiber body. The emergency brake lever motor cutoff needed to be dismantled to work with his control system too, and finally the mid-drive motor needed a custom mount as well. It’s a TSDZ2 motor that comes with torque-sensing pedal assist.
The changes didn’t stop there. The velomobile max speed is much higher than a standard bike. This called for some gear ratio changes, in the form of a monster 60-tooth chain ring.
This leads to the one major problem with this build which is that the velomobile can achieve such high speeds on its own that the electric assist cuts out for most of the ride. There is a legal requirement over much of Europe that e-bikes only have pedal assist (without a throttle) and that they stop assisting above a specific speed. But if you want to build an e-bike that pushes the boundary of the law instead of strictly adhering to it, take a look at this one which uses a motor from a washing machine.
Ebikes are slowly taking the place of many cars, especially for short trips. Most ebikes can take riders at least 16 kilometers (10 miles) without too much effort, at a cost that’s often a single-digit percentage of what the same trip would have been with an internal combustion engine. If you’re interested in dropping the costs of your ebike trips even further, or eliminating it entirely, take a look at this small ebike with integrated solar panels.
While any battery can be charged with a sufficiently large array of solar panels and the correct electronics to match the two systems together, this bike has a key that sets it apart from most others: it can charge while it is being used to power the bike. Most ebikes don’t have charging enabled during rides, so if you want to use the sun while riding to extend the range of the bike you’ll need to find one like this. This bike uses two 50 W panels on the two cargo areas of the bike, attached to a 400 W MPPT charge controller. The Lectric XP 2.0 ebike has a motor with a peak rating of 850 W, but in a low pedal-assist mode the solar panels likely output a significant fraction of the energy used by the electric drivetrain.
Even if the panels don’t provide the full amount of energy needed for riding around, the project’s creator [Micah] lives in Florida, so just setting the bike outside in the sun for six to eight hours is enough to replenish most of the battery’s charge. It’s probably not going to win any solar-powered bike races anytime soon, but for an efficient, quick bike to ride around town it’s not too shabby.
If you’re a Hackaday reader, it’s a good bet you could figure out how to convert your bike to use an electric motor. But you might have more important things to do, so a start up company, Skarper, wants to help you with a conversion kit and the folks over at [autoevolution] took a closer look at how it works. The interesting part is that it transfers power from the motor to your wheels through a disc that substitutes for the bike’s disc brake. You can see a promotional video about the product from the company below.
Unlike some conversions, it looks like with this kit you can easily snap the assembly on the bike when you want it powered and take it off when you want it to function normally or if you want to take the electronic part inside with you.
The company claims that the 250-watt motor can to propel a bike to nearly 20 miles per hour. But we’re willing to bet you can’t go that fast and get the claimed 37-mile range. On the plus side, a 30-minute charge will net you another 12 miles and a full charge only takes 2.5 hours. The battery and motor weigh a bit more than 7 pounds. Obviously, you’ll need a bike that has disc brakes.
Cost? About $1,200, so it isn’t quite an impulse buy. Especially if you have the time and wherewithal to roll your own solution. For example, try a skateboard motor. Makes it easier, too, if you have a 3D printer.
Pulling a trailer behind your bike has an aspect of freedom and exploration to it. However, the reality is that pulling a large, heavy box behind your bike is incredibly draining physically. So [Drew] returned to the drawing board for his bike camper and added a motor, making some tweaks along the way.
We covered his first attempt at a bike trailer; this update encompasses everything he mentioned as future improvements. First, he strengthened the axle, and the trailer mount bolted straight into the chainstay arm for added strength. Then he built a custom battery pack out of 18650 cells clocked in at just under 3kw. Next, he installed a hub motor kit into the bike’s back wheel. Finally, a flexible 100W PV solar panel was added to the roof and routed to a small battery bank inside that provides USB and a few AC outlets for laptops and phones while camping. [Drew] does note that he could charge the big e-bike battery with the smaller bank, but since the e-bike battery is much larger than the small one, it would take a few cycles.
[Drew] takes a journey to a music festival and is happy to report better stability and the battery having fantastic range even without him pedaling. We love seeing a good project revisited, and we hope [Drew] gets some good use out of his camper. Video after the break.
