I just visited an electric bike shop for a test ride, and the owner and I were discussing some properties of batteries. Quick and short:
1. He claimed that Ni-Mh had as much memory effect as Ni-Cd cells. I argued otherwise.
2. He claimed that every single battery in the world (yeah, he really said that) was recommended a charging time of 10 hours, whether it was Ni-Cd, Ni-Mh, li-ion, or li-polymer. He said that if one charges them at higher currents, their lifespan will decrease. I saw where he was going, but I argued that 1-2 hour Ni-Mh charges would still provide the rated number of charges (1,000 times for an Eneloop).
Bonus: He said that I shouldn’t act as a know-it-all about batteries and that I should read some more. Oh well, I was just trying to discuss some properties of batteries.
Any feedback is appreciated!
Edit: The electric bike kit was pretty nifty. Instead of the motor being in a wheel, it’s in a small package just above the wheel, and there is a textured piece of cylinder that delivers the torque directly to the rim of the tires.
One thing I noticed that he was using a hobby R/C grade motor and ESC. The entire system consisted of the motor, ESC, power delivery wheel, battery pack, and a manual throttle switch. Totally not worth $1,100 in my opinion.
Well, he’s a sales person. You should never trust what they say without checking the facts. They just want to get your money.
Obviously he wanted to sell you Li-Ion powered product over NiMH (more money there, I guess). And the charging time was long so he claimed that the long charge time is just a good thing.
The things he said might be based on a truth, but he “modified” the truth to guide you to the product he wanted to sell to you.
Unfortunately (or fortunately) the kit is backordered two months, which tells us how popular it is. I personally think it’s a rip off, after seeing the parts that are used.
No wonder why he doesn’t have a detailed photo of it on his website, just long range shots of bikes with the device.
I’m not a big fan of those friction systems. Many have tried them on bikes in the last ~100 years and none of them was really great.
But it might be an option for such a little bike.
1100$ sounds really expensive though.
Interesting, I’ve been looking up some friction drive systems, and I may just be able to put some parts together and see where that goes. It certainly doesn’t seem as easy as it looks though.
I was once on a 100 person or so boat and the captain was telling me that only marine GPS’s had WAAS corrections (better then 100m accuracy, any modern cell phone will have it), and me showing him my handheld GPS which clearly states WAAS enabled did little to convince him, and by poor fortune i had poor accuracy at that moment, must have been the clouds
Incidentally i was using NiMH batteries at the time which were charged in far less then 10 hours
Those products are interesting.
I have been dreaming of buying an electric drill and putting that on to my bicycle as motor. Just haven’t been able to figure out what would be the best/simplest/easiest way to transfer the power to the wheel yet. :bigsmile:
Huh, that’s weird, because in the FAQ section, he explains that there are no considerable problems with friction drive mechanisms. In fact, he didn’t mention the wearing of tires at all.
Depends on your usage. Wear can be low in a well adjusted configuration.
But in rainy or dusty conditions, the nonpositive connection might fail from time to time. That’s not only annoying because of the loss of power, but the constantly engaging and disenganging connection will wear down the tire quite quick.
Friction drives are around for a long time now, most prominent would be the french Vélosolex bike. They all have more or less the same problems.
Still might be a solution where hub motors cannot be used.
not sure if u know but lipo battery & electric motor kits for bikes start as low as 250. 350 for whole kit. I think a 26 speed columbia one with 36-volt electric motor bike is under 600. I once opened a 2008 36-volt battery pack? It was 6 parallel and 5 series i believe of 26650 MNKE oranges ones.
