Clean NRG E-Bike Challenge

CleanNRG

1 µW
Joined
Jan 27, 2015
Messages
2
Location
Osborne Park Western Australia
The only e-bike challenge of its kind in Australia, the Clean NRG E-bike Challenge is an opportunity to showcase current off the shelf street legal e-bikes in the 250watt category and to encourage innovation in e-bike technology in the open category. please take a look and spread the word http://www.pipelinechallenge.com.au/info/clean-nrg-e-bike-challenge/ :D
 
That's the challenge. Is it possible to build an E-bike to go 180km on one charge. How big does the battery need to be? will it be too heavy? will it be strong enough to travel on a bumpy dirt rd along the Pipeline from Kalgoorlie To Perth over 5 days. What motor/motors should we use. If you were to build an e-bike to do this what would you build ?... http://www.pipelinechallenge.com.au/info/clean-nrg-e-bike-challenge/
 
The site suggests people in the 250w category could just pop shop and and get one.

I have a 5ah pack. About 1.6Kg. My longest ride is a quite unspectacular 40 miles (almost half your target) along waterways. Took an afternoon with stops to explore along the way. I did most of the work though. The pack alone will only do 20 miles at sedate speeds, on smooth surfaces, with no headwind.

How about solar? A square meter of good panel would keep you rolling till it got dark. You could use it as a roof to keep the sun off you.


How fast do you want to go? As doubling speed expectations generally means 4 times the battery requirement.
 
You might want to look around at the multiple long-range bike threads to see what they did.

THen you can go to all the noob bike build threads to see about simulators and figuring out power requirements and pack size, etc.
 
Sorry, but I tend to think in miles and watt hours per mile.

Not sure how fast you need to go, but 25 watthours per mile would be a very low number for dirt riding. So lets use 40 wh/mi as an example.

120 miles x 40 is 4800 watt hours. A typical very large ebike battery is around 1000 watt hours, such as a 48v 20 ah. So like 5 of those?

If you were able to travel at 25 wh/mi, 3000 wh. So 3 48v 20 ah. That sounds huge, but could actually be carried. About 40 pounds of battery if you get the lightest type.
 
On my BBS02 equipped Cannondale 3 pairs of 16Ah Multistars will get me 195km with ease.
Thats with my unfit pedalling help and using assist 2 and 3 out of 9 on the level and assist 5 uphills.
 
Maybe a trike instead? Its possible, but you have to carry lots of batteries if you dont mind to pedal at all.
 
I averaged 160 km when riding from Perth-Sydney with 2kWh of lithium. Out of 35 days riding, 11 were distances of 180km or greater. So it's certainly possible to do that distance on 2kWh but rough roads, signifiant climbs or headwinds will necessitate a larger pack unless you pedal hard!

The rules of that race are strange though...25 km/h speed limit when on roads but no limit to the number of riders per team (swapping tired riders with fresh ones is permitted). In my view that means all entrants will just ride at the 25 km/h limit for all the on-road sections. But, I'm not sure how much of the race that encompasses.

They also list 40 km/h as the max permissible speed off road however pro riders already ride faster than that for distances greater than 180 km on non-electric bikes! For example Fabian Cancellara won the Paris-Roubaix in 2013 at an average speed of 44 km/h for 254 km!

So this Pipeline race is either a challenge for a fit rider to do the distance with a small battery or for any other rider to simply use a big enough battery to make it easy to go the distance. Perhaps that's why they call it a challenge and not a race 8)
 
It all comes down to the road surface. 25 wh/mi is an easy number to hit, even in the mountains, on paved roads. I'm not guessing, I live in the rocky mountains.

But if your tire is sunk into soft dirt, sand, mud, as much as 1-2 inches, then your wh/mi can double or even triple. 60wh/mi totally normal, ( with a 1000w bike traveling slow) with a fairly wide "normal tire" if the surface is soft sand. A pipeline road, to me, sounds like it could be all churned up if it's been dry a long time. Or, the opposite, have long stretches of mud in every low spot. The 250w limit will help your efficiency some, but if the going is tough, then you will be pulling the max watts and going 3 mph. This could call for a mid drive to improve efficiency, but still end up with a pretty high wh/km result.

If the road is packed dirt, then you could end up 20 wh/mi or less.

You'll need to scout that route, to have any idea what it will take to do the 180 k leg. In any case, 2000wh needs to be your minimum target battery size, unless your riders are pro, or extremely strong athletes. Ride some sections, get some real world wh/km numbers to work with.

If the riders are that strong, big deal, Sagan could ride the leg on 250wh. Who cares how far a pro athlete can pedal a too heavy bike?
 
dogman dan said:
If the riders are that strong, big deal, Sagan could ride the leg on 250wh. Who cares how far a pro athlete can pedal a too heavy bike?

But what's the point of an ebike challenge when from the outset the riders are required to stay below speeds that pedal cyclists exceed?

dogman dan said:
You'll need to scout that route, to have any idea what it will take to do the 180 k leg. In any case, 2000wh needs to be your minimum target battery size, unless your riders are pro, or extremely strong athletes. Ride some sections, get some real world wh/km numbers to work with.

Good idea! Data will be key in planning for the ride.
 
Meh, I agree. Off road, why a 250w limit? To see how hard it is to pedal a heavy bike?

More fun to see what can be done, under a weight limit that's pretty tough, like 70 pounds. What's the best strategy, power up the hills and or deep sand, then pedal the remainder? Or push a moderate 400w the whole way? 70 pound limit would just about prevent carrying 2000wh. So you couldn't just motorcycle the whole way.

I suppose, the point is to prevent hurting the feelings of the pedalers. :roll:

It will still be a fun event though, 5 long distance days is not easy, even with riders swapping out if you choose to do that.

Best approach could be a little currie motor. Torquey little 24v things. I mean the one to the side of the rear wheel, not a hub.
 
Juiced riders ODK has a 48V22Ah battery option, I think Tora said 100 miles, so that's like 160Km on a production bike
 
Sounds like a challenge alright.
As far as I know there is a road along most of the the pipeline and it's pretty flat country.
The biggest problem will be a sore arse. It would be hard work even on a petrol trail bike.
At 20kph it's going to take 9 hours of riding. It's going to be more of an endurance test for the rider than the bike.

I'd be going for the latest lipos and a light weight mountain bike with a front hub motor. Keep things simple for easy repair and a really comfortable seat.

I think the "street legal" requirement will put a lot of people off and the event will miss out on some of the real talent in ebike engineering. Pretty much the guy who can afford the best batteries and bike will win. Not so much an engineering feat as a funding one.
 
Does the event allow you to swap out batteries during the challenge? If so, that could solve the weight issue. - Been back and red the rules, can see this is not an option.

Depending on what vehicle you are thinking of making/taking, could consider any other form of charging to supplement along the way... regen, solar etc. This may help extend range.

Edit* have red about the ride now.

Couldn't see anything there saying you cannot use hydrogen to charge the li ion cell, then use the li ion cell in turn? probably too expensive.

Are you looking to just compete or are you out to win?
Further, do you want to use the things you buy afterwards or are they disposable in light of winning the race?
Whats your budget?

Given you cant use an external source to charge and you can have a team.. surely a team of super fit mountain bike riders (couldn't see a limit on team members) are going to smash an ebike (heavy) over that distance anyway because they won't have the weight and will have fresh legs? It's a long way to cart a dead battery if you don't have a decent way to charge it....
 
Yes. You'll need the highest whr/kg cells that money can buy though.. that would either be turnigy multistars or panasonic/samsung/LG/etc 18650's that hit the 200-250whr/kg range.

http://www.ebikes.ca/tools/simulator.html

Use the ebikes.ca simulator to figure out how many amp hours you need at the speed you'll be traveling at.
 
If you really want to win why bother with re chargeable batteries. Primary batteries are supposed to have higher energy density. You could override the low battery cut out in your controller and squeeze every bit out of them giving you a significant edge. :?
 
YES
is the answer!

Pipeline challenge Trip report brief below. should see some pics up soon www.pipelinechallenge.com.au

I built an 8T MAC 29ER bike used 2 x 18650 Samsung 29E triangle packs at 16.5AH each.
range on speed 1 (32-36km/hr) with as much pedaling as i could manage was 99kms in calm conditions mostly off road gravel/ some sand some hills etc.
and 66km with a monster headwind - on one of the two batteries.
The second battery mounted with tape on a pannier rack was then used for the balance of the distance
(ie save the legs a little or whatever to use up the lot)

Day 1 was 60kms and we flogged both bikes hard (I built the Clean NRG bike with Craig along with mine) riding them like dirtbikes with pedal assist
avg speed was 40km/h (yeah I know we bent the "rules") top speeds 64km/h.

Day 2 turned into ~188kms My bike made it with some grunt left, Clean NRg Bike with ~27AH and 2 riders (vs my 33AH and 1 rider) fell 20km short which was easily pedaled NB ~30kg bike hills SUCK but downhills they roll fast.

day 3 turned into 140kms again attempting to go as hard as possible we used up the grunt faster than we thought with some killer sand sections.
Bikes performed flawlessly but sand = big power and big fun but also = big consumption hence more pedaling to complete

Day 4 my most annoying day as i had to pedal mine ALOT and Clean NRG bike was a DNF due to shitloads of "double G's" which are the meanest thorns of all time punching straight through tyre liners and all.
ME- Continental Travel contact + Slime tubes + stopping and pulling them out as soon as i noticed the "furry" tyres -covered in hundreds of thorns!!!
this i believe saved me as rolling along not hammering them in and or snapping off was an epic win - only one other bike made it through (out of 30 odd bikes)

Day 5 110km some ripper road sections and i can say we never exceeded 25km/h under power however on the downhills we were punching 65km/h +.
some epic off road sections today including a couple of massive climbs in rocks and sand (5-8mins at full power and ~25km/hr at best)
really showed off the MAC motor and for me an 8T in a 29ER is an awesome FAST and powerful combo.
Line honours for me and enough grunt for a full high speed parade lap on the grass which was a heap of fun.

only 3 crashes for me fortunately all at low speed 1 on sand, 1 at very low speed turning on pea gravel (only drawback of the travel contact and not much experience) and one in a river crossing where i was in the wrong gear and couldnt pull my feet out of the cleats fast enough.

HIGHLY recommended ride - apparently tougher than the Gibb River rd ride from folk who had done both.

Expect a few more to start prepping some Ebikes to give us a run for our money.

Incidentally - running a team with non-ebike although a challenge 20mins on and 40mins off = 40mins in an Airconditioned environment vs ebike guy 1hr on the road for me = very sore bum and 600kms in the Sun in 30deg+ = hard work.

If anyone would like to donate to Youth Futures, can do so for another month as i think a chunk of us were well behind our targets.

Karl
 
Congrats on getting through it!
 
Back
Top