I went about 2500 miles on my first 250W build in 9 months , so you can guess how pleased I was because I didn't have too high expectations. I'm studying mech engineering which helped to keep my expectations very low
I spend about 500 bucks on the whole bike with battery and charger. I drove about 20 miles every day and a few trips of about 40 miles with 36V 10ah lipo.
It was the reason why I sold my chinese made 100mpg moped:
and build a RC concept with really completely undersized drive train (ebike2: my another 80-100 rear drive build) in the meantime. I should have build it into the 100cc moped, but it was gone
(which gets 100 miles per gallon in real life use and for which I payed about €400, it ran 60mph but not with 100mpg
. Then the axle of my front driving motor (1st bike) cracked, which was a good thing because I know now that 250Watts at the crank is more than I thought, cause I fitted the motor in my 80-100 meant bike (e-bike number 3):
...which had so many issues that I completely redesigned it. It's still in progress and I hope that I can finalize it next weekend. But this will not be the end. My big future project will now really aim for an offroad bike. It will use a 5-speed gearhub on a jackshaft and I will be able to pedal through all gears. If someone knows the "eRocket", he knows what I aim for. I never fitted any Lipo on any frame. I know now why I never did. All the time and money I spend on my Ideas, I could have had a couple of days on my suzuki motorcycle instead.
but would it really be worth it??
I know that for me, at 4kw and 2kilowatt hours Lipo, the whole e-bike story will end. I'm developing hybrid drives and I know why I do... they also run on natural gas
which is a much better source of energy than any lipo will ever be, if theres's no near grid. It is the most clean fuel to burn, it is most efficient (it's almost even with hydrogen but much better to handle), and you can make it out of wind energy (which is the cheapest and furthest developed energy source humans ever invented) easily. For the US countryside it needs cars that run 200 miles on a charge. To gain this the capacity of batteries still have to double at least. If you commute more than 50 miles per day a lipo powered motorcycle will do the job. For longer distances you will still need your car or a railway system which can carry e-bikes. Trains are so much more efficient than cars. I I can only laugh about the US railway even if the railway system in my country isn't perfect at all. The condition of the railway system for passengers in the US can only be told as third world standard, I already used it myself
Trains are old and slow. If the US wants to get away from their "most polluting nation" condition, they have to think more about new railways tracks and trains. And less about ebikes or electric cars.
OK I just saw that there is no wiki about this so called "wind gas". For making wind gas or solar gas it needs more than just electricity and water. It needs pure CO2. This CO2 must come from industrial processes or something else like rotten plants. In my country we have so much CO2 from our omnivore producing economy that no one will ask where it would come from till it's rare. Sorry for writing OT, but this just had to be explained here.
What I mean is: OK there might be some issues to be solved. But if you go for a front drive 1kw geared system there wont be much of it. So if you only intend to get to work you should go for it. A direct drive does not make sense below 2kw in my opinion, because you can just forget regen, it wont be used enough to be suitable. Only with a 2KW concept the hills that can be climbed are steep enough to talk of "regen" when you drive them down. OK in San Francisco this will be the case
In my home city, the hills are just as steep, but I still drive them down whithout regen, because I try drive through cross streets to use the down-grade.
