European Dealers

Jackolantern

100 µW
Joined
Dec 22, 2012
Messages
9
Hi all,
I have been searching the forum for two days now and reading the existing dealers thread, but it is a bit of a jumble, I am unable to locate dealers in mainland western Europe, specifically the Benelux or Germany. Is this an international forum or are there members that could point me in the right direction? I have purchased a bike, it is a 20" folding one with a 250W rear hub from a company called Yadea , but the battery is toast. I also have about 50 laptop batteries, so I figure I can take the laptop batteries apart, separate out the dead or dying cells and build a new battery. It is just a challenge to find suppliers, I have contacted several bike shops here, but they all say oh no we only deal in parts for one brand and we can only shift boxes, they all have no idea whatsoever how it works, all they can do is sell you their brand and nothing is interchangeable according to them.
Thanks.
 
Jackolantern said:
Hi all,
I have been searching the forum for two days now and reading the existing dealers thread, but it is a bit of a jumble, I am unable to locate dealers in mainland western Europe, specifically the Benelux or Germany. Is this an international forum or are there members that could point me in the right direction? I have purchased a bike, it is a 20" folding one with a 250W rear hub from a company called Yadea , but the battery is toast. I also have about 50 laptop batteries, so I figure I can take the laptop batteries apart, separate out the dead or dying cells and build a new battery. It is just a challenge to find suppliers, I have contacted several bike shops here, but they all say oh no we only deal in parts for one brand and we can only shift boxes, they all have no idea whatsoever how it works, all they can do is sell you their brand and nothing is interchangeable according to them.
Thanks.

There aren't a lot of EU parts suppliers, and those that I've found have been expensive when compared to buying direct from China.

In France there is http://goldenmotor.fr/

In the UK there are: http://www.8funbike.com/store.asp/d=5/c=45 and http://www.alienbikes.co.uk/page5.htm and http://www.cyclotricity.com/electric-bike-kit/

There are a few other EU dealers, I'm sure, but they may be a bit constrained by EU regulations. To be legal within much of the EU a completed electric bike has to be Type Approved to the requirements in EN15194, something that is expensive and difficult to do for a one-off kit or DIY converted ebike. The result is that pretty much all DIY constructed ebikes in Europe may be either illegal or of dubious legality. Some countries just allow this level of law breaking and pretty much ignore it, others are a bit more stringent and may even have laws making it illegal to sell conversion kits that cannot be legally used.
 
Crystalyte Europe is located Belgium I think.

http://shop.crystalyte-europe.com/home.php
 
It's rare for us to get batteries locally. Very often it's a deal with a guy in china, or a china company like hobby king that ships from a more local warehouse.

Are you set on using the original battery box?
 
I have the bike, so it isn't so much motors and conversion kits i need. I need to build the battery out of the scrap laptop parts, so i am looking at a project like this
http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-an-inexpensive-Lithium-Ion-Battery-Pack/

I need bits like battery holders and the circuit boards to charge and maintain the battery. I can solder, even the finest surface mount components if i need to, but where can I get this kind of kit?
 
Jackolantern said:
I have the bike, so it isn't so much motors and conversion kits i need. I need to build the battery out of the scrap laptop parts, so i am looking at a project like this
http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-an-inexpensive-Lithium-Ion-Battery-Pack/

I need bits like battery holders and the circuit boards to charge and maintain the battery. I can solder, even the finest surface mount components if i need to, but where can I get this kind of kit?

There are BMS boards advertised on some of those links above. Not sure what you mean by "battery holder". If it's a battery box to slot on to the bike, then the chances are that you may struggle to get one that will accept the dimensions of a DIY pack. Most of us end up making housings for packs because of this. Scrap laptop batteries are a mixed bag. They are rarely capable of giving a decent discharge rate, so pretty much always have high internal losses, unless you make a large, high capacity, pack. It's a budget way to build if you can get enough laptop packs with decent cells, but it's as much work as making a pack from cordless tool batteries for a far poorer outcome. If you want to go down this route then I suggest looking for old Makita or DeWalt tool packs, there are several threads here describing the use of those cells. They are pretty good cells, generally far better than those in laptops in terms of discharge rate.
 
I mean the plastic holders that i could click the cells into. The balancing and charging boards to charge it safely, and balance it so that it is going to last.

I have hundreds of lithium ion laptop cells, and so far as discharge, well my bike will only be going 25km/h. I don't want to splash out on lipo4 batteries if I have a ton of li-ion ones in the shed. So far as power, i though that the lipo4 was physically larger and heavier with a lower capacity, but a much safer device. The li-ion batteries will combust under many circumstances but the lipo4 ones will not under any condition.

Yes I have been reading the threads about building a battery pack, just looking for places to buy the bits on my side of the pond, i did find the holders, but they ask ten euro for a holder for 4 batteries and if i want to build 10s4p I will be giving out 150 only for the holders after taxes and shipping and i haven't even started on the electronics.
 
If you really want to make your own pack from laptop cells, check out drkangel'a threads on this. Also DrBass for tool packs. I use 6 paralleled Bosch toolpacks on my wifes trike and they have been pretty foolproof even without balancing. These have some of the best cells ever made though, and now are amazingly expensive.
Good luck on your project. Also develop a setup to test those cells before you put them in the pack.
One more thing: Forget about spring battery boxes. They can't take the heat and power required to run an ebike.
otherDoc
 
There is a company in germany: http://www.ebike-solutions.de/de/index
 
Jackolantern said:
I mean the plastic holders that i could click the cells into.
As already said, forget this idea, it will give no end of trouble and isn't practical for the sort of current that an ebike battery has to handle. Either get the cells welded together with nickel tabs (there's a long thread here on a cheap way to do this) or do what many have done and learn to solder them together (needs a bit of practice to avoid damaging the cells, but works OK).

Jackolantern said:
The balancing and charging boards to charge it safely, and balance it so that it is going to last.

There are BMS boards listed on at least one of those links above, as I already mentioned.

Jackolantern said:
I have hundreds of lithium ion laptop cells, and so far as discharge, well my bike will only be going 25km/h. I don't want to splash out on lipo4 batteries if I have a ton of li-ion ones in the shed. So far as power, i though that the lipo4 was physically larger and heavier with a lower capacity, but a much safer device. The li-ion batteries will combust under many circumstances but the lipo4 ones will not under any condition.

Yes I have been reading the threads about building a battery pack, just looking for places to buy the bits on my side of the pond, i did find the holders, but they ask ten euro for a holder for 4 batteries and if i want to build 10s4p I will be giving out 150 only for the holders after taxes and shipping and i haven't even started on the electronics.

Discharge current and range aren't directly linked. Motor torque and discharge current are linked. The primary problem with some laptop cells is that they will not deliver more than around 1 to 1.5C without incurring high internal power loss. Typically laptop 18650 cells will be around 2Ah to 3Ah, so each cell can only reasonably deliver 3 to 4.5A at most. This means that even for a low power ebike, that needs, say, just 15A, then you need at least 4 cells in parallel in each cell group as you're planning, preferably a few more if you want a decent amount of power.

In practice there's very little practical safety difference between any of the current lithium ion cell chemistries. There seem to have been as many instances here of LiFePO4 cell fires as there have of LiCoO2 fires, as far as I can see. In theory LiFePO4 should be slightly safer, but my own view is that most battery fires we've seen here would have happened whatever the cell chemistry, as the cause invariably seems to be poor construction or, more commonly, insufficient care when charging.
 
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