Charging the battery whilst cycling

[leatherman]

I use a road bike for holiday touring and now my knee is playing up I thought of buying an E-bike to give me some assistance. I shall be towing a small trailer to hold the camping equipment and was wondering has anybody any experience with recharging the batteries whilst cycling? most of my touring is throughout the UK and Northern Europe. Generally the distance one can cover with a battery is about 20-25 miles and to even carrying a spare is not sufficient.One can't sit in a café for hours waiting for the recharge as one has to be on the road. Distance covered in a day could be up to 100miles.

 

[Rassy]

No, you can't. Well, technically you could, but it would require even more rigorous pedaling then the help you get by trying to recharge your battery. This subject has been covered numerous times.

Your best bet is to either plan to recharge while stopped where electricity is available, carry more batteries, consider using solar rechargers (not to practical on a two wheel bike, but has been done), or consider using a gas or equivalent fueled generator.

 

[john61ct]

use petrol if you don't want to take long recharging breaks

 

[amberwolf]

I use a road bike for holiday touring and now my knee is playing up I thought of buying an E-bike to give me some assistance. I shall be towing a small trailer to hold the camping equipment and was wondering has anybody any experience with recharging the batteries whilst cycling? most of my touring is throughout the UK and Northern Europe. Generally the distance one can cover with a battery is about 20-25 miles and to even carrying a spare is not sufficient.One can't sit in a café for hours waiting for the recharge as one has to be on the road. Distance covered in a day could be up to 100miles.

Sure, if you don't mind running a gasoline generator on that trailer, you could recharge while cycling, just run the generator the whole time to power the charger, leaving the charger always connected to the battery while you're riding with it, and it will keep charging the whole time.

As long as the charge rate is at least as fast as the discharge rate, it won't run out.

If the charge rate is slower, then there will be a point at which you'll have ot ride without power until it catches up, or swap to a spare battery that's been charging off the generator on it's own separate charger.


You can also look at The Sun Trip bikes and trikes, and see if any of their solar setups were able to do the kind of stuff you're after for the range and time and speeds you want to do. But those depend on enough sunlight at the right time and angle to hit your panel(s) to keep the charge rate up enough to keep going.