Legal/certificated retrofit kit for Europe?

[oriol]

Hi all!

I have been studying how to make an electric conversion street legal in Spain. Every EU country has different regulations; and some are more friendly than others like Germany or the UK. However it seems that in the near future the rules will be standard for all EU countries and conversions will be much more easy.

In my particular case in Spain, although it is allowed to retrofit a motorcycle to electric, there is no availabe certificated kit on the market which makes virtually impossible to transform a motorbike, unless you pay a lab to certificate your transformation kit.

Paying a lab will represent, at least if everything goes smooth, something in between 6000 to 10000E to get the papers.
If there was a kit available on the market the transformation would only cost 300E in paperwork fees which is not much.

Although investing 10000E seems a bit pricey for a single enthusiast, it seems surprising that no electric motor/kit manufacturers has done it yet. I bet that investing in tests/certification would serve for most EU countries and represent a big market for their products.

Spain has recently changed the laws to make retrofit possible and France as well, but still no manufacturer has dare to certify their kits. I have found in Fance a company who does retrofit but only to a few sprecific motorbike models, and probably those kits are not certified for Spain

https://www.noil-motors.com/nos-modeles/

Perhaps I am wrong, If so please let me know if there is any kit supplier/manufacturer who markets certified electric transformation kits out there?

BTW,I did this little beast, see attachments below, which was intended to be a pedal chopper but the frame was two wide for pedals so I transformed it with a junkyard kawasaki wheel. One option was to put a bicycle electric kit with throttle but find out that it was ilegal without pedals. That is when my research about motorcycle retrofit was started...

Thanks,

 

[flippy]

you can buy an existing electric scooter/motorbike. swap over the drivetrain, battery and controller and take the papers of the donor vechicle and use that as your certification. technically you are doing a frame swap. check with the agency what papers they exactly want/need if you replace a frame. you might need to keep parts of an existing frame (the bits with the number on it) to get it passed inspection.
once you have the plates on electric you can change the battery, controller and motor for stuff you actually want.

technically you are doing the same thing as bikers with aftermarket exausts. first you get your plates on the original "silent" exaust and as soon as you have the plate you remove the stock junk for aftermarket stuff so you can annoy the whole town.

 

[oriol]

Hi Flippy!

It is a great idea to get a second hand electric motorbike with papers, and take the electric engine and instal it as a kit on a donor bike frame that I like!

I am waiting for a reply from the certification lab to see what are the requirements for an engine/controller/battery for a donor bike. There is a chance that they admit an electric engine without the need to perform expensive test on it. However the reality is that I can be waiting for years to get a proper reply, It is a burocratic nightmare.

If a LEM engine conversion can cost at least 4000E, without considering the cost of the lab certification. The cost of a second hand/junkyard electric motorbike, or even a brand new engine from a certified motorbike manufacturer (BMW, Kuberg, Volta...), can be lower and skip the need for lab certification.

I will look into that. However no matter what, I have to consult the lab for they approval on certified or non certified parts. This is how it works in Spain, there are only two authorized labs and I can wait for years to get an answer.

I will try to insist but I need to be sure that the transformation will be accepted by the authorities before buying anything.

OTOH the chopper frame has a MTB fork and hand made bikes are only allowed in Spain, for whatever reason, above 45km/h. I do not think they will allow me to ride above that speed with a mtb fork. It would have been great to have used a speed bike kit for that frame.

Anyway, I am working on the chopper frame and I will share some pictures of the build progress.

Thanks!

Oriol

 

[Elektrosherpa]

you can buy an existing electric scooter/motorbike. swap over the drivetrain, battery and controller and take the papers of the donor vechicle and use that as your certification. technically you are doing a frame swap. ...

As "oriol" pointed out correctly ("Every EU country has different regulations; and some are more friendly than others like Germany or the UK."), there is no "European Way" to do this. Well..half way correctly, since the UK isnt in the EU anymore

The rules differ extremely from one country to another.

I can speak about Germany and France from my own experience-between them is a huge difference:
In France, motorbikes do not even have to go to regular technical checks ("controle technique"), but cars and trucks etc. have to.
In Germany, motorbikes are checked every 2 years (same as cars and trucks), and every change, no matter how small, must be approved by a technical test organisation.
In consequence, in Germany a private person would never get a legalization for changing the frame of a motorbike-unless you are ready to pay a lot for technical tests and certificates.
In France, nobody would even notice that you changed the frame because nobody checks it at all...

Another question is what would happen in France in the case of an accident-I dont know if an insurance company might refuse paying for damages if it finds out that such an essential part of the vehicle has been changed-in Germany they would refuse, for sure.

As for Spain, I have no idea how strict are the rules there-but "oriol" should know this himself, being in Spain...

 

[oriol]

Hi Elektrosherpa!

One option to make this street legal, would be to add a sidecar with pedals and a bicycle hub engine on the chopper frame that only works when there is someone pedalling on the sidecar.

I would also like to add a small trailer; if the vehicle is a bicycle it is a much more easy to make the trailer street legal.
Although, strictly speaking, having a sidecar motorbike with a trailer is not illegal in Spain, and probably in many other countries. I have not seen any on the street, which probably tells much about the legal hassle.

This has been a difficult year. I have had very little time for building, but still I have managed to work a bit on the project, which seems like a miracle!

This is a picture of the frame on wheels with a mock up steering arm. I already have the lathe parts done waiting to be weld for the real steering arm. I also mounted two aluminium sheets one to be able to seat on the frame, and the other below intended to carry the batteries.

Cheers,

Oriol

 

[Elektrosherpa]

As for this point:

I have found in Fance a company who does retrofit but only to a few sprecific motorbike models, and probably those kits are not certified for Spain
https://www.noil-motors.com/nos-modeles/

If the Spanish government cares about EU regulations, this should be no problem, since all vehicles in the EU have to get a "COC", which allows the owner to immatricualte them in any other EU-country.
Additionally, any vehicle which is street legal in any of the EU countries can be immatriculated in any other EU country.

If they do like the French government, and give a shit on EU laws, then it is not possible: when I asked the (French) immatriculation office about this law, they told me "go and sue the french goverment if you dont like our rules"

 

[oriol]

Hi there!

Finally I got the control arm mounted!

Now, I am thinking about what is next?

I can ask the authorities to allow me to registrate the bike as a motorbike, even though the front wheel is a MTB wheel, or build a pedal sidecar and power the chopper with a electric bicycle kit, that only works when there is someone pedalling on the sidecar.

So, option A is paying for tests + legal paperwork and a LEM engine, insurance... And option B is making the Chopper a bicycle sidecar, which gives me more freedom to design and experiment for less money.

Both options are cool. The thing is that I am looking forward to build a leaning sidecar, not quite like the one in the picture below but similar. My guess is, that it is probably much more easy to build a sidecar from the legal point of view if the vehicle is a bicycle.

Yesterday I used my first recumbent proto as a mock up to get an idea how it will look like.

Options are limitless, I can build a two wheel recumbent and attach it to the chopper frame, or build a one wheel sidecar similar to a two wheel recumbent frame.

I will put on hold a bit the chopper while I sketch the different options, and give some thought about it. I also have other recumbent projects on stand by, that only require minor fixes.

As how you put it Elektrosherpa,

Sometimes it is very frustrating, when you try to go by the rules. My first builds were gasoline powered minimotos, which were impossible to make street legal. That is why I started building bicycles; by accident. Howewever I do not miss ICE engines at all, and I am happy building and testing the bicycles on the streets around my shop, instead using parking lots on sundays etc.

I guess that with a bit of patience and thinking, I can make the chopper street legal and fun as hell to ride!

Stay well, and thanks for your inputs!

Oriol

 

[oriol]

Hi!

As of today, I have realized that it is not worth to legalize the prototype as motorbike, because even if I change the fork for a motorcycle one, probably the walls of the frame are too thin for a motorbike, the current ones are 1 mm.

OTOH, I am seriously considering about building a motorbike from scratch and make it street legal. The main issue is still finding certified parts. I have contacted a lab, in where they test vehicles for certification approval, asking them; how can I tell if the parts meet the requirements? I guess that as Elektrosherpa told, all the parts have to possess COC/Certify of Conformity. I hope that the engineers from the lab will answer my email, but this seems very hard unless you are a big company.

If I can figure out the legal requirements. I will be able to see, if getting the required parts is within my budget?

Regarding the prototype on the pictures, I have come to the conclusion that it will be cool to build a sidecar for two, or a sidecar on each side with the occupants hand pedalling to power the bicycle. Then I will like to build a swing arm on the chopper and install a Bafang in there to power the motorbike wheel.

Cheers,

Oriol

 

[raedy07]

hi Oriol, i found you by searching for someone who has already done it here in Spain: take a street-legal motorcycle and change petrol-engine for electric motor. with DIY battery. i thought it could make a difference if i don't exceed original power and leave everything else -brakes, wheels, lights etc- unchanged. as i would like it to go at least 80km/h (5kW?) this would rule out d 'yellow plates' but a 125ccm would be right. something like an old YamahaDT. do you have any new knowledge of the process? you doing a prototype must be even more complex?!? somewhere i heard if it's only for personal use then no need for homologation, any facts on this?
i'd even consider d 'yellow plates' if it were much less complicated; as we know they usually go much faster than 45

PS i asked at near ITV station yesterday, they laughed, i was their "1st case", gave me info-paper, but they didn't seem at all informed.