Alan B said:
I am just looking over the Prodeco website Rob/Daniel.
I see some very reasonable looking models. I can think of several relatives/friends/ acquaintances who want prebuilt ebikes that these might be suited for. I get a lot of interest in my home made ebikes but most people need something they can buy.
One suggestion - it would be nice to see an off the shelf affordable recumbent e-bike.
On the website - I know some folks think it is a small thing, but I see a lot of errors in the area of electrical units. This really makes the site look less than it could be. I know there is a lot of effort in the site and it really shows, but a little more attention to getting these small details right would improve the professional and quality image of the company and cause less confusion among buyers.
A quick units checklist:
Chargers can be rated in volts and amps. Never amp hours. Time to charge is hours, that is fine. To say a 2 amp charger is "2 amp hours" is meaningless because it depends how long it is charging.
Motors can be rated in volts, amps and watts. Never amp hours or watt hours.
Batteries can be rated in volts, amp hours and watt hours. They can have a maximum amp and watt draw ratings as well. But capacity is not amps or watts. Things like "xx watts of energy stored in the battery" are not right.
A question - On the website some models are quoted as having "free spinning motors". Are these are geared hubmotors with the usual freewheel internal clutch for easy pedaling when the motor is off? These seem to be the 250-300 watt models. The 500 watt models say they are direct drive hubmotors, so that is clear.
Thanks,
PRODECO TECHNOLOGIES RESPONSE: This is Rob Provost, the website was never reviewed by me because we recently hired a new writer to completely re-write the website. They have been studying our company very closely and I will review that wording. You are 100% right that a company is only as strong as the smallest detail and if we are not 100% accurate and consistent, it could look very bad. This week I will however review the website and have each area involving the explanation and details of the electronics to be accurate. I made an error myself just a few days ago leaving hours out a few times when speaking of battery capacity. In regards to motors and watts and studying the consumption on the battery, we formulize using watts hours but we should not state that when specifying the motor. In other words, if the motor is 200 Watts, the nominal consumption is 200W per hour, sort of like a light bulb but we should never include watt hours when describing the motor. Did that make sense? But only using that to figure what your battery capacity will allow for distance. We have tested multiple motors around the world, controllers and various battery types. The numbers always come out the same and the formulas are always the same regardless of the manufacturer as long as everything is specified correctly. There is however loss for efficiences, just not dramatic between brands. What we have noticed over and over throughout the years though is the Manganese and Cobalt cell batteries deteriorate rapidly. A few years ago we used only Lithium Manganese then switched to Lithium cobalt and had constant issues. They would not produce the distance according to capacity after the first 2 months of use. That was why we swicthed to LiFEPO4 and now have no issues. The Managanese and Cobalt if sitting for a long time gave reduced numbers.
If the chargers were listed as Amp hours, that is wrong. I know I previously explained if a charger is charging at 2 Amps, it will give 2 Amps of capacity in 1 hour, which is correct. All energy is calculated by hour. If a battery is 9Ah and the charger is 2 Amps, it will charge the battery in 4.5 hours. It is the way to figure how long it takes to charge a battery and vice versa to how long a battery will last. The writer however should not state the specs of the charger as Amps per hour and only Amps.
In regards to Battery wattage, they have to be listed as battery capacity wattage. That is the only way to list and how batteries are regulated for shipping. It is now a Federal Law all lithium batteries shipping have to have a label with the total wattage capacity which is calculated by multiplying the volts by amps. Federal Express explains it well in their dangerouse goods section. Every lithium battery must be measured by complete capacity and based on this number and how many grams of lithium in the battery decides on the classification of how to ship. You will see more and more batteries have this information on them. Everyone of our batteries states total capacity but not just because we want to, it is required. We had a shipment grounded in Kentucky because it did not list the total capacity on the battery. We also had to have anyone handling the battery which was around 15 people take a training course. On top of that we have to always have 2 certified lithium shippers on the premisis with special training. In regards to battery Amps, yes, there are 2 numbers. An example is the Ah for one of our batteries is 9Ah and at 38.4V it will produce 9 Amps for the hour. If the motor consumers 9 Amps of current at 36V, the battery will die in 1 hour. 9 Amps at 36V is equal to 324 Watts (9 x 324) so the motor is running at 324 Watts and consuming 324 watts per hour. The battery however can handle 3 X the Ah and will output 27 Amps if needed, so the battery has an effective output of 27 Amps if needed. If the controller is 20 Amps, the 27 are not needed and the controller at it's peak will consume max 20 Amps. The battery management board also governs the output of the cells and we limit to 3C and the batteries are also rated at 3C. There is a noticeable difference for example on a 300W geared motor if we switch the 36V 14A controller for 36V 20A. The motor will now peak much higher and the bike performs differently but distance is also diminished. The power comes off the line and not on top end. Since we limit through the hall sensors dirteclty in the motor the RPM of the motor, a higher Amp controller does not affect the top speed unless up against the wind, incline or heavy person where the 14A was not enough and the motor had to peak to a higer wattage to push the rider along.
The website design: This past year as most people can tell, we put little effort and resources into our website and used an outside company. All our resources went to building the bikes. Now that we recently sold part of the company to a VC group, we will be redoing our website once again and bringing in new inhouse talent to do it.
In regards to the recumbent, in our R & D department, one of the guys is exactly doing that for one of the wheel builders. He has a recumbent and wanted it to be electric so they are doing a special outfitting on it. We have done this with many types of bikes including a 7 foot low profile long sloping cruiser.
In regards to the motors free spinning and geared. Most all geared hub motors are free spinning but in 2011 all our bikes had friction drives and no gear motors at all. The friction drive uses 3 wheels similar to gears but friction is caused by the pressure of a steel ring around the wheels. Since there were no gears and the motors spun completely free just like a sealed bearing hub, we called them "free spinning" and the size was much smaller. We discontinue using them this year due to a failure rate of 6%. Through R & D they tested incredible but in real life, the riders who preferred not to pedal along placed strain on them, especially throttling hard off the line while on an incline. They were just not good for throttle bikes and the steel ring would crack. For 2013, we are using this technology again but on a pedal assist only bike which weighs 35lbs. The motor has been enhanced and the controller is inside the motor also so nobody can mess around with trying to over power the motor by using a higher Amp controller. All our 250 - 300 bikes now have geared motors but the gears are 20% larger than specified for almost all other hub motors. We have a ZERO failure rate on the Gears and almost a ZERO on the complete motor. The 500W is direct drive and we have a 1.5% failure rate. All motors have 2 year warranty and we require 3 year from our supplier of the motors. In the industry, most 500W direct drive motors are almost the same, an run in the efficiency of 82-85%. There is a different in construction though and some motor companies have a production line with 1 year warranty motors and another line for 3 year warranty motors. Some companies only produce the 1 year while other companies only prduce the 3 year. There is also a difference in the free spinning characteristics of a geared motor. Some definitley spin much more freely than others and we are very careful about this. For a direct drive motor, due to the magnets placed on the inside of the hub and the stators being the axle, there is no way to have them spin freely and a workout if the battery was to die. On a side note, if a battery was to die on a direct drive motor, if the rider disconnected the motor, the bike pedals much easier since nothing is attache to the motor and drawing power from it. The motor becomes a dynamo when the battery is off and whatever requires power such as the controller, throttle, lights, the motor will start powering it. A perfect example is I myself assisted at the beginning in lacing wheels. If we had a 500W motor on a stand to lace the spokes, the motor would have a somewhat easy spin to it. If we shorted the wires, the motor would be very difficult to spin. By wires, I mean the disconnect wire at the motor. By the way, 4 years ago our company was the originator of the brass pin disconnect at the motor. We were developing a disconnect and shocked nobody in the industry ever thought about a small multipin disconnect at the motor, at least not for hall sensor motors. We decided to use an off the shelf brass 9 pin connector that would handle 25 Amps, only 8 pins were needed but there was no such thing as an 8 pin at the time. The connector had the 3 low gauge wires we also needed along with 6 higher gauge. We displayed it at Interbike in 2009, within 1 year, everybody started copying it and now it has become an industry standard. It use to be a nightmare to change a flat and we were wondering for all those years why was everyone connecting the motor directly to the controller with no disconnect in between for flats or easy motor repairs. That was example of why our theme is "electric bikes that make sense..." and how we say we want to revolutionize the industry.
Thank you for post and comments. I apologize if I wrote so much but as you can tell, I have a lot to say usually. Most people can't keep me quite and I run around here 7 days a week 14 hours a day always talking and I LOVE electric bikes. They are my passion.
