Buster84 said:
Hi,
New to the forum and ebikes. I tried to find information if the 500w TSDZ2-motor with the 850C display can be restricted to a lower power level like 250w? In my country You will need a traffic license for motors over 250w. During my daily commutes more power probably won't be needed.
im not a lawer, but there was some research done by
Rene Kreher in Germany. He has asked the police, his insurrance and the insitution responsible for motor bike street legal testing in germany.
i plan to add a wiki page for this, as it was one of my main concerns. The 250W do not refer to a maximum power limit but to a "duration rated performance" (dont know if it is translated correctly). What it means is that the motor needs to be rated 250W by the ebike manufacturer. the rating is determined under laboratory conditions and leaves a lot room for interpretation to the manufacturer. (something like: average wattage under which the motor does not heat more than 20 degrees in 30 minutes iirc).
The power rating is not only influenced by the motor but also by the battery and controller used, so the 250W power rating does not apply to the engine but to the bike as a whole.
Now here is the funny part: as you are building the bike, you are the manufacturer - which means that you have to specify the duration rated wattage (so putting one of these 250W stickers on you engine cloud be a legit move

). but as you have no laboratory (and i think nobody would expect you to have one) you can only estimate the wattage of your bike.
Main problem is that the laws (and your insurance) do not have extra rules for upgrade kits like the TSDZ2 is. the laws are only made for bikes made by bigger manufacturers. but not having no specific law for upgrade kits does not make them illegal.
It is reported that street legal Bosch Performance Line CX 250W Motors are pumping out peak powers up to 850W. it is also known that the TSDZ2 48V (sold as 500/750W) version cannot run on 750W for extended time without overheating. i guess even running on 400W for 30 minutes would also cause overheating but i do not have it long enough to say for sure.
the street mode currently implements a power
limit of i.e. 250W which should be pretty solid. i think it would be possible to allow Wattages up to the engines full power for short periods like the bosch engines do without making it illegal.
the consensus of research done by Rene Kreher was that all parties do not care much about the manufacturer rated wattage, because it is very flexible (Bosch) and also not possible to test it on street (when the police stops you). when having a crash, it is likely not the reason for it.
Most important is the assisted speed limit of 25km/h and only getting assist while pedaling.
my goal is to have a (optionally) street legal bike in germany. i will patch the firmware so the street mode will make it street legal with as much features enabled as possible. i plan to build a bike for my wife using a TSDZ2 and i do not want her to get into trouble for riding an illegal bike.
im not sure if the street mode throttle flag disables the new virtual throttle. it should do it because a throttle would make your bike illegal.
you should also keep the walk assistant currently disabled because it assists up to 8 km/h. i plan to work on the walk mode and change it to max. 6km/h so it would be street legal.
@casainho would you mind having the walk mode top out at 6km/h? i personally do not walk faster than this. especially as i use the walk mode only uphill.
one thing i would have to think about is the street mode toggle by hotkey. i'm almost sure that no judge would consider an ebike as legal, which you can switch between legal and illegal within 1.5 seconds while riding. so i think about adding an option to disable this hotkey. as manufacturer of the bike, you should have a way to test it off roads. so switching the street mode by the main configuration menu could be fine - also because that is nothing you can do unnoticed while been stopped by the police. this is also how it works on the tsdz2 stock firmware - not saying the Chinese manufacturer complies to any European law.