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Very Slow Wind Geared Hub Recommendations

KaiYeena

🧲 New user
Joined
Feb 1, 2026
Messages
4
Location
Sydney, Australia
Hi All, looking for recommendations for a compact and light geared hub motor for a standard MTB dropout 29" rear wheel.

Have a bit of a weird config in mind, for context in the past I had the standard DIY Missile setup of a ~"3kW" (peaked around 7kW) DD hub, 72V 17Ah pack (Molicel P42A's) and big 100A square wave controller. Thing was a missile, sketchy as hell and quite loud, also rode pretty rough as it was a hardtail and the unsprung mass of the huge DD motor made it as smooth as a bag of rocks.

Im in sydney, and my area has a bit of an epidemic of teenagers and kids riding like dickheads on electric fatbikes, surrons, DIY missiles and other things which has brought a lot of public and police attention to eBikes, and i've since analogue'd the bike again (mainly because it didnt ride very well, but also because im an adult with a drivers license and here, the penalty for riding a illegal e-moto is they suspend your license, and I cant risk that).

Sold the motor, however still have the battery, which was quite expensive, and have been looking about converting it again but to a more tame "grandma friendly" setup that will fly under the radar a bit more.

The question then is, can anyone recommend a geared hub that has a very slow wind, or very short gearing, that puts the peak power speed somewhere around the 35-40~kph mark. All of the small geared hubs i've found are clearly designed for smaller wheel, lower voltage systems in mind and when I run the numbers for a 29" wheel at 72, puts the unloaded motor speed like, >80kmh, which if the motor/controller combo is power limited to like 35-40, isnt technically a problem, it'd just behave like a lower voltage pack but without the power loss as the SoC goes down due to the voltage headroom, I just know the switching losses in the controller wouldnt be ideal, and it could probably be more efficient if the speed range of the motor and voltage of the pack were matched better.

The idea for keeping the battery instead of getting a generic 36V downtube pack is to keep the efficiency advantages of the higher pack voltage, also because used it is worth like half what I paid for it and i dont want to sell it at a massive loss only to buy a smaller, worse pack. Also at sensible speeds i'd presumably get amazing range out of it, That is provided I had a motor and controller which could operate efficiently with this setup, which is where I need the help for. Also if anyone has any related controller recommendations i'd appreciate, otherwise probably going to go with a 855/Phaserunner.

Cheers.
 
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Major bummer to hear about the enforcement situation there.

29" makes this pretty hard with a geared hub motor. A mid drive would be easier.

What comes to mind is that bmsbike sells a couple hub motors that are on the slow side ( ~200rpm on 36v )

For example:
Q128H 48V800W Rear Driving EBike Hub Motor RPM 201

These motors have dual reductions and not too good of efficiency. But they have the stealth factor and a pretty low KV.
The dual reductions should help produce ample torque in such a big wheel.
I've yet to see slower wound geared hub motors than these.
 
Major bummer to hear about the enforcement situation there.

29" makes this pretty hard with a geared hub motor. A mid drive would be easier.

What comes to mind is that bmsbike sells a couple hub motors that are on the slow side ( ~200rpm on 36v )

For example:
Q128H 48V800W Rear Driving EBike Hub Motor RPM 201

These motors have dual reductions and not too good of efficiency. But they have the stealth factor and a pretty low KV.
The dual reductions should help produce ample torque in such a big wheel.
I've yet to see slower wound geared hub motors than these.
Awesome, cheers for the recommendation.

Yeah, there was a good period where eBikes were a rare oddity and you could get away with it, but now an electric fatbike or surron is on every teenage boy's christmas list and in the wealthier beach suburbs, they are incredibly common with some schools and local councils even implementing eBike license plates for the kids.

The local facebook pages and newspapers are now 90% bitching about kids on eBikes and the police are starting to crackdown hard.
 
Major bummer to hear about the enforcement situation there.

29" makes this pretty hard with a geared hub motor. A mid drive would be easier.

What comes to mind is that bmsbike sells a couple hub motors that are on the slow side ( ~200rpm on 36v )

For example:
Q128H 48V800W Rear Driving EBike Hub Motor RPM 201

These motors have dual reductions and not too good of efficiency. But they have the stealth factor and a pretty low KV.
The dual reductions should help produce ample torque in such a big wheel.
I've yet to see slower wound geared hub motors than these.
Did some math and @ the max efficiency point of the motor (178rpm), on a 29er is bang on the legal limit of 25kmh which is basically exactly what I want. Assuming the controller losses from running this low duty cycle arent too bad, this is probably exactly what I need, thanks!
 
Did some math and @ the max efficiency point of the motor (178rpm), on a 29er is bang on the legal limit of 25kmh which is basically exactly what I want. Assuming the controller losses from running this low duty cycle arent too bad, this is probably exactly what I need, thanks!
I just did exactly this,
 
Interesting motor, I wonder what's the peak torque and how much motor amps it sustains to produce that torque. I wonder why the industry went for mid drives as opposed to geared hub drives. I'd love to see a modern geared hub with a through axle and 750 nominal 1500w peak power, currently there is no such motor on the market.

Edit: OK, I can see there are some test results and it produces 80~Nm at 24A (Battery). Pretty good, with a better controller with more phase amps and with MTPA it has potential to produce more.
 
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Did some math and @ the max efficiency point of the motor (178rpm), on a 29er is bang on the legal limit of 25kmh which is basically exactly what I want.
I think it's rated 201 rpm at 48V so at 72V the efficiency point will move up.
 
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