micromobility - Ebikes, scooters, longboards: Whatever floats your goat, this is micromobility
Ebikes, bicycles, scooters, skateboards, longboards, eboards, motorcycles, skates, unicycles: Whatever floats your goat, this is all things micromobility!
"Transportation using lightweight vehicles such as bicycles or scooters, especially electric ones that may be borrowed as part of a self-service rental program in which people rent vehicles for short-term use within a town or city.
micromobility is seen as a potential solution to moving people more efficiently around cities"
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This is generally not a thing.
Generally no. DIY ebikes from good components are easier to repair but not without spare parts. Good luck with that during an apocalypse. Cheap factory ebikes as well as expensive factory bikes with mid drives aren't repairable. Finding parts is a problem with the former (today, not in an apocalypse), the other can only be repaired by authorised shops due to parts and DRM.
As others mentioned, batteries may not last too long depending on the make and chemistry. A LFP based DIY would likely last the longest. You have to keep a few spares of all parts - controller, motor, computer, and a spare battery.
Regen is a fairly common feature in ebikes. It doesn't work while you ride, other than as a brake going down hills, but as most are hub drive if you lift the rear wheel off the ground you could use the bike as a generator and charge the battery by pedalling.
However, it would in no way be energy (food) efficient compared to just using a bicycle due to the losses, but if you needed it for emergencies or for powering something else, it could be used.
It's not a common feature.
It doesn't make as much sense to do on an bike, mainly because regenerative breaking requires more expensive electronics and stresses the battery more.
My family has 7 ebikes, all different models and none has regen.
It's not common, but it does make sense to do! No, not in charging the battery but in braking. Regen slows down the bike without wearing down your brake pads, which is extra important with a heavy bike. I cannot even manage 900 miles without changing my longtail's pads. I have yet to replace the pads on my regenerating e-trike.
The extra 20% range is nice but I'm more happy about the money and hassle I've saved in not replacing brake pads.
You can't slow down with regen without putting the energy somewhere, and that's the point of brakes, they convert kinetic energy into thermal to slow you down.
The point of regen is to not waste the energy and put most of it back into a battery. At the scale of an ebikes, the additional components electronics, battery thermal management, and so on for regen are more expensive than just adding 20% more battery.
Unless you wanted to make an expensive, super efficient or very light ebike, it just doesn't make sense at the moment.
That will not likely always be true if we ever use different battery chemistry and the cost of regen electronics goes down.
I agree it doesn't make sense to pick regen for extending range. Just buy a bigger battery if that's the biggest issue, say a rarely used bike but long ranged when needed.
To me it's the brake pads that add up. Replacing two pairs of pads every few hundred miles is way more expensive than the system and any additional battery wear. $500 isn't that many sets of pads.
Considering I don't charge my batteries much beyond 80%, yeah, there's plenty of room to put that extra energy early in the ride. I'd rather charge a battery than to grind pads into dust.
Honestly I'd wonder if the wear on brake pads could be cheaper than the additional strain on the battery.
I have 1400 miles on my non-regen bike which has burned through three sets of pads (1.5 mm currently left). I'm slowly trying better/harder pads which won't eat rotors and don't cost as much. $25 every 500-ish miles isn't great (10k miles is $500 in pads) . Suggestions are welcome!
I think a key difference is my neighborhood is quite hilly. I've never smoked and glazed a set of pads before moving in. That was a quick learning experience for me.
Maybe a super cap, to better handle the charge rate?
It also requires special frame dropouts consideration because of the back-and-forth torque. Typically a strong torque arm.
Regen is only really a thing with direct-drive hubs and not even with all of them. Yes you can weld the clutch of a geared hub, but this isn't done in production. Some DIY shops like Grin do it on some motors but that's not a widespread practice. And there's definitely no regen on mid drives. To be clear, I'd absolutely use regen if I had a direct-drive hub, because the controller I use supports it, but yeah, it definitely isn't common.
Grin is co-developing a mid drive regen. It has a neat design.
https://youtu.be/bLu6H-K4L2Y
Not a mid-drive but a geared hub. And yeah, it's a pretty cool design. I'm just worried about cost and water/salt ingress.
Whoops, you're right. I misremembered that for sure.
Totally agreed with the cost. Grin motors are pretty inexpensive, but not many companies have a complete system. Who knows what a licensing agreement would run.
I mean 5 years is longer than the 6 months for gas, so if you have a vehicle that out lasts that I'd love to know it!
Many do charge when peddling, you can google and see many offer that feature.
I design and build DIY ebikes. I'm aware of what common systems are available and I don't know any that is capable of this. The only thing that comes close to this description is regen braking which isn't engaged while pedalling because it creates enough resistance as to make you stop. On a DIY you could theoretically turn regen on while riding at low rate to charge from your legs. Wouldn't be very practical because you can just use the same energy from your legs to ride longer. To be clear, there's no free charging where you just pedal normally and the battery charges. If you engage charging the battery, like turning on regen, it will make pedalling harder. The difficulty will be proportional to the energy you put in with additional 10-20% losses. Say you ride at 15kph, that generally takes about 60W. You know how that feels. If you charge with 60W while going at 15kph, your legs will have to produce about 130W. That'll feel as difficult as riding at 25kph.
It's the apocalypse. There will be plenty of spare parts to scavenge. We live in a world of abundance.
That's exactly why repairing any old Honda or Toyota hatchback will be easier than repairing an e-bike.
Where will you get fuel?
Fair point. And we're back to regular bikes. But I think the fuel supply will still last longer than an e-bike.