Lightweight e-bikes, capabilities and transport

[Archev]

Here's an idea, that may help your camping and bike transport.

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If you can find a sliding tray that fits in the boot, it would help with loading the bike in. (not upright obviously). But could work as an out side table for you kitchen stuff.
A tent thingy that went over the hatch would extend the car to the rear.

As long as the tray doesn't interfere with your sleeping space, and can be installed without too much hassle.

i had a similar problem with my late wife’s mobility scooter. I dismantled it to four parts to load it but also tried a similar arrangement with two telescopic alloy ramps which was promising. Another idea I investigated was one of the little hydraulic post cranes which were promising but would take up too much room.
This sliding tray idea could possibly be configured to double as the sleeping base.

 

[decrep]

Fixing it could be a problem, you wouldn't want to go drilling into the battery.
It would also fix the height difference between boot and folded seats, you'd need to get the tray over the lip at the rear

 

[Rolfe]

That's a fine contraption for a sizeable van, but I think it's a bridge too far for a hatchback! I think I'll just have to see what can be achieved once I have the bike. (Archie, I have a friend who had the same problem with his wife's mobility scooter. They bought a VW Tiguan, which is big enough to take the scooter without completerly disassembling it.)

 

[DixieTGS]

if you can get the back of the bike in the car, it may be possible to undo the front wheel while it sticks out the back?

An advantage of this method is once the front wheel is off, you may be able to simply roll it fully in on the back wheel which takes all the weight of the battery etc ..... But a back bike rack will almost certainly make it too high to fit through the opening, and even with the seat off it may still be too high.

 

[T1 Terry]

I've watched a number of reviews which include assembly and nobody has mentioned a problem with alignment. One review on the web site said their bike arrived with a slightly bent disc that had to be fixed. The thing about rim brakes is that unless they're fitted with a release mechanism to allow the wheel to be taken out easily, they're another obstacle to getting the wheel off.

The axle doesn't look like anything I'm familiar with on ordinary bikes, although having said that it's been a long time since I disassembled one. It looks like a simple procedure to take that wheel off and on, and the Yorkshire guy's review talked about taking it off to put it in the car, though I'm not sure he actually did that.

There are people talking about carrying the bike up and down stairs, and in the most recent one I watched the guy just lifted the entire thing out of the box to start assembling it, apparently with one hand. So we'll see, I wasn't thinking about putting it in the car when I decided to buy it, but when I watched the assembly video I started to think, why not?

Here's how I carry my pedal cycle at the moment. Admittedly this photo shows the "too easy" configuration, because the front mudguard, the bit that gets in the way, isn't there. (The bike was being taken to the shop to have new mudguards fitted because the front one had irretrievably fallen off.) But I can certainly do it with the mudguard fitted, and did on the way home from this trip too.

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I can't remember the frame size of this bike, could be 19", but I don't think the e-bike is any larger. Could be smaller.

Point is, even in camping mode, the Ikea box is in the footwell and the cool box is on the passenger seat. There is definitely room to put the rest of the stuff (flight bag, air mattress, sleeping bag and so on) around or on top of the bike. It just has to be possible to get the bike out without killing myself.

What about a board, the full width of the opening and length of the available area. Longish flat rollers on the front edge to make it easy to slide in and out.
Slide the board out, attach the bike, slide it back in and put the front wheel on top.
This would double as a flat base to use as the bed, no idea where you put the bike when using it as a bed though :lol:

Or, a fold down bike rake like this https://www.kogan.com/au/buy/fortis...KgFd0-GW_OYvZYh2ZKz1UFoBG5Eg7ACAaAtRyEALw_wcB
Naturally, there is no picture with it folded down I'm guessing you would remove the front wheel and battery to make it lighter to lift onto the rack and be able to fold the rack down to open the tailgate/hatch

T1 Terry

 

[Rolfe]

I don't have a towbar, and I'm trying to avoid having to fit one. The idea of some sort of ramp to get the bike in is worth playing with though. A piece of chipboard or something like that that could be stored in the lower part of the SE's load bed, under the table and chair, might do the job.

As I said earlier, if I was combining a cycle trip with sleeping in the car, the bike would have to live outside during the night. I'm not likely to be camping in places frequented by determined bike thieves. (It has some sort of immobiliser that locks it up if your phone is a certain distance from it, which should deter casual pilfering anyway.)

I was getting slightly cold feet about the range of the bike, because one reviewer only managed about 12 miles out of it! The manufacturer boasts 50 miles, but that is in your dreams as that's on level ground at 32C for crying out loud. I was hoping for maybe 30 miles. Actually I think that's probably feasible. The guy who only got 12 miles weighs a fair bit more than I do, and he did a climb of over a thousand feet while thrashing it on turbo. Somebody else did 32 miles with 2,000 feet of climbing on Dartmoor and still had 1/5 bars left at the end.

There is a range extender battery available which doubles the range (while really spoiling the look of the bike), so that would be an option if I felt unduly constrained. It will be interesting to see how much power it uses when doing my relatively short cycle rides around here, and I can get an idea of how it's shaping up. Also, the cross-Borders drove road practically passes my door and while I have cycled some bits of it I've never tackled it seriously. Could be a very good test which doesn't require getting the bike in the car at all, although maybe not in the weather we're having at the moment.

 

[GaryMG4]

I was getting slightly cold feet about the range of the bike, because one reviewer only managed about 12 miles out of it! The manufacturer boasts 50 miles, but that is in your dreams as that's on level ground at 32C for crying out loud. I was hoping for maybe 30 miles. Actually I think that's probably feasible. The guy who only got 12 miles weighs a fair bit more than I do, and he did a climb of over a thousand feet while thrashing it on turbo. Somebody else did 32 miles with 2,000 feet of climbing on Dartmoor and still had 1/5 bars left at the end.

I tried a Halfords (free trial) ebike for a day a couple of years ago, claimed range was around 50 miles. After playing with turbo mode for a bit, probably less than a mile, I rode it sensibly and got 26 miles out of it, and as its Norfolk I did around 50 ft of climbing!

 

[Rolfe]

It will be interesting to see what I get out of it round here. But there's been so much rain recently I'm likely to be staying on tarmac roads for a while, which is less interesting. I don't know how much range will be taken off by having a dirt track under the wheels.

Full disclosure. This is the trail I have ambitions to go up. My original thought was to walk it, and that's still likely to happen, but it's a question of getting as much assistance as possible. I sometimes get a backache if I walk a lot (though I did a mile of an average gradient of 21% the first time I slept in the car and lived to tell the tale), and although my popliteal tendinitis that was causing me problems going downhill seems to have gone away, this would be a fine time for it to come back. Not.

This is only three miles from where a car would have to be abandoned, but although I could obviously get my normal bike there, the track is so relentlessly uphill from there that I'd probably end up pushing it most of the way anyway. I couldn't see a way to get an e-bike there, but if the one I'm buying will go in the car then it's a runner.

As far as range is concerned, from the car to the top of the pass is only four miles. And a climb of 1,370 feet. I have no idea how a bike's battery would cope with that. It's obviously something that has to be worked up to, and it's not recommended to go there at all between October and April, but ambitious goals and all that.

 

[decrep]

My questions are, does it have regen?

How much do you save by pedaling yourself?

Can it share the load between pedals and motor, or is it just one or the other?

 

[T1 Terry]

My questions are, does it have regen?

How much do you save by pedaling yourself?

Can it share the load between pedals and motor, or is it just one or the other?

Very few of these things have regen, they don't have reverse wired into the controller so there is no way to switch to reverse to create regen ......

As far as the pedal assist, to get approved over this side, you only get assistance based on the effort you put into pedalling, but maybe the TURBO button bypasses that, I'm not sure if that is even available on the Aust versions of E Bikes ...... I know I very quickly found a work around so I could just twist the throttle and go, but I realised that would cost me as far as the distance I got without having to pedal the last bit home ......

T1 Terry

 

[Coulomb]

Very few of these things have regen, they don't have reverse wired into the controller so there is no way to switch to reverse to create regen ......

? You don't need a "reverse gear" for regen. Regen is reverse power flow, not reverse direction of rotation. As long as it's an AC motor, and I imagine most if not all of them would be, then regen comes easy. The problem is perhaps how to allow the rider to control the amount of regen.

 

[T1 Terry]

? You don't need a "reverse gear" for regen. Regen is reverse power flow, not reverse direction of rotation. As long as it's an AC motor, and I imagine most if not all of them would be, then regen comes easy. The problem is perhaps how to allow the rider to control the amount of regen.

Poor wording on my part, I meant, if the controller had a reverse function built in to swap around the 3 phase wiring, the amount of pressure applied to a hydraulic disc brake on the rear wheel would regulate the level of regen with some sort of pressure check valve similar to the Prius braking system, where it all regen until the last few kmh, or if the brakes are applied really hard, then both come into play and you hope you don't get hit from behind .....

T1 Terry

 

[Coulomb]

I meant, if the controller had a reverse function built in to swap around the 3 phase wiring,

No need to do that when you have 6 MOSFETs in a three-phase bridge. And again, swapping two phases would reverse the direction of rotation; you still want to be moving forward, just slower then you are right now.

 

[Rolfe]

My questions are, does it have regen?

How much do you save by pedaling yourself?

Can it share the load between pedals and motor, or is it just one or the other?

So far as I know, e-bikes don't have regen. I did read about why once, but I don't really remember. I think the bottom line is that it doesn't provide significant advantage. Just freewheel down the hills.

You can't ride just on the motor, the motor is a pedal assist. If you stop pedalling, the motor will cut out. The motor will also cut out if you get above 15 mph. You are allowed to ride a bike faster than 15 mph, but you have to be doing it all on your own steam.

I've only ridden an e-bike once, but the sensation was that when you start to pedal everything becomes magically almost effortless. But you still have to pedal.

I've watched some US videos about e-bikes and they are vastly different over there. Most have motors of 500 watts, and 750 watts is recommended for heavy riders. Here, 250 watts is the legal limit. Here, the bikes are not supposed to have throttles, as far as I know. I think it's all about differentiating between bicycles that use bike lanes and may share road space with pedestrians, and electric motorbikes that are treated as motor vehicles with insurance and can't drive in bike lanes. Some of those US things, why not just get a motorbike and be done with it?

Archie, this thing you hired at Aviemore, was it road legal? I can imagine that off-road locations might have things for hire which wouldn't be allowed on the roads but are fine if you're at an adventure park or something like that and the bikes aren't going to leave the venue. So you might get more powerful things there? But of course someone like me, looking for a bike to ride on local roads, needs something UK road legal. (They even put a silly wee bell on the thing, because a recent law mandated that all bicycles should have bells, although the bike has a much more efficient horn.)

 

[decrep]

I'll have to investigate what our laws are here. I'm sure I've seen kids flying around on them without pedalling, but I may be getting confused with scooters. There's one of each zoom past me when I ride to the clubhouse.

 

[Rolfe]

You don't have to pedal if you're going downhill...

Impatient person here. I ordered the bike late on Friday evening and it says, "ships in 2 working days from the UK warehouse". I got an automatic email when I ordered, saying that they will notify me when the bike has been sent. They've had their two working days, and nada.

 

[Archev]

So far as I know, e-bikes don't have regen. I did read about why once, but I don't really remember. I think the bottom line is that it doesn't provide significant advantage. Just freewheel down the hills.

You can't ride just on the motor, the motor is a pedal assist. If you stop pedalling, the motor will cut out. The motor will also cut out if you get above 15 mph. You are allowed to ride a bike faster than 15 mph, but you have to be doing it all on your own steam.

I've only ridden an e-bike once, but the sensation was that when you start to pedal everything becomes magically almost effortless. But you still have to pedal.

I've watched some US videos about e-bikes and they are vastly different over there. Most have motors of 500 watts, and 750 watts is recommended for heavy riders. Here, 250 watts is the legal limit. Here, the bikes are not supposed to have throttles, as far as I know. I think it's all about differentiating between bicycles that use bike lanes and may share road space with pedestrians, and electric motorbikes that are treated as motor vehicles with insurance and can't drive in bike lanes. Some of those US things, why not just get a motorbike and be done with it?

Archie, this thing you hired at Aviemore, was it road legal? I can imagine that off-road locations might have things for hire which wouldn't be allowed on the roads but are fine if you're at an adventure park or something like that and the bikes aren't going to leave the venue. So you might get more powerful things there? But of course someone like me, looking for a bike to ride on local roads, needs something UK road legal. (They even put a silly wee bell on the thing, because a recent law mandated that all bicycles should have bells, although the bike has a much more efficient horn.)

The bike I hired in Aviemore was fully road legal and massively capable on or off road. The power only came in (in glorious spadefuls) when pedalling. There was no “throttle” as that’s illegal here on public roads.
My own wee folding machine does have a twist grip and will take away from standstill using it without pedalling. I bought it second hand so I’m not too sure if it’s 100% road legal here but I think it was brought in from abroad.
I don’t think regen is available on bikes.

 

[Archev]

The bike I hired in Aviemore was fully road legal and massively capable on or off road. The power only came in (in glorious spadefuls) when pedalling. There was no “throttle” as that’s illegal here on public roads.
My own wee folding machine does have a twist grip and will take away from standstill using it without pedalling. I bought it second hand so I’m not too sure if it’s 100% road legal here but I think it was brought in from abroad.
I don’t think regen is available on bikes.

Speaking of Aviemore, the forecast is looking reasonable for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday so the snail might venture forth once more.
If I do I promise to try to post any resultant story in the “roof tent” thread ??

 

[Rolfe]

I am hoping to have a bike to play with by then. And have you seen the night-time temperatures?

ETA: actually, I see it's only Sunday night that's forecast to be cold, so you should be OK. Something wrong with the BBC weather forecast at the moment though. It's telling me we currently have hurricane force winds from the north-east of 6,278 mph!

 

[Archev]

I am hoping to have a bike to play with by then. And have you seen the night-time temperatures?

Happy cycling hopefully.
Yeah Cool ? but some folks are cooler - my Kiwi niece is in Namche bazaar prepping for her ~week long trek in to Everest base camp.