| ▲ | bri3d 6 hours ago |
| Friction drive e-bike conversions were popular years ago. They generally: * Wear tires surprisingly quickly * Absolutely suck in any form of weather or terrain condition (dirt, rain, etc.) * Have ~20% less efficiency than any other drive form. But, they are easy, and they do work. |
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| ▲ | molsongolden 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| This bike booster will probably come in at less than half the cost but the Bimotal kit is another option that doesn't have the tire wear issue, offers better performance, and the form factor is much nicer. https://bimotal.com/products/elevate |
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| ▲ | fwipsy 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Wow, $2k? You could get a decent ebike for that money. And the installation doesn't look any easier than a hub motor... Only seems worth it if you already have an extremely nice bike. I think of friction drives as being aimed at budget-conscious commuters, not serious mountain bikers. | | |
| ▲ | selfhoster1312 27 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I was shocked by the price, too. I mean a motor and a battery can't be so expensive, especially such a "small" battery (300Wh). That being said, having driven electric bikes for a while, here in France they're ridiculously limited in speed and power. 25km/h limit on flat land usually makes sense (except on long straight lines), but when you get climbing even slightly you get down to ~10km/h and have to provide more effort. I guess that's where the 750/1250W 70Nm unrestrained motor comes in handy, and if you live in a place with lots of small hills the choice is either that kind of motor or a car, not the 1000€-total Decathlon/Carrefour electric bike. | | |
| ▲ | bramblerose 11 minutes ago | parent [-] | | In my experience the issue is one of torque, not of power. Most cheaper electric bicycles (including most Decathlon models) have a hub-mounted motor which cannot deliver power effectively at low speeds -> it stops assisting when you most need it. For hilly terrain you need a motor that's mounted on the crankshaft so that it can take advantage of the gears. To compare: a tour de france runner outputs 400-500W on mountain climbs while keeping up to 20-25km/h. So a 500W motor (plus 100W power output from yourself) should be enough for smaller climbs! | | |
| ▲ | DonHopkins 4 minutes ago | parent [-] | | My Koga has an Enviolo stepless bicycle automatic transmission, which frees me from thinking about shifting, so I can pay more attention to riding safely and effortlessly. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48761621 DonHopkins 44 days ago | root | parent | prev | next [–] Enviolo stepless bicycle automatic transmission (never manually shift again, accelerate while continuously shifting under load), with a carbon fiber belt drive (maintainance free, silent, never get grease on your pants or hands again), and Bosch Performance Line mid-motor (strong zippy performance from the geniuses who paid a €90 million fine for Dieselgate), plus GPS tracker with "recovery service" (required for insurance). https://enviolo.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQrgKBQrkag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xY2S-9gjHI https://www.koga.com/en/enviolo-gear-hub https://www.koga.com/en/bikes/e-bikes/evia-pro-automatic?fra... It's a dream bike, optimized for comfort and city riding, but Koga is not available in the US, though. Here's an American bike that has similar features (not as nice as the high-end Koga Evia Pro Automatic though), the Harley Davidson Rush/CTY (step through model is easiest to mount/unmount/ride): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SjN8RN9g7Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoX9S5UhETE https://serial1.nl/ The Enviolo Automatic also come in a heavy duty version paired with high performance motors for bakfiets (cargo bikes), for 3-4 children, big dogs, and groceries: https://batavus.com/en-nl/products/fier-3-bbfn3 https://www.dw.com/en/bosch-pays-90-million-euro-fine-over-d... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal Edit: Fair, they're ideal for city bikes, stop-and-go traffic, and the flat Dutch landscape where they're produced, where the biggest "mountains" you encounter are the bridges over canals. Their city model has 310%, trekking 380%, and the new utility hub has 400% gear range, which you can use on a normal bike, bakfiets, or speed pedelec. https://enviolo.com/news/enviolo-launches-the-utility-hub/ |
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| ▲ | flexagoon an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Only seems worth it if you already have an extremely nice bike How nice should one's bike be that you'd rather turn it into a mediocre ebike for the price of buying a good ebike? | |
| ▲ | KennyBlanken 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You can get a nice ebike for that money if you're even slightly patient in waiting for a sale to hit. | |
| ▲ | CitrusFruits an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Bimotal is removable after the installation: the motor and battery can both be taken off in under 30 seconds and you're left with just the cables and a specialized brake disc. I'd say that's its main differentiator. It is definitely more for premium bikes though and even then isn't for everyone. |
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| ▲ | thih9 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Also: * you cannot install them on bikes with a rear rack. Here most city bikes have them. |
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| ▲ | portly an hour ago | parent [-] | | That made me question who this is for. Looks like it's only for racing bikes that have taken off the rear mudguard. And those bikes are typically used to exercise.. Which makes me wonder about the cleaning after it rained.. | | |
| ▲ | KeplerBoy an hour ago | parent [-] | | Nobody who rides a road bike would be seen dead with something like this. There are proper road ebikes for that. |
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| ▲ | ryukoposting 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| And, don't forget: easy to steal off even a well-secured bicycle. |
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| ▲ | Jerry2 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | That's not a problem in Asia. | | |
| ▲ | seanmcdirmid 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Only because there are so many targets to steal from. And by Asia you mean China, where E bikes are rarely very fancy and often the size of a moped (except for the ride shares, which are still bricks and GPS tracked). And judging by the noise level at the hotel I stayed at in Chengdu a couple of weeks ago, they definitely come with theft alarms. | |
| ▲ | wahnfrieden 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Bike theft common in Japan | |
| ▲ | szundi 3 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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| ▲ | calmbonsai 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Yeah. I don’t see weather or theft addressed in this design. I recall a wheel-mounted rotor system from a few years back that did address theft, tire-wear, and weather, but it suffered from far too little torque and very limited battery life. |
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| ▲ | rtkwe 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It looks like their solution is to make it easy enough to install and remove you take it with you. My thought would be security bolts so the pool of thieves is at least limited to people with the right bolt head. Also it has a big battery built in so | | |
| ▲ | SoftTalker 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Thieves will just take the whole bike. | | |
| ▲ | Gigachad 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Tbh solving this is one of the actual use cases for things like flock cameras. Simply bolting things down harder is still defeated by a battery powered grinder. | | |
| ▲ | AngryData 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Theft is solved by making society better, not worse. Make people not want or reliant upon crime to survive. | | |
| ▲ | mik1998 27 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | No one relies on bike theft to "survive". | | |
| ▲ | a2800276 4 minutes ago | parent [-] | | That's right, people steal bikes because they are inherently evil and want to make baby Jesus cry. I think it's ok to define "survive" as an addict who needs (<-also loosely defined) a fix. You don't generally commit serious white collar crime, tax fraud or do crypto grifts to survive. For petty street crime, I don't really see any other motivation. |
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| ▲ | adwn 12 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Theft is solved by making society better, not worse. Phew, good to hear. Here I thought it would be a hard and complex problem, with lots of unknown unknowns, difficult political compromises, a generation-spanning efforts and many potential solutions with uncertain outcomes, partially contradicting each other. Instead, we just have to make society better. So, what's step 1? |
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| ▲ | dreamcompiler 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Cameras don't solve crimes, Flock or otherwise, unless the cops consider the crime serious. It is almost universal that cops don't consider bike theft serious. This is beginning to change in a few cities but not most. | | |
| ▲ | Gigachad 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | From what I can tell, they are mostly fully occupied with dealing with emergency situations and domestic violence calls. There isn’t the resources allocated to searching for bikes. Especially when there often isn’t much to go off. Making the search process easier makes locating stolen stuff becomes more of an office job that’s cheaper to do so the math works out better. |
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| ▲ | jvuygbbkuurx 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's actually solved by putting thieves in prison (by the help of flock cameras). | | |
| ▲ | defrost 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Is it though? Does prison work as a deterrence to others? | | |
| ▲ | blfr 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | There's usually a fairly small number of criminals in the population and they have short careers. Otherwise, the whole enterprise of society wouldn't be viable. So once you take them off the streets for a couple of years, or decades for the more hardened ones, it's fine. It has an added benefit of breaking criminal networks so the future adepts have no place to fence the stolen goods. | | |
| ▲ | simondotau 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | On one hand, you’re breaking existing networks; on the other hand you are establishing a social club for new ones. | | |
| ▲ | KennyBlanken an hour ago | parent [-] | | That person is insanely naive - either very young, or very lacking in life experience and worldly knowledge. |
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| ▲ | KennyBlanken an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | "It has an added benefit of breaking criminal networks so the future adepts have no place to fence the stolen goods" is probably the most naive thing I've ever heard. I also think you have no idea how much it costs per prisoner per year. I also think you have no idea how much harder it is for someone to get a job, housing, a partner, etc after they have a conviction. Or how much whatever life they had falls apart, which includes partners, friends, family. And guess what happens when you strip away all of someone's social connections? They lose that safety net, and are now dependent upon whatever society as whole provides. And in the US we have people saying "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" non-ironically, not realizing the whole fucking point of that phrase is that recovering from poverty in the US is extremely difficult. That money is better spent on helping people who are not able to afford basic necessities, because that is why a lot of people commit property crime. I suggest you actually open up some studies on this subject because you clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Or just open up a chart reflecting the economy over the decades and compare it with property crime rates. The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world by both headcount and percentage of the population. How's that working for us? We have one of the higher property and violent crime rates among developed nations. Far higher than nations where criminals are imprisoned for rehabilitation, not to punish. Things like giving them a cell that looks like a bedroom, not pen in an animal shelter. |
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| ▲ | ajkjk 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The idea is that it lowers the number of thieves. | |
| ▲ | notourproblem 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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| ▲ | wahnfrieden 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Police here don’t even care to help if your car is stolen and you have GPS on it. Cameras and jail do nothing to help protect your property if the police refuse to work. | |
| ▲ | retired 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Where I live that’s a win win for thieves. Earn money stealing a bike, have a roof over your head and free food. | |
| ▲ | KennyBlanken an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Aside from the fact that there's little to no actual evidence (not funded by flock cherry-picking, and doing a lot of extremely thin correlation/causation nonsense... No, it's actually solved by providing social safety net programs and managing the economy to have entry level accessible jobs that pay a living wage. People steal because they run out of other options. The cost of flock contracts would be far better spent on food pantries, job counseling, emergency housing... There is nearly zero correlation between the number of police and the amount of crime. |
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| ▲ | taneq 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You don’t gotta be impossible to steal from, you just gotta be more annoying to steal from than the next guy. | | |
| ▲ | a2800276 a minute ago | parent | next [-] | | Well said by somebody who's very obviously never used a bicycle as their primary mode of transportation ;) | |
| ▲ | Gigachad 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | They will still steal your seat, lights, wheel, and any other bit they can get. Sure you can use all number of locks, security bolts, and stripping the bike down yourself every time you leave it, but it’s sucks. You’d rather public spaces just be safe. | | |
| ▲ | wafflemaker 26 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Just follow the old Eve online adage - don't fly what you can't afford to lose. If there's lot of theft and you can't store bike at a secure place - have a cheap bike. |
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| ▲ | neves 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Can't use with mud guards | | |
| ▲ | runamok 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | These sorts of seat mounted mud guards would work: https://ass-savers.com/ (yes, the URL is funny and seems a risky click) | |
| ▲ | giardini 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | And WTF is it about mud guards now? When i was young all bicycles came with mud guard (then called "fenders") front and rear. Now they seem to be anathema. Every bike I rode w/o fenders put a stripe of mud up my back! | | |
| ▲ | pjmlp 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Being cynical I would say it is yet another way to upsell. Here in Germany if you want to get a cheaper bicycle, other than flea markets, usually they make you mount the pedals yourself, doesn't have fenders, lights might also be missing, depending on the offer. | | |
| ▲ | silversmith 12 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Are you looking at performance road bikes? Fenders and lights are removed for weight savings, and for pedals there are multiple clip-in systems, you are supposed to install the pedals that match your chosen system. If, however, they are doing that for commuter bikes... | | |
| ▲ | pjmlp 3 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Regular city bikes. This is the approach if you go offers on regular supermarkets that also sell bicycles. Personally I am never going to give more than 400 euros tops, for a new bicycle, it is either that or not much beyond 100 euros at a flea market. Getting the bicycle stolen or worse, revenge damage when they fail to steal it, is not worth more than that. |
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| ▲ | Fnoord 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Looks like you can't have a passenger anymore either. I like to have my kid on the backseat of my e-bike. I'm not in the market for this, but I am in the market for making my cargo bike electric. Having to slow down at a traffic light and then start from zero absolutely sucks. It goes very slow, it is rough, and you won't have time. I'd use it just for that specific use-case. |
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| ▲ | Reason077 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Conversion kits that add a front hub motor are relatively affordable and easy to install. Should work with most cargo bikes if you can find one that's compatible with your wheel size. Something like: https://swytchbike.com/ | |
| ▲ | caminante 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Front mount or trailer for kid could work, but this seems inferior to your ebike. |
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| ▲ | 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
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| ▲ | culi 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Personally I also don't see the niche they serve. If I'm going far away I take a train or a car. I pretty much exclusively use my bike to ride to a nearby grocery store or do other close-by errands. If I'm doing short errands like this, I really prize being able to get on and off quickly and lock my bike up quickly. A device like this needs to be taken with you when you leave your bike to prevent theft. It's a whole nother step and a lot of extra weight |
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| ▲ | edmundsauto 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Are you elderly, differently able, live in extremely hilly or hot terrain, or only willing to bike if it’s half the current effort? That plus “already has a bike” is a massive market. | |
| ▲ | garciasn 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | People who already invested in an expensive traditional bike and want to have the option to add electric support to make trips easier and faster without having to deal with selling their current bike and buying an even more expensive e-bike. There’s also the fact that many people have bike racks that are fine for traditional bikes but not the additional requirements necessary for some (most?) e-bikes such as weight and strength. —- Just because it doesn’t work for you and your specific worldview doesn’t mean others wouldn’t see value in it. | |
| ▲ | whycome 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | When I read your comment before the article I thought it was some sort of complicated contraption in multiple parts. Instead it seems pretty compact and easy to disengage. I’m not sure what you’re missing in terms of a niche either. Anyone who just wants to ride with less effort but use their existing bike? |
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| ▲ | MisterTea 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Are there any mechanically coupled solutions that can be field installed by the owner? |
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| ▲ | taneq 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I remember back in the 90s some guys at my school fitted a whipper snipper motor to a 12” kiddy bike with a friction drive (I think it was a skateboard wheel fitted to the output shaft). |
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| ▲ | Lord_Zero 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I had a gas powered goped that worked that way years ago. Had all those problems but it was fun. The second you hit any water the drive shaft would just spin against the tire. |
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| ▲ | tadfisher 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| They could have made basically the same thing except with a sprocket to help drive the chain. |
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| ▲ | ryukoposting 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Chain moves side to side with gear changes, and adding extra chain tension with an extra drive sprocket could make the deraileur angry. Also, chain-tube geometry varies a lot. Not impossible, just more complicated than it might seem. I ride an all-original 1970s steel-frame road bike, which seems like a prime candidate for this sort of product. I'm certain no sprocket-based design would fit it. I'd buy one of these if there was any way to lock it up. |
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| ▲ | StopTencent 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
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