How E-Bikes Work

Electric bikes aren't a new idea. How do they work? Scott Benjamin joins the show to talk about e-bike tech.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Get in touch with technology with text Stuff from dot Com.
Hey there, and welcome to Text Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland
and I'm joined once again by my esteemed colleague Scott Benjamin. Oh,
thank you very much. I appreciate he've asked me back
a few times. I know I keep doing it because

(00:24):
you keep saying yes. I appreciate the invites. This is
always a fun one to do, and it's uh, it's great,
you know. I always like to have him on. Usually
we have Scott on to talk about things that have
to do with cars, because that's the world that's Scots
quite familiar with. He's and I mean, I don't even
know how many episodes Car Stuff is up to now,
but it's got to be in the hundreds and hundreds.

(00:45):
It's like six fifty or so. Yeah, So you guys
are you know, you've been around for a while and
you've talked a lot about cars. But this time I
thought we'd talked about something a little different. We're gonna
talk about E Mike's which, as you mentioned before we
started recording. Uh, the E stands for the sound you
make when you're writing it. That's if you're going downhill,
really fast. I guess I often follow that up with

(01:09):
a series of other sounds, some of which make words
that I can't say on this podcast. But we were
talking about electric bicycles, various types of electric bicycles and
kind of some of their counterparts that are similar to them.
And you might have seen stuff about e bikes recently. Uh,
there's been a couple of products that have been coming

(01:31):
out of the prototype stage that have made it something
that is more accessible to the general public. Before, I
would say there were it was like a very niche audience,
like bicycle enthusiasts and uh, some do it yourselfers who
really were into this. But now we're actually seeing it
where people who are living in maybe city environments can

(01:54):
get hold of these, especially if they're trying to transition
from car ownership to something else. I mean, you've probably
heard the story about millennials not flocking to car ownership
the way previous generations have. In fact, we talked about
that a couple of times in previous episodes. So bicycles
are becoming more and more important in the United States.

(02:16):
They've been important in other parts of the world for ages,
and electric bikes are becoming a big part of that.
But here's the interesting thing. A long way to go
for this, But they're not a new idea, no, no, no,
they're far from a new idea. In fact, this goes
back oh what a hundred and twenty some years now,
I say, what, Yeah, a long long time ago. So

(02:38):
went back to uh, I want to say, it's in
the late eighteen hundreds, right, right, Um, I think my
notes say the mid to late eighteen nineties. But the
first one that I've actually got an account for, you know,
the actual the date that was given, it's right around
and it had a double electric motor design. Now there
may have been one prior to that, I'm not sure,

(02:59):
but actually had two electric motors. And we've talked about
the complexity of a two motor design earlier. Today it
seems like it would be an impossible thing to do,
really nearly impossible. At least, it would seem impractically. Oh
that's it. Maybe not impossible, but impractical, that's a better
way to say it. Because we talked about the pros
and cons of different types and how they work and
and the characteristics of each one, and what you would

(03:19):
have to do to pair two of them together. To
make them work in tandem. Yeah, what happens if you
cut the power to one and you forget to cut
the power to the other, and then next thing you know,
you're doing flips. Well, I have a feeling in it
wasn't quite as complex as we're making it out to be.
It's probably a lot simpler. But then in uh In,
just one year later, there was a drive belt design
that came around, which is, yeah, it is kind of

(03:41):
cool because that's different than what we're seeing today, which
you might think you're seeing that today, but you're seeing
probably a version of a moped really or something like that,
which we'll talk about the difference of that too. And
then in this is one that I really wanted to
talk about just for a second, there was a patent,
you know, pulled for a frick in roller wheel design,
which is really unusual, and this is one that we

(04:03):
haven't seen maybe ever on a bicycle recently. Can I
like a guess on what this is? Sure, because I
I haven't read the patent, so why would guesses? This
means that there would be an electric motor that would
turn a small wheel that is actually right up against
one of the primary wheels. In the bicycle, and the

(04:23):
rotation of the small wheel is translated into the rotation
of the larger wheel. That's exactly right. Now. It seems
very inefficient, isn't it to do it that way? It
was it was mounted, I guess, would be behind the
rider's seat above the wheel, and it would it would
the pressure was a downward force on the wheel, on
the surface of the wheel where it would contact the road,

(04:44):
and that translated to as you said, the you know,
the drive the actual drive wheel, which to me, that
would be not just inefficient because obviously the smaller wheel
is gonna have to rotate many, many, many more times
faster than the large wheel, right, but also it means
adding more aar and tear on that particular wheel of
your bike. You're exactly right, And it just seems like

(05:05):
it seems like a difficult design to make work. But
I just wanted to tell you that, you know, even
prior to nine, people are really thinking about this. They're really,
you know, considering the idea that an electric bike is
something that is necessary to get around town. And quite honestly,
you know, where did they have It's not like they
were in a crowd of city at that point, probably
it's not likely. Uh they might have been, but um

(05:25):
it would it would be more for you know, like
a country ride or something like that that they would
use it for, right, I would imagine. So, I mean,
unless you're talking about you know, your your when you
see the rise of the city's really because the rise
of the automobile. You see the rise of automobile, which
gave rise to two cities getting larger and larger and
more sprawl. Perhaps you could argue that the bike would

(05:47):
have been useful for someone who cannot afford a full
automobile but still needs to make a commute. But we
often here in the United States in particular, we have
often thought about bicycles as recreational devices. Right, this is
the thing that we use. You want to go out
and get some exercise, you want the fresh air, you
want a nice relaxing ride. And uh, in fact, when

(06:09):
we were first talking about doing this topic, it was
only when we started talking about the possibility of using
a bike in instead of a car or taking public
transportation in order to get around regularly. That's something like
an electric bike really started to make sense because otherwise
you kind of want that that exertion, that's part of
the experience. Let me let me just for one second

(06:30):
go back and kind of defend my my my country
ride example, because the lay that I I picture UM
cities right around the turn of the century, you know,
the turn of the nineteenth century, is that they were
they were crowded with cars which were relatively new at
the time, brand new at the time, UM, carriages, lots
of horses, lots of people walking. But I don't necessarily

(06:51):
think of seeing a lot of a lot of bicycles
in city environments. That's from from photos of that day,
of that era or depictions of it, you know, whether
it be wrongs or whatever. You don't see a lot
of bicycle riders. However, today in crowded cities, you do
see a lot of bicycle riders. I mean that's that
and especially in places like China where it's extremely crowded
and you know, maybe not everybody can afford a motorcycle,

(07:13):
right or or a big scooter um or definitely not
a car. Bicycle is a good option, but as you said, UM,
they're not necessarily in it for you know, exercise or
to get out and you know, to get the get
the heart pumping or whatever, especially in places where pollution
might be so bad that you don't necessarily want to
be breathing. R Now, this is just like an inexpensive

(07:33):
method of transportation, way to commute and uh and also
you know, to take up as little space as possible
when you're not using that thing, right, Yeah, So now
we're starting to see this grow in popularity here in
the United States, like I said, in some parts of
the world, and in parts of Europe. That's all. It's
been popular for years and in fact, electric bikes have
been around for quite some time in in both Europe

(07:55):
and the United States as well as Asia. But these
are uh, you know, we've seen a lot of development
over the last i'd say a couple of decades. We've
seen really some some interesting development to the point where
it's become uh, something that the average consumer can can
be aware of, as opposed to you know, the bike enthusiasts.

(08:15):
Part of that is battery technology. I mean, I don't
know if I'm jumping ahead of you here, but but
part of that is battery technology because lead acid batteries,
that's the kind of battery that you typically find in
an automobile, a typical one, not not one of the
newer ones. But um, they're big, they're heavy, they're bulky.
I mean, it's just it's difficult to carry that kind
of weight around on a bike. You're trying to remain

(08:35):
as light as possible with this type of setup, as
we'll talk about in a moment. But um, you know,
with some of the newer battery technology, like lithium ion
batteries or even you know, some of the nickel cadmium
batteries from you know, or nickel metal hydride batteries, or
or even the seal some of these, I guess, the
sealed lead acid batteries. Some of them are small enough
that couldn't you know, you could potentially use them. But

(08:57):
the lead acid batteries tend to be a lot heavier
than the batteries. Yeah. The other thing that uh, you know,
those batteries have been a challenge, not just from a
science perspective, but also safety obviously lithium ion in particular.
You know, you don't you want to be really uh
you don't you don't want to overheat your lithium ion batteries. Well,
and it's not a great idea to also be biking

(09:18):
around with a box of sulfuric acid. Yeah, that's that's
what it is. Yeah, that's that can be a bit
of a that could be a bit of a drag
if things go wrong. But yeah, yeah, I mean, like
I think of here in here, in Atlanta, for example,
things can get pretty hot. So imagine that you have
a really hot day and you're taking your electric bike
for a ride, and you've got your battery or lithium

(09:39):
ion battery, and you're you know, you have to hit
dead Man's Hill, It's the craziest hill in Atlanta, which
I just made up, and uh you, so you kicked
the bike into full gear to try and help you
as much as it can to get up there. I
can imagine that lithium ion battery getting really kind of
deteriorating rapidly due to we're operating at such a high temperature.

(10:02):
The heat is the worst enemy of batteries. I mean,
I know that they die often in cold weather, but
heat is where the real damage occurs. And then you
don't realize it until it's cold and all those chemical
reactions are slowing down, and that's when you really feel
that you feel the pain from you know, the damage
that was done in the summer months. Now. Of course,
the nice thing is that most of the systems we're

(10:23):
talking about, in fact, all the ones I'm familiar with,
have replaceable batteries. So worst case scenario as you swap
out a dead battery for a new one, obviously you
want to preserve the life of your batteries as long
as possible for multiple reasons. Financial would be a big one,
but also just you know, it's more environmentally friendly to
go easy on your battery so that you don't have

(10:45):
to have I don't have to worry about, well, how
do I dispose of this thing now that potentially has
toxic materials in it. But let's be honest, the financial
reason is the big one. That's the big one. I mean,
it is the big one. I mean. Another thing we
need to point out is electric bikes can be pretty expensive.
Even the conversion kits where you can turn your existing
bike into electric bike, some of those can be some

(11:06):
of those can dwarf the price of your original bike. Absolutely.
I've seen kids just conversion kits that that range anywhere
from you know, I think it was about seven seventy
five dollars up to two thousand dollars where you're not
getting an entire bike, you're getting the kit to make
your existing bike into an e bike. And and of
course the two thousand dollar kit comes with everything you

(11:27):
would ever want, all the sensors. The seven D and
seventy five dollar kit doesn't even have a battery with it,
and I think there's no controller. I mean, it's just
it's it's a very basic, basic kit where you're gonna
have to add parts to it in order to make
that even work. So it can be expensive, but maybe
maybe it's better just to buy a bike right from
the manufacturer. Yeah, yeah, there there are choices, right, I mean,

(11:48):
you can get a bike that is designed as an
electric bike from the beginning, and it's got the systems
all integrated into it already, so it's going to Those
are gonna look the nicest. Obviously, they're to cost a lot.
You're gonna cost a lot if you convert a bike, then,
depending upon the conversion kit you have, if it's one
of those where it's a real D I O Y
kind of approach, it'll work, but it'll probably also look

(12:10):
kind of weird because the bike that you have was
not originally intended to be an electric bike. You had
to add all these different components on it. You have
to put a battery pack somewhere on that thing, and
sometimes that means that you have a big bulky section
of the middle of the bike. But there are other
types of electric bike converter kits as well that um
incorporate all the elements into the hub of either the

(12:33):
front wheel or the rear wheel. Those are kind of cool. Now,
it does mean that the hub of that tire is
going to look enormous compared to a normal bicycle tire.
But but all the other elements are hidden away, right.
You don't have, uh, you know, and there're only a
couple of examples of this, but you don't have like
a big external battery pack that's hanging off one of

(12:54):
the bars of your bicycle unless unless you go back
to one of those kids like we talked about. You
know that you do have a big canvas bag that
has a battery attached to it, and that's a speed
controller and all the other electronics to go along with this.
And you know, I mean that stuff is gonna be
zip tied to the frame of your bike. I mean,
it's not it's going to look like it's a kid
that you added onto your bike. It's not going to

(13:14):
be as as buttoned up as the as the bike
that would come from the manufacturer. Look because they you know,
they drill holes in the frame and they feed the
wire through there and it only exits where it needs to.
It's very uh, it's very minimally obtrusive, I guess on
the on the design of the bike. Yeah, as opposed
to have zip ties every couple of inches, everything in place,
and there's still kind of is that element of these

(13:36):
even even with the manufacturer built ones, you know, the
ones that come from the factory, you know where I
don't know how many they build a day, maybe, you know,
it depends on the place, I guess, but it would
I would think it's very few because these are hand
assembled of course. Um, but yeah, they're they're pretty well
buttoned up, but they still have a little bit of
that you know, uh, a little bit of that look
like it was kind of made it a workbench a

(13:58):
little bit, but in a good way, like of in
that that you know, again like that d I Y
sort of approach. And they're getting better and better. Yeah,
and so I guess it's good to talk about, you know,
the different types of electric bikes as well as to
compare them against other powered bicycles. So the powered bicycle
I always thought of when I was growing up, it

(14:19):
was not electric at all. It was it was gas powered.
The motorized bicycle, the moped moped. Yeah, so you've got
the motorized and pedal PD the moped or velociped. Some
people say that's from the old term for bicycle velocopied,
which dates to even earlier in the uh you know,
the the nineteenth century. Uh that was my favorite arcade

(14:41):
game philosophy. Yeah, where you had to, you know, to
shoot the little Penny Farthings as they came down the screen. Um. Yeah.
The the moped is similar in many ways to electric bicycles,
except of course it's not running on electricity. It's got
an actual motor engine and I should sea tiny gasoline engine. Yeah, yeah,

(15:02):
that's right. And that's what I tend to think of
two when I think of of a a pedal assisted
powered vehicle and I think of that, that's that's the
one I go to. Is like that old moped design
where you see you would see somebody pedaling like crazy
to either get it moving or more typically, you would
just see the pedals, you know, remaining where they are.
People would have their feet on the pedals, but it
would be all you know, gasoline power that they're using.

(15:24):
They're using just the engine to propel themselves forward. Yeah,
they've got a throttle control, and the throttle control provides
the power which drives the drive train and you don't
have to do any pedaling at all to keep it going.
It was very rare to see somebody actually pedaling a
moped to the point now where the term moped, by
at least some people is used as a generic term

(15:45):
for any non motorcycle motorized two wheel vehicle. Okay, this
is where we had a little discussion about this at
our desks earlier, because we sitting next to each other
in the office and we were kind of throwing this
back and forth a little bit like, Okay, if if
this is a moped, what what is a scooter? And
then how do you differentiate between that and a motorcycle?
And you know, there's there's traditional ways to do that

(16:06):
by engine size. You can you can say that you know,
a moped is between forty nine ccs and all the
way up to ccs. But now I think that there's
some what they call, I want to say, they're called
like maxi scooters that are bigger than that. They're capable
of going faster, but they're still considered a scooter. But
they're allowed on roads but not on highways. And you
do sit with your feet forward, you know, on a

(16:27):
platform in front of the chair, so there's like a
pass through between the handlebars and where you sit. You're
not on you don't have your feet on pedals in
or pegs as you would on a motorcycle. It's on
like a little just its own little platform. But some
of those maxi scooters are capable of you know, eighty
miles per hour, seventy five miles per or something like that. Um,
that's not the typical scooter that I think of. I

(16:47):
think of the old vespas, you know, which we're you know,
the older ones, which are creeping along at about thirty
miles per hour max. But they did have that traditional
seating position where you can you can picture that right
with the platform in front, where your your feet are
side by side in front of you, And that's what
I think of. They didn't have a pedal mechanism at
all like a moped does. So that to me was
the break between scooters and mopeds. But now I guess

(17:11):
there's a blurred line between what's a moped and what's
a scooter. Yeah, I think it's just. I think it's
just in the use of the term being very casual
about it, right, I don't think it's I think if
you were to nail someone down and say no, let's
let's get to the technical uh distinction between these, they
would agree. But I think casually people refer to practically

(17:32):
anything that doesn't look like a motorcycle as a moped
or a scooter, one or the other, And honestly, it
really doesn't matter. We're just trying to to segment these
different things into and just find a way to discuss
them where everybody can picture the same thing. Now. The
interesting thing also about mopeds to me is that some
of them are designed so that, yeah, you could pedal
and propel them just under pedal power if you needed to,

(17:54):
like if the engine died or ran all gas. Uh,
It's not easy to do. This is a very heavy vehicle.
Sometimes it looks like you're peddaling like crazy and you're
not really getting anywhere some of them. Really, the pedals
were more about getting the engine started right, so it
wasn't about providing any form of propulsion. It was just
about getting the engine to the point where you could

(18:16):
get the ignition going and take off. So uh, that
kind of separates it from electric electric bikes in another way.
So you've got two big separations. One you're not using
gas with electric bikes. But the other is that with
a true E bike, you are supposed to be able
to pedal and power the bike, or you use some

(18:39):
form of pedal assists. That's where you get the ped
alex type of bikes, So that's that's often what they're called,
where they are providing some of the power to turn
the wheel of the bicycle so that it offsets some
of the force needed. And then you have power on
demand electric bicycles where the electric motor is providing all

(19:02):
the power you need to propel the bike forward, and
you can you can cut the motor off and then
continue to pedal, or if you just want to have
a real easy ride of it, you just power the
throttle and that gives the electric motor the power to
push the bike forward. On, so it's you're using it
as if it was a scooter, not a bicycle at all.

(19:24):
For the power on demand systems, okay, and the pedal
X when you mentioned that, I think people might be
confused by the term, But that's a combination of three words.
It's pedal electric cycle and it's pedal X. It's spelled
a little weird, but PEDALEX. I've also heard elect peds
simply to say that it's similar to mo peds, so
instead of motor pedals, you want to think of it
that way, it's electric pedals. But pedal X is definitely

(19:47):
the more common of the two that I've seen, and
you know, these are these are pretty popular I think
in Uma, as we said, in cities, you know, the
pedal X systems are the ones that we see a
lot of because those are the ones that if you're pedaling,
you get like A watched a few videos of these recently.
That's why I'm kind of familiar with what's going on here.
But when you when you get on them and you're pedaling,
it's like you're feeling something that's pushing you, but it's

(20:09):
like it's pushing you along because these are rear wheel
design things. Mostly. I mean, we've seen them on the
front wheels, but that's more unusual. Usually they're on the
back wheel, so it's pushing you along. And a lot
of times when you watch these videos of people who
are reviewing them or testing them or trying them for
the first time, you know, never tried an ebike before,
this pedal assist type system. When they get on them

(20:29):
and they start riding, they start to giggle. You know,
it's like they're laughing because they're they're barely pedaling, but
their cruising along as if they were really really pumping
the pedals really fast, and you're passing every other bike
on the bike path. Um, you know, top speed vary
between you know, different models, but you're going move along
at a pretty good rate, a pretty rapid rate for
the limited amount of pedaling that you're doing. And that's

(20:51):
really the benefit of these pedal lex systems. That and
you know, let's say you're riding into a headwind, are
you're riding up a hill, which would be you know,
pretty important here in Atlanta because it's not a flat
city by any means, um, So that would be helpful.
But the pedal systems can be used by law enforcement.
You know, if they're on bikes, it's a great thing
because it gives them kind of an edge, I guess

(21:13):
if they're trying to I don't know, catch up to
somebody who's on another bike. Um, it assists them in
in you know, just having to do less work to
get speech exactly exactly right. And there's a lot of
different variety of different types of gearings and things that
you can get with the different types of motors as well,
so they have their own purpose. Like if you want

(21:35):
one to go fast, you get this type of of motor.
If you want one that's gonna pull a lot of weight,
let's say that you're carrying a trailer, small trailer behind
your bike. Cargo bikes, Yeah, cargo bikes. That's I'm glad
you said that because I have written down somewhere that
I wanted to talk about that. Uh, there's a different
type of motor than the ones we've been kind of
focusing on mostly it's it's a geared motor that would

(21:56):
be more efficient for happy loads like that if you're
pulling a trailer, if you've got a cargo bike like
you said, or if you're a bigger writer, you know
somebody who's who's a little heavier on the heavier side,
a geared motor might be the one that you want. Yeah,
mid drive motors are also really good about pulling a
lot of weight or kicking into two gear for something

(22:17):
like a real steep climb. So let's say that you
live in San Francisco and you've decided that you want
to bike to work because you're crazy. Uh, then you
may want something like a mid drive electric bicycle because
it's going to give you a lot more when you
start hitting those really steep hills, those really tall steep hills.

(22:38):
I mean they're not just steep, they go on forever.
So you need that kind of kind of ruty for sure.
When I went to the San Francisco this is a
long time ago, maybe fifteen years ago, I had a
friend who, you know, I graduated with this this person,
and he was now working out there with his wife,
and I was in town and I had never been
there before. Was my first time there, and they decided

(22:58):
that the way we're gonna get around on was on bicycles.
So this friend doesn't like you. I don't know what
was going on, but I was just huffing and puffing
the whole time, and would have to occasionally get off
and walk my bike up the hill. And as it's crazy,
well as would they, and you know, they were even
accustomed to it. You know, they've been doing this for
a year or two years at that point, so they
were in a little better shape than then. I wasn't

(23:20):
that bike. And honestly, even you know, back I lived
in Michigan the time. Even there, I wasn't necessarily biking
all the time, so it wasn't really my thing. But
you know, then we're in the you know, these extremely
hilly areas. Try we we rode up to the middle
of the Golden Gate Bridge and you don't realize until
you're on that bridge that to the midway point is uphill. Yeah, exactly.

(23:40):
Coming back was fine, unbelievable. I couldn't. I just could
not keep up with that treacherous place to ride a bike.
And that that's the sort of thing like that. These
bikes are really good to help for folks who want
to uh use a bike more frequently, but they might
encounter these issues or maybe for example, you know, one
of the little behind the Curtain the episode we're recording

(24:02):
right now, you guys, is the very last full episode
of any podcast in How Stuff Works. To use the studio, Yeah,
this building, Yeah, this studio that we are recording and
right now is going to be broken down as soon
as we're done, and then moved across town. Now, when
we go to that new place across town, it's closer

(24:25):
to where I live. And I'm thinking about biking to
work whenever the occasion merits it. That's fantastic, idea, fantastic.
I also am really thinking about getting an e bike system,
a pedal pedal a system to help me if because
I don't want to have the experience of biking to
work and arriving at work looking like I just biked

(24:46):
to work in Atlanta, especially in the summer. Yeah, I understand,
But see, you want a little bit of exercise at
the same time, right, and it's going to there's gonna
be hills in between you and the office and I'll
pill both ways, I'm sure. And uh, the you know,
humidity ranging in the area. You know, you can't get
around the sweating. So yeah, and we're talking about several miles.

(25:07):
It's not it's not like it's around the corner or
anything like that. So it's a good twenty five minute
ride from my house. Okay, so that's a that's a
reasonable distance. I can completely understand why you would want
something like this now. Now me, I'm not a bike
rider to begin with. Um, I have one. It's collecting
dust in the basement. I think, I think I still
have it after the last move. I don't even know.
But it's it's just not my thing. I mean, I

(25:30):
don't live in town, so I don't really have a
use to just quickly grab a vehicle and get somewhere,
you know, five blocks away or whatever. But that would
be a perfect use for somebody, you know, if if
they did have a need like that or like you say,
to get to work, you know, on days when it's
sunny and uh and humid, when you don't necessarily want
to uh to you know, fully exert yourself get in
there as well. And uh. We could also differentiate really

(25:53):
quickly between electric bikes and electric motorcycles. There are electric motorcycles. Yeah,
Harley Davidson is touring around with one, showing it off
the kind of a prototype electric motorcycle. Yeah, that's is
that the that's live wire is in it. I think
it's so it's it's very quiet. You know what, I
have done a podcast about this. I should remember the name,

(26:14):
but I believe it's the Harley Davidson Live Wire. It's
it was the concept. They did a tour around the
nation and they were allowing people to test drive that vehicle,
and people who drove it really or wrote it, I guess,
really really liked it. And the difference between an electric
motorcycle versus an electric bike is that an electric bike
has pedals that you can pedal and you operate under

(26:35):
manual power, whereas electric motorcycle does not. That's the main desert,
and it's extremely powerful. It's as just as powerful as
a Harley Davidson motorcycle would be, only an electric form.
So you know, all the all the other stuff that
goes along with motorcycle ownerships still apply, and and a
lot of the considerations that you would have to have
for a bicycle are no longer part of the thought process, right,

(26:55):
You don't need to have You don't need to sit
there and say, well, we can't put a motor on
that's X powerful because that it adds so much weight
to the bicycle that a bicyclist isn't going to be
able to use it. With a motorcycle, you don't have
to worry about that as much. Now. You just worry
about how fast that things canna go. Yeah, right, So
let's talk about some of these motors. Some of the ones. Now,
keep in mind, like I said, some of these can

(27:17):
be bought, uh completely, like you can buy a whole
bike that uses this sort of stuff, or you can
end up buying conversion kits or these in hub systems
where it's really an e bike inside a bicycle wheel.
You literally just replace a wheel with one of these
and it'll turn it into an e bike, which is
pretty cool. You were talking about direct drive now. The

(27:38):
direct drive are the ones that look like a like
a pie pan in the middle of your wheel. Yes,
and that's the one that everything is housed within that
uh that I guess it would be a plastic outer casing, right, Yeah,
plastic in most cases, I think, Uh, you might find
a couple that do some form of metal as the outside,
like an aluminum exterior. But again, you want to have

(28:00):
generally speaking, you want to have something that's going to
be able to vent heat because it is going to
build up heat inside of this thing. Yeah, exactly right.
Now that the direct drive is just one type, there's
also the geared systems of geared motors that we'll talk
about as well. But if you I found a pretty
good article that that describes some of the pros and
cons of both types of motors. So there's direct drive,

(28:24):
there's gear drive. There's pros for both. Now that the
pros four direct drive system the pipean type you know
that has everything in case. Uh, they're they're a lot
more durable than the geared systems. Uh, they're faster and
they tend to be quieter as well. There's actually more
pros for the geared systems that we'll talk about in
just a second. But they provide less drag, they're smaller,

(28:44):
of course, they're lighter, but they do have more torque
than the than the direct drive systems. Yeah. I thought
that was kind of strange, I would think, and that
has to be just based on gearing, of course, I mean,
because you can make that work for you however you like. Right,
But the direct drive motors that we talked to about,
one thing we said is that it's got to have
a lot of torque in order to to work because

(29:05):
the way it's mounted on the wheel, every one rotation
of the wheel is one rotation of the motors, right
and right. That has to be an extremely torquey motor
in order for that to work. Yeah. So, uh, that's
the benefit of having gears. Right. You can you can
play with how many times the motor has to rotate
to rotate a wheel. You can you can use the

(29:25):
different sizes of gears to determine the actual speech. So
you can you can get it for speed, or you
can get it for pulling or for power. Right, so
kind of like a you know, like a transmission in
a car. Uh. And so you you use these different
things for different purposes, Like if you want to have
a bike where it's just going to be the simplest version,
the direct drive makes a lot of sense. Uh. It

(29:48):
is as the fewest moving parts of an electric motor
compared to the other variations that we've seen, and most
of the kids that you'll find that you'll see have
have that direct drive TI stop. Now, I've seen some
that are geared that are still all self contained, which
is kind of interesting, but uh, you know, it's it's
where you see like Essentially, there's a gear that the

(30:11):
motor turns, then there are maybe two gears that interlock
with that, and then it goes inside a larger casing
has a gear mounted teeth mounted on the internal wall
of the the hub, and that that's what causes the
hub to turn, thus making the wheel turn. UM. So

(30:32):
all of that can be completely enclosed too. But you
can also have what what I call mid drive motors.
Where are you have the external motor. It's not inside
the hub of the wheel, it's mounted to the exterior
of your bike. UM. It typically uh, it taps directly
into your bicycles gear drive train. So you essentially replace

(30:56):
the chain wheel that your petals would attach to the
cranks on your pedals at that I think they call
that the crank set. Yeah, you would replace that with
the motor, the electric motor version. You know that it
has the same sort of wheel that you would have
to mount the chain too, but the motor helps drive
that wheel so that when you start pedaling, the motor

(31:18):
drives the actual wheel that you're their pedal cranks are
attached to. This sounds a lot closer to the like
a motorcycle set up. Swapping the gasoline engine for the
electric motor, of course, but it's it's closer in position
and the way that it drives that rear wheel, you know,
with a chain or a belt in some cases. Right,
that's interesting. Those are a lot less common then then

(31:40):
would be the direct drive motor, which is the hub
one or the other one that the more complex geared
system that you described. Yeah, and and these also tend
to get really super expensive. These are the ones that
can be really efficient because they're already using the ideal
gears to turn your bicycle wheel. They're using the gear
is that the bicycle wheel uses anyway they would use

(32:02):
under your normal pel. Yeah, and that's one thing that
the direct drive motor does not provide you with. So
you know, the one that looks like the pie pan again,
that really turns any bike that you're riding into a
single speed bike. But that's really all you need. And
that was pointed out in one of the reviews. I
know when the guys right and he's saying, well, you know,
I have the ability to switch gears here, but I
can't do that now that this is mounted. But I

(32:23):
don't even need it because this kind of adapts to
whatever whatever I need to happen. You know, if I
need to go faster, I just pedal a little faster.
If I need to slow down, I back it down.
And you know, that's one thing that we should mention too,
is that, um some of the reviewers were saying that
there's that that instant where you need to stop, you know,
and this thing is still powering, and it's there's a
signal that's that's sent to that that that motor, that

(32:46):
direct drive motor, and it's usually by slightly backpedaling, like
you know, on a tent speed where you can kind
of freewheel, you can back backpedal without having to you know,
hit a coaster break like you went on an older bike,
as long as you're not either on a yeah, like
an old single speed bike where you would you would
use the pedal brakes and that didn't have any handbrakes,

(33:06):
just pedal brakes, or or even a fixed gear bike
where you could pedal backwards and that would actually cause
the wheels to go oh yeah, because you know the fixies,
as the bike bicycle enthusiasts like Dixies, that never So
that's so that's what's going on with this is that
when you want to stop, when you want the assist

(33:27):
part of this to stop, you back pedal slightly and
then you use the handbrakes to bring yourself to complete stop.
But there's that there's the one moment, you know where
it depends on how fast you're going, if it's you know,
five ft or ten feet that you travel in that time. Uh,
there's that moment where it's pushing you along you would
rather be stopping or you you're you're trying to you
have to kind of plan ahead. I guess a little
more with this type of setup right now, they haven't

(33:49):
quite got it exactly right where it immediately responds to
the need. Well yeah, because when they're cutting power, what
you're doing is well, well i'll talk more about what's
actually going on inside the motors here. When you're cutting power,
you're essentially cutting electricity to electromagnets. But you know, it
takes it takes a moment for that that attraction between

(34:10):
your the magnets, the permanent magnets or potentially another electromagnets
inside the hub of your wheel. Two um, stop being
attracted in that circular motion, stop being driven forward, And
this isn't so bad by any means that you know,
it's not worth buying it or anything like that. It's
just it's it's something that everybody noted like, oh that's
a little strange. But once I adjust to that, everything

(34:32):
works out fine. Right. So you know, let me talk
a little bit about how those electric motors are working
and the basis on electromagnetism. So I've talked about this
so many times on tech stuff, and I know you
long term fans who have have heard the electro magnetic
lecture a billion times. So um, you know, go ahead

(34:54):
and put this on two time speed and you can
get through it. But I gotta I gotta cover it.
So the basic of electromagnetism if you have a coil
of a conducting material, if you if you coil that
conducting material around a core, like you know, the classic
classroom example is you taken an iron nail and you
wrap some copper wire around the iron nail, and then

(35:16):
you run an electrical current through that wire. Uh that
electrical current will create a magnetic field and it will
turn into an electro magnet. You can react with Ferreross materials,
Fairest metals, and uh so you can pick up iron
filings with this thing, because now you've got a magnet.
If you put alternating current through it, then you've created

(35:37):
a fluctuating magnetic field, which gets pretty interesting and is
the basis of a lot of important technology. But anyway,
if you've got these electromagnets, it creates this magnetic field.
It will attract other opposite polled magnet materials. So if
you have permanent magnets, let's say you've got a whole

(36:00):
bunch of neodymium magnets. Those are very popular for a
lot of applications these days, and you set them up
around let's say a wheel, a free rotating wheel, and
then you've got stationary electro magnets, and you can control
which electrode magnets are turning on and off at any
given moment, and you turn them on and off in

(36:22):
a pattern so that it's constantly attracting and repelling the magnets,
so that it creates a rotational force that will cause
the wheel to rotate. Now, this isn't free energy, because
you're pouring electricity into those electro magnets. This is often
one of the basics of you'll see people who are
peddling something they're calling a perpetual motion machine, but in

(36:44):
reality it's using electro magnets, which means that it has
to get power from somewhere, which means it's not truly
perpetual motion. It means it's perpetual motion as long as
the electricity doesn't run out. It's funny you said peddaling, Yeah, exactly, so, uh,
you know, sometimes pun is unintended, as in this case,
and sometimes it is intended. So with this rotational force,

(37:06):
that's what provides the basics of the electric motor. By
the way, the reverse is also true. If you put
a conductor into a fluctuating magnetic field, then it will
induce electricity to flow through that conductor. So in other words,
if I have an uh, if I take that wire
and I move it to something where there's a fluctuating
magnetic field, meaning I'm I've got this polarity reversing over

(37:29):
and over and over again, electricity will flow through that
copper wire. So the first version I mentioned, that's the
basics of the electric motor. The second one is the
basics of dynamos and magnetos and even alternators. So uh,
with all that in mind, that direct drive system we
were talking about. Is the easiest to imagine. Think of

(37:50):
the electro magnets as a a circle of these coils
of wire. So the coils of wire are kind of
if you're thinking of it in that pie shape. You
turn the bicycle wheel on its side, and you you
were to pull off the cover, you look at essentially
little columns of a of coils of electric wire set

(38:12):
up in a circle. Uh. And these would be stationary
relative to the rotation of the wheel. They are mounted
to the axle, They do not rotate, Okay, so they
are they they're going to remain stationary compared to the
rotation of the wheel. Around this, you would have a
rotating uh wheel, rotating or rotating chamber that has permanent

(38:36):
magnets mounted on it. All right, Now, these are the
magnets that are going to be attracted and repelled by
the electro magnets in the center. And because these can rotate,
that change in electromagnetism is what's going to make it
move and make the wheel turn, whether it's to assist
you or to completely take over and act as an
electric throttle. So that's where your direct drive just comes

(39:00):
in exactly. And there are some that I've seen that
connect as both like the mid drive. Some of the
mid drives connect as pedal assist or then you can
switch it to throttle control and then it just completely
takes over for you. Um. So this is, uh, this
is the very basic version, the easiest one to understand.
With the electric motors, and that that chamber of permanent

(39:24):
magnets when it does one full rotation, that's the full
rotation of the wheel, right And uh, usually you have
a multiple phase electric motor, and that sounds really complicated,
but it's actually really easy. In fact, I'll give you
a very simple example. Let's imagine that we have a clock,

(39:45):
an analog clock, round clock, regular old thing you've seen
a billion times. Now, imagine that instead of a number
at each space where there normally would be one, you've
got one of those coils of electric are copper wire,
So you've got an electro magnet at each of the
number spots. If you have a phase three motor, that

(40:06):
means that one third of those numbers are all going
to essentially switch on and switch off simultaneously. The other
two thirds will do the same with their respective groups.
So with the twelve number version, for a standard clock.
Your twelve o'clock, three o'clock, six o'clock, and nine o'clock

(40:27):
positions would all turn on and off simultaneously. Then you
would have the one o'clock, four o'clock, seven o'clock, and
ten o'clock one's doing the same and the two, five, eight,
and eleven o'clock one is doing the same. And by
switching between these you can have a smoother transition. To
keep the bike wheel moving as smoothly as possible. It's
not speeding up, slowing down, right, it's to try and

(40:51):
keep that nice and smooth. And obviously the more phases
you have, then at least to some point, the smoother
the the the experience will be. You may that very
easy to understand. Yeah, so, uh, you know, I I
looked at this a lot to try and figure out
how I was going to explain worked. Well, thank you,
I appreciate that. So, yeah, that's that makes the direct

(41:12):
drive really easy to understand. The geared ones are a
little a little more complicated, but not by a whole lot. Yeah,
they're they're different, and they've got some parts that wear
as well because they've got nylon gears and as you
can imagine those those uh, you know, grinding on each other. Um,
they're going to show signs of wear for time and
you have to replace parts in them. So they're a
little bit more complex than that. There's a there's actually

(41:34):
quite a few different things. You know, they're a little
bit noisier. Um, they have a lower top speed typically.
Now that again, we can talk about gearing again if
you want, but I think that everybody kind of understands
that you can play with that gearing however you want
for for an increased top speed if you need to.
But typically they have a lower top speed. If you
buy a bike that has a set up with a
geared system, it's more for um, the heavy duty applications

(41:55):
like the pulling or the throwing and um as we
mentioned ability, right, I mean, that's that's one thing that
the you know, getting in there to service them, if
you have to do this yourself or you know, it
could be expensive, I guess probably more expensive in the
long run because of because of maintenance. You're probably talking
like bucks at least to bring it into a bike

(42:16):
shop to have a service. And honestly, the prices I
mean from the kids that I was looking at, you
know the difference between buying a kit to add to
your bike. You know, the difference between a geared motor
and a direct drive motor. It was just about identical.
So you know, the the added expense that you're gonna
have with a geared motor is something you have to consider,
you know, somewhere down the road, you know, whether it

(42:37):
be a year down the road or I don't know
how often it would have to be serviced. I think
it depends on youths really well. One other thing I
would mention about the direct drive systems that is a drawback,
small one. It's something called cogging. Cogging. I saw a
someone trying to, uh, trying to depict this on one
of the reviews, and I didn't quite see what it was.

(42:59):
What's so so cogging is where you've got these magnets
right inside inside the direct drive. They're constantly rotating because
they're in the part that moves along with the rotation
force of the wheel. If you have your system unpowered,
so you don't have any pedal like going, that's the
electro magnets are off. Those magnets are somewhat attracted to

(43:21):
the materials at the core of that wheel the stationary part,
So that part of stationary with respect to the ground,
like with respect to the rest of the bike, and
who wouldn't be that's a good looking part, yeah, exactly.
So when you're trying to pedal, that means that these
magnets are slightly attracted to that stationary part, the resisting moving,
So you have to overcome that magnetic resistance to get

(43:43):
them to move. It's not necessarily a significant like, it's
not it's not like you're gonna be like straining to
move forward a few inches, but it means you have
to work a little harder initially, yeah, to to get
it moving because it has this drag effect. So it's
called cogging, but really you can think of it as
drag in the sense that it's a magnetic drag. That

(44:05):
is listed as one of the cons on this in
this article that I'm kind of following along with here
and the uh the article, I mean, it's from a
site called e bite kit dot com, so that's where
you can also buy a kit, but it was a
review blog post was done by somebody and um one
of the cons that they mentioned for direct drive is drag.
Drag when you when you pedal um. Now the other ones,

(44:25):
you know, the geared systems I guess don't have that
kind of drag, but there's more noise because those gears
are constantly spitting in there as well. Um. The other thing,
the other cons I guess we should want to just
list them now for the directory system are that it
has typically has less range. Uh, there are a lot
you know, a lot bigger, and they're heavier than the
geared systems would because the gear systems can be much smaller.

(44:45):
They're they're again it's just based on gearing, how efficient
you want to make them. And we've talked about batteries.
We've talked and I felt I missed my chance to
mention this, but the size of the battery matters as well.
So you want a big, powerful battery, you're gonna go
a little bit fat. It's gonna be able to power
that you know, that that motor, whether it's a direct
drive or whether it's a geared system, it's gonna be

(45:06):
able to to I guess expel expend more juice to
make that thing go a little faster. Um. It's it's
very similar to if you think about the like the
Tesla cars, um you know, there's the version I think
it has a sixty kill a lot. Uh. I think
I'm getting these numbers right. I hope I am sixty
kill a lot battery. And then there's an eight five
kill a lot battery and it's the the higher performance version.

(45:27):
So it depends on the battery size and the output
of that battery, how fast you're gonna go, Also the
size of the motor, the output of the motor. You know,
you need to get the right pairing. And there's some
other really cool things that we're starting to see paired
with these electric bytes bikes, especially the wheel systems that
are coming out there too, in particular that I was
really interested in. But there's more than that. You actually

(45:48):
mentioned another one when we were talking before we came
in here, but the Copenhagen or Copenhagen wheel from M
I T and the fly Cli wheel, which uh some
have suggested might have taken more than a little bit
of inspiration from the Copenhagen wheel. But the truth is,
these direct drive motors all look the same, it's all

(46:11):
the same ideas, so that's hard to say. The implementation
is really what's important here because it also depends on
the sensors that you include, and that's where we're starting
to see more complexity like that when you break it down,
a direct drive in hub system is one of the
simplest electric motors that you can have. But the complexity

(46:31):
comes in these other sensors that come to play. Like
some of these kits use uh you know, how do
they know when to kick in and help give you
pedal assystem For example, some of them, you mount a
small magnet on one of the spokes of your wheel
and mounted to a stationary part of the bicycle is
a sensor and every time the magnet passes the sensor,

(46:54):
it it uh clocks it so it knows, all right,
the wheels having this many rotations per minute, therefore they're
pedaling this amount. Therefore I will kick in this much assistance. Yeah,
you know, about thirty years ago, I had a spedometer
on a bicycle that worked the same way. It's it's
really simple, it's really basic, and a lot of there's

(47:14):
a lot of sensors and automobiles that work that same
way as well. It's just a counter. It's just counting one, two,
three's well, it's just more like one one one, But
but it's just every rotation is saying it's just registering
that right as movement. And then there are other ones
that are torque sensors, right, These are these are calculating
how much force the bicyclist is applying to the pedals,

(47:36):
and it kicks in the electric motor to help counteract
that force to keep it either very smooth or to
just say like, all right, we have a threshold here,
and anything beyond this threshold we need to kick in
the electronic assess so that way we're not making the
bicyclist pedal too hard. And it's a bit more complex, yeah, obviously, Yeah,

(47:58):
And then it also means that it tends to be
more expensive, Like the systems that have that version of
sensor are more expensive than the ones that just count rotations.
And some of these are wired systems and some are
wireless systems. And we talked about earlier. We talked about
the control of these these systems and some of the readouts.
You know, because a lot of the kids come with

(48:18):
an LCD dashboard and it'll tell you all the information
you need to need to know about, you know, the
range that you know, what you have left battery power, etcetera.
You know just how much help you're getting, like whether
it's uh, you know, a little bit of help or
a lot of help, that kind of stuff. You can
put it in different modes like Eco mode, which is,
you know, less help and it's it saves the battery,

(48:39):
I guess you have an extended amount of range, or
you can put it in performance mode or whatever they
call it by the manufacturer. But some of them are
controlled with your smartphone and how this is one of
the downsides of this though. I mean, it's really cool
that you can do that, and you can mount it
right in the center of your of your handlebars, you know,
right where you can see it. But you still have
to avert your eyes from the traffic or wherever you

(49:00):
are right in order to look down at that smartphone.
And then you have to interact with it. So it's
sort of akin to texting and driving or texting and
biking right in a way. I know, they make the
controls very easy. You know, it's it's large buttons. You
just touched and swipe, and once you get accustomed to
where that is, you might be able to do that,
you know, relatively quickly. You know, you won't have to
stare at stare at it for quite as long as

(49:21):
you will when it's new to you. But you know,
the more options you have, the more the more complex
the interface is going to be. So for example, if
you have the Copenhangen wheel, it's got a lot of
different options, right, and you have an app that connects
to the wheel, and it's using low energy Bluetooth, so
it's not sipping a whole lot of power, although in fact,
I would say that for your smartphone, the most power

(49:43):
that's been consumed is just powering the display, Like that
display is going to suck up more battery power than
the low energy bluetooth. However, all that being said, if
you've got lots and lots of options, that means you've
got to swipe through stuff too, and that makes it
even more complicated because your your attention is taken away
from your surroundings in the road even more so that
you can switch. Uh. They also have options for things

(50:07):
like regenerative breaking or regenerating some of that electricity by
putting it into exercise mode, which is where you're you're
kind of working against the motor. The idea being that, uh,
it's it's sort of reversing this this trend. Instead of uh,
the electricity causing the motor to turn and thus giving

(50:27):
you help, you are pushing the motor, which is causing
electricity to flow the other direction and recharge the battery.
It's turning a motor into a dynamo in other words. Yeah,
and now one of the one of the models that
I saw, um, you know, Demode, I think it was
maybe the Copenhagen wheel is the one that if you're
backpedaling as you're in motion, if you're so so the motor,
you're you're saying to the motor, you don't want it
to assist you in pedaling at this point, and you backpedal.

(50:50):
That's the regenerative mode. That's it's it's you're gaining battery power,
I guess by doing that. And you can also make
a hill work for you in the same way. Right, Yeah,
when going down the hill, you put an exercise mode,
which normally would mean you have to pedal harder to
get to wherever you were going. Let's say you're on
a totally flat surface, You've got everything turned off and
you and you ride across this flat surface. You're using

(51:14):
a certain amount of energy. In order to do that,
if you turned on exercise mode, you'd have to put
in a little extra energy because now you're working against
that motor to kind of regenerate electricity. If you're going
down the hill, you let gravity do that extra work
for you. So you switch from pedal assisted to exercise
and you can regenerate some of the electricity, giving your
battery a little bit extra juice that you can make

(51:36):
it all the way to work. But that means having
to switch modes in mid ride, and that's where we're
getting into this, like how do you do that in
a way that's not distracting the bicycle. See with that one,
you're not looking down at the screen and swiping through.
You're just physically doing something. And I thought that was
a great way to handle that. And then you know,
you just slightly backpedal. Everybody can remember that and you

(51:56):
don't have to look down to do that. And I
was thinking, why don't start to incorporate some of these
controls in the handlebars as if it would be a
game controller, Because once you learn a game controller, and
you know what, it takes you ten minutes or if
it takes you ten weeks to learn that game controller.
You know, maybe not ten weeks, but you understand where
it is. You don't have to look down, you know,
find out where the X button is or where the

(52:18):
A button is. It becomes natural. It's a it's a
you know, um memory, muscle memory, that's the term. So
once if you if you were to have a system
that was universal, you know that all design all e
bike designers used it, you know, that used the same
hand controls on the on the not the pegs on
the handlebars, handle grips, it would be something that I

(52:41):
think everybody could benefit from because you know, you could
sure you can still have your your phone there and
you could have that you know, set up so that yeah,
i'm gonna I'm just gonna put it in eco mode
and I'm gonna leave it there, but every other control,
you know, from that point on, I can use hand
controls without looking down. I think that would be great
for somebody who's in traffic and crowded cities like what
we're talking about now. Most of them aren't as advanced

(53:01):
as that we were talking about. That's that's the top end,
really expensive ones, the ones that I'm sure that you
know most of you know, the people in these crowded
cities that have these kind of early versions of e bikes,
they're not that complex. They they respond more to the
physical commands like what we were talking about with the
backpedaling for the generation and things like that. And some
of them do have things like thumb throttles or thumb

(53:24):
controls to either said on uh you know, pedal assist,
or they might have a twist throttle for the fully
powered electric bikes sure like a mini biker a motorbike
would have. Yeah. Yeah, so there there are those versions.
But the ones that I've seen, like the fly Line
and the Copenhagen both of those are completely one wheel

(53:45):
systems that then hook up like once you once you
detach your existing rear wheel and then install the the
Copenhagen wheel or the fly lie wheel. Uh, then all
you do is you you hook it up to your
smartphone and then that's what activates it's it also has
some interesting safety features, like you can deactivate it so

(54:06):
that if someone were to take your wheel, it wouldn't
be of any use to them because they couldn't turn
it back on again. You mentioned theft, right, because that's
that's something that a lot of people would be concerned
with if their back wheel of their bike is where
is now worth two thousand dollars just one wheel? Right?
I mean it's just a matter of two bolts to
get that thing off of there. Right, So you park
your bike and it's worth two thousand dollars the back

(54:27):
end and then whatever else the rest of the bike costs.
Probably an expensive bike, I guess. So what what prevents
somebody from just either walking away with your bike, which
I guess they could do anyways, or just taking that
that that wheel off. I mean, you have to be
very creative about how you chain this thing up or
or what you do with it. But there's there's a
safety in place, I guess if it does walk away, right. Yeah,

(54:49):
there's a couple of them, right. There's one that has
the electric motor turn off and it doesn't turn on
again until it recognizes the handshake with your particular smartphone
because you're paired it. Uh. There's also some that have
GPS in them, so that should the wheel go wandering,
you can track down where it is, kind of similar
to like where's my iPhone? That sort of stuff will

(55:10):
alert you if it's moving when you're not near it,
which is interesting like that, and it's a useful feature. Uh.
The Copenhagen one, I think is seven nine, and I
think the fly Cli is something like six hundred. Uh
they're they're about a hundred dollars off. I remember that.
And uh so they're both pretty expensive. I mean, if
you're looking at a brand new bicycle, depending upon what

(55:31):
market you're in, it could be the same price as
your bike. And that's just a wheel. So and and
the e bike kits that I was I was mentioning you,
that's that I keep saying that, so I hope you
don't mind. But it's the bike kit dot com because
they have a lot of good information there as well.
And again they ranged from about seven hundred and seventy
five dollars up to about two thousand. Was the top
one I saw. But you're talking about different um completely

(55:53):
different packages. Like that seven seventy five kid, it doesn't
it It has no battery and it has no charger.
UM so you're gonna have to add on to that thing, right.
The other one has everything, as I mentioned. But the difference,
one of the biggest differences is in the top speed
and the range of these things. So you know, the
lower kids tend to have a lower top speed and
a and a slightly less range you know, or lower range,

(56:15):
I guess. And as far as the distance you can travel, um,
you know, maybe maybe the low end one is like,
you know, twelve to fifteen miles with power assist, and
the upper arrange one can go all the way up
to about fifty four miles. So a fifty four mile
bike ride on one charge. That's pretty good, I mean.
And you know, top speed if about twenty eight miles

(56:35):
per hour. Now you might be limited in some cities
to what speed you're allowed to travel because there are
restrictions on some of these things. And the UK it's
an hour, which is about fifteen yeah, and here it's
a little bit faster in the States here I think
it was what twenties. And then there's that odd strange thing.
It's not it's not so odd really when you really
think about it, because everybodys gonna want to go a

(56:56):
little bit faster, right, there's it's gonna be the group
that wants the sport version, right, So there's the s
pedal X for those people, and that stands for Speedy
Pedal X. And the difference is there they have a
more powerful motor. Um you know, of course you can
do unlimited pedal assists if you want, so it can
be kind of like a power on demand type system. Um, oh,
you know what, I'm going to take that back again.

(57:17):
I don't know if it will do that, but it
has unlimited When I'm saying it now, I've understand it.
It's a it's unlimited pedal assists. So you know, once
you reach that twenty miles per hour, it doesn't kind
of cut out like the ones that are limited. So
if you're capable of powering it further, it will continue
to assist, and you would be because see it's one
of those things where like you, because it's a pedal

(57:38):
assist system, you would be able to get up to
twenty miles per hour no problem. And then once you continue,
it's like you're putting out less energy to go faster,
and then you put out just a little bit more
and you can go way faster and it just carries on.
And I'm sure there's got to be an upper limit.
There has to be a a top limit, but really
the speed cutout is set far far higher, and for

(57:59):
this type of sis them. Uh, you know, things like um,
you know, helmets and protective gear are required because they
realize that it's closer to a scooter or a motorcycle
even in some phases depends on how fast you can go,
but the speedy pedal X or something for you know,
the people that want to kind of take it to
the next level. Right, I don't think I'm gonna need
anything quite at that level if I if I do

(58:20):
invest in one of these, uh, And I gotta say
that something else we should mention is that the in
hub systems do have other other things you gotta remember.
For one, it's going to offset the weight of your bicycle,
like it's going to put a lot more weight on
whatever wheel you're replacing. Yes, and we're talking like ballpark
ten pounds. I mean that's right around where it is.

(58:42):
It's that you know, I've seen nine pound systems and
I've seen thirteen pound systems, so somewhere in there. Yeah,
So that's gonna be something to keep in mind. The
as opposed to some of the other like the mid
drive systems, they kind of balance the weight out across
the frame of the bicycle, so you don't have one
section of the bike that is is heavier than it
otherwise would be. But you know, it's it's well, it's

(59:04):
important for riding, you know, for the way it feels
on the road, but it's even more important when you're
trying to carry it up the stairs and put it
in your house at night. Yeah, so I'll be I'll
be sure to keep all of my listeners posted if
I if I invest in one of these things, I
would love to see it if you were if you
ride that into work, I would love to come down
to the parking structure or whatever and maybe even take

(59:26):
it for a quick sure. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, it's
funny because it will mean that my wheel will be
much more valuable, or at least cost a lot more
than my bike did because I got my bike for free,
so so automatically the wheel will be more expensive a
free bike. Yeah, that's nice. There's a thing called free
cycle Atlanta where people give away stuff. Would they don't

(59:47):
have space for it anymore? And you found a bike
and the guy was given away his bike, Wow, I
got a bike. It's not it's not fancy, it's not
it's not a super fancy bike, but it's it's a bike.
Do they have any boats there? You know, I like
a boat, but I don't necessarily want to buy a boat.
The second happiest day of my life was when I
bought my boat. Happiest day of my life was when

(01:00:09):
I sold it. All right, Well, Scott, thank you for
coming on the show. Of course, my pleasure. And and
in in addition to the website you mentioned, I also
want to mention electric bike review dot com, which has
some great articles and some great videos. If you are
interested in buying an electric bike or buying a conversion kit,
they have everything you would need to know, and they

(01:00:32):
also review them so you can actually look and see
if they've reviewed the system you're interested in, and see
what they have to say about it. Always helpful. Yeah,
they had like a fifteen minute long review of the
Copenhagen Wheel for example, which was very interesting. They went
into great detail about it. So uh and Scott, if
people want to find your stuff, where do they go? Oh? Sure, yeah,

(01:00:53):
we have our own website which is car Stuff Show
dot com and you know Facebook, Twitter, all that stuff.
We are car stuff HS of you yep, and same
here for tech stuff we're tech stuff HSW on Facebook
and Twitter and over on Tumbler, and you can also
send me an email tech stuff at how stuff works
dot com. Uh, following this episode, we're gonna have a

(01:01:14):
couple of rerun episodes. That's just so that we have
enough buffer between when we break this studio down and
when our next studio is ready to go. And I
didn't want you guys to go a single week without
any episodes, So don't be frightened if you hear some reruns,
just temporary, I promise, and you will hear new stuff

(01:01:34):
from me. Release for more on this and basons of
other topics because it has staff works dot com