Collaborate Disseminate
In the ebike world, there are two paths. The first is a homemade kit bike with motors and controllers from China. The second is a prebuilt bike from a manufacturer like Giant, with motors and controllers from China, which will be half as fast and cost three times as much. …read more
[Tom Stanton] is well-regarded in the maker community, and has put much effort in over the years on a variety of electric vehicle builds. In the process of upgrading his e-bike last year, he ran into some issues with the main drive pulley. Rather than rely on guesswork, he threw …read more
Continue reading The Trials and Tribulations of E-Bike Drivetrain Design
Electric bikes may be taking the world by storm, but the world itself doesn’t have a single way of regulating ebikes’ use on public roads. Whether or not your ebike is legal to ride on the street or sidewalk where you live depends mostly on… where you live. If you’re …read more
Continue reading Russian eBike Goes Everywhere, Possibly Legal
Ah, the simple pleasures of a bike ride. The rush of the wind past your ears, the gentle click of the derailleurs as you change gears, the malignant whine of the dual electric jet turbines pushing you along. Wait, what?
Yes, it’s a jet bike, and its construction was strictly a case of “Why not?” for [Tech Ingredients]. They recently finished up a jet engine build using a hybrid design with electric ducted fans as compressors and fueled with propane. It was quite a success, and pretty spectacular, but left an embarrassment of riches upon its passing in terms of …read more
Continue reading Plug Your Ears And Hop On This Jet-Powered eBike
Electric bikes are getting a lot of attention lately. Pretty much anyone can buy a kit online and get a perfectly street legal ride with plenty of range. But if you don’t want to take the kit route, and you’d rather take a tack that will get you noticed more around these parts, take some notes from [Jule553648]’s recent build that definitely isn’t using any parts from a kit.
The motor from the build is an electric power steering pump from a junkyard car. This gets mounted on a one-off rear bike rack and drives the rear tire with help …read more
Continue reading Power Steering Pump Repurposed for Great Speed
Electric vehicles are getting more traction these days, but this trend is rolling towards us in more ways than just passenger vehicles. More and more bikes are being electrified too, since the cost of batteries has come down and people realize that they can get around town easily without having to pay the exorbitant price to own, fuel, and maintain a car. Of course there are turnkey ebikes, but those don’t interest us much around here. This ebike from [Andy] is a master class in how to build your own ebike.
Due to some health issues, [Andy] needed a little …read more
[GreatScott] has now joined the ranks of Electric Bike users. Or has he? We previously covered how he made his own lithium-ion battery pack to see if doing so would be cheaper than buying a commercially made one. But while it powered his E-bike conversion kit on his benchtop, turning the motor while the wheel was mounted in a vice, that’s no substitution for a real-world test with him on a bike on the road.
Since then he’s designed and 3D printed an enclosure for his DIY battery pack and mounted it on his bike along with most of the …read more
Continue reading [GreatScott] Tests His DIY Battery Pack On His E-Bike
At Hackaday we’re all about DIY. However, projects can have many components, and so there’s sometimes a choice between making something or buying it. In this case, [GreatScott!] wondered if it would be cheaper to make or buy a lithium-ion battery pack for his new eBike kit. To find out, he decided to make one.
After some calculations, he found he’d need thirteen 18650 cells in series but decided to double the capacity by connecting another thirteen in parallel. That gave him a 5 Ah capacity battery pack with a nominal voltage of 48.1 V and one capable of supplying …read more
Continue reading Comparing Making To Buying A Lithium Ion Battery Pack
[Rasel] likes to make things himself, and his latest project is a homemade electric quad bike. It’s an impressive build, including two 1 kW motors and a tilting turning system that makes it more maneuverable than most quad bikes. It has big, wide tires, a raised battery and longitudinal arms that mean it can climb over obstacles. That all makes it great for off-road use, and it’s just 60 cm (just under 24 inches) wide, which is much smaller than most quad bikes. It also has a top speed of 35 km/h, which would make it somewhat illegal to use …read more
One of the more interesting yet underrated technological advances of the last decade or so is big brushless motors and high-capacity batteries. This has brought us everything from quadcopters to good electric cars, usable cordless power tools, and of course electric bicycles. For his Hackaday Prize project, [marcus] is working on a very powerful electric bicycle controller. It can deliver 1000 Watts, it’s got Bluetooth, and there’s even an Android app for some neat diagnostics.
The specs for this eBike controller are pretty much what you would expect. It’s able to deliver a whole Kilowatt, can use 48 V batteries, …read more
Continue reading Hackaday Prize Entry: Smart Electric Bike Controller
