Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host
Speaker 1: job in Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech and it's time for
Speaker 1: a tech Stuff classic. This episode, originally published on February four,
Speaker 1: two thousand and fifteen, is titled how E Bikes Work.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy. I remember doing this episode because
Speaker 1: I also remember taking a test drive on an e
Speaker 1: bike and nearly wiping out because it has been so
Speaker 1: long since i'd ridden a bicycle. You know that that phrase,
Speaker 1: it's like riding a bike. Um, well, I guess for me,
Speaker 1: it just doesn't take like it does for other people. Anyway,
Speaker 1: here's the classic episode, how e Bikes Work. You've been
Speaker 1: around for a while, and you've talked a lot about cars,
Speaker 1: But this time I thought we'd talked about something a
Speaker 1: little different. We're gonna talk about bikes, which, as you
Speaker 1: mentioned before we started recording. Uh, the E stands for
Speaker 1: the sound you make when you're writing it. That's if
Speaker 1: you're going downhill really fast. I guess I often follow
Speaker 1: that up with a series of other sounds, some of
Speaker 1: which make words that I can't say on this podcast,
Speaker 1: but we were talking about electric bicycles, various types of
Speaker 1: electric bicycles and kind of some of their counterparts that
Speaker 1: are similar to them. And you might have seen stuff
Speaker 1: about e bikes recently. Uh, there's been a couple of
Speaker 1: products that have been coming out of the prototype stage
Speaker 1: that have made it something that is more accessible to
Speaker 1: the general public. Before I would say there were it
Speaker 1: was like a very niche audience, like bicycle enthusiasts and uh,
Speaker 1: some do it yourselfers who really were into this. But
Speaker 1: now we're actually seeing it where people who are living
Speaker 1: in maybe city environments can get hold of these, especially
Speaker 1: if they're try trying to transition from car ownership to
Speaker 1: something else. I mean, you've probably heard the story about
Speaker 1: millennials not flocking to car ownership the way previous generations have.
Speaker 1: In fact, we talked about that a couple of times
Speaker 1: in previous episodes. So bicycles are becoming more and more
Speaker 1: important in the United States. They've been important in other
Speaker 1: parts of the world for ages, and electric bikes are
Speaker 1: becoming a big part of that. But here's the interesting thing.
Speaker 1: A long way to go for this, but they're not
Speaker 1: a new idea. No, no, no, they're far from a
Speaker 1: new idea. In fact, this goes back oh what a
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty some years now, say what Yeah, a
Speaker 1: long long time ago. So went back to uh, I
Speaker 1: want to say, it's in the late eighteen hundreds, right, right, Um,
Speaker 1: I think my notes say the mid to late eight
Speaker 1: d nineties. But the first one that I've actually got
Speaker 1: an account for, you know, the actual date that was given,
Speaker 1: it's right around and it had a double electric motor design.
Speaker 1: Now there may have been one prior to that, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure, but actually had two electric motors. And we've
Speaker 1: talked about the complexity of a two motor design earlier.
Speaker 1: Today it seems like it would be an impossible thing
Speaker 1: to do, really nearly impossible. At least, it would seem impractical.
Speaker 1: That's it. Maybe not impossible, but impractical, that's a better
Speaker 1: way to say it. Because we talked about the pros
Speaker 1: and cons of different types and how they work and
Speaker 1: and the characteristics of each one, and what you would
Speaker 1: have to do to pair two of them together to
Speaker 1: make them work in tandem. Yeah, what happens if you
Speaker 1: cut the power to one and you forget to cut
Speaker 1: the power to the other and then next thing you know,
Speaker 1: you're doing flips. Well, I have a feeling in it
Speaker 1: wasn't quite as complex as we're making it out to be.
Speaker 1: It's probably a lot simpler. But then in uh In,
Speaker 1: just one year later, there was a drive belt design
Speaker 1: that came around, which is, yeah, it is kind of
Speaker 1: cool because that's different than what we're seeing today, which
Speaker 1: you might think you're seeing that today, but you're seeing
Speaker 1: probably a version of a moped really or something like that,
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about the difference of that too. And
Speaker 1: then in nine this is one that I really wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about just for a second, there was a patent,
Speaker 1: you know, pulled for a friction roller wheel design, which
Speaker 1: is really unusual, and this is one that we haven't
Speaker 1: seen maybe ever on a bicycle recently. Can I like
Speaker 1: a guess on what this is? Sure, because I haven't
Speaker 1: read the patent, so why would guesses? This means that
Speaker 1: there would be an electric motor that would turn a
Speaker 1: small wheel that is actually right up against one of
Speaker 1: the primary wheels in the bicycle, and the rotation of
Speaker 1: the small wheel is translated into the rotation of the
Speaker 1: larger wheel. That's exactly right. Now. It seems very inefficient,
Speaker 1: isn't it to do it that way it was it
Speaker 1: was mounted I guess, would be behind the rider's seat
Speaker 1: above the wheel, and it would it would the pressure
Speaker 1: was a downward force on the wheel, on the surface
Speaker 1: of the wheel where it would contact the road. And
Speaker 1: that translated to as you said, the you know, the
Speaker 1: drive the actual drive wheel, which to me, that would
Speaker 1: be not just inefficient because obviously the smaller wheel is
Speaker 1: gonna have to rotate many, many, many more times fast
Speaker 1: er than the large wheel, right, but also it means
Speaker 1: adding more wear and tear on that particular wheel of
Speaker 1: your bike. You're exactly right, and it just seems like
Speaker 1: it seems like a difficult design to make work. But
Speaker 1: I just wanted to tell you that, you know, even
Speaker 1: prior to nine, people are really thinking about this. They're really,
Speaker 1: you know, considering the idea that an electric bike is
Speaker 1: something that is necessary to get around town. And quite honestly,
Speaker 1: you know, where did they have It's not like they
Speaker 1: were in a crowded city at that point. Probably it's
Speaker 1: not likely, uh they might have been, but um, it
Speaker 1: would it would be more for you know, like a
Speaker 1: country ride or something like that that they would use
Speaker 1: it for, right, I would imagine. So, I mean, unless
Speaker 1: you're talking about you know, your your when you see
Speaker 1: the rise of the city's really because the rise of
Speaker 1: the automobile. When you see the rise of the automobile,
Speaker 1: which gave rise to to cities getting larger and larger
Speaker 1: and more sprawl. Perhaps you could argue that the bike
Speaker 1: would have been useful for someone who cannot afford a
Speaker 1: full automobile but still needs to make a commute. But
Speaker 1: we often here in the United States in particular, we
Speaker 1: have often thought about bicycles as recreational devices. Right, this
Speaker 1: is the thing that we use. You want to go
Speaker 1: out and get some exercise, you want the fresh air,
Speaker 1: you want a nice relaxing ride. And uh. In fact,
Speaker 1: when we were first talking about doing this topic, it
Speaker 1: was only when we started talking about the possibility of
Speaker 1: using a bike in instead of a car or taking
Speaker 1: public transportation in order to get around regularly. That's something
Speaker 1: like an electric bike really started to make sense, because
Speaker 1: otherwise you kind of want that that exertion, that's part
Speaker 1: of the experience. Let me let me just for one
Speaker 1: second go back and kind of defend my, my, my
Speaker 1: country ride example, because the lay that I I picture
Speaker 1: UM cities right around the turn of the century, you know,
Speaker 1: the turn of the nineteenth century, is that they were
Speaker 1: they were crowded with cars which were relatively new at
Speaker 1: the time, brand new at the time, UM, carriages, lots
Speaker 1: of horses, lots of people walking. But I don't necessarily
Speaker 1: think of seeing a lot of a lot of bicycles
Speaker 1: in city environments. That's start from photos of that day,
Speaker 1: of that era or depictions of it, you know, whether
Speaker 1: it be drawings or whatever, you don't see a lot
Speaker 1: of bicycle riders. However, today in crowded cities, you do
Speaker 1: see a lot of bicycle riders. I mean, that's that,
Speaker 1: and especially in places like China where it's extremely crowded
Speaker 1: and you know, maybe not everybody can afford a motorcycle,
Speaker 1: right or or a big scooter, um or that's definitely
Speaker 1: not a car. Bicycle is a good option. But as
Speaker 1: you said, UM, they're not necessarily in it for you know,
Speaker 1: exercise or to get out and you know, to get
Speaker 1: the get the heart pumping or whatever, especially in places
Speaker 1: where pollution might be so bad that you don't necessarily
Speaker 1: want to be breathing are Now this is just like
Speaker 1: an inexpensive method of transportation, way to commute and uh
Speaker 1: and also you know, to take up as little space
Speaker 1: as possible when you're not using that thing, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So now we're starting to see this grow in popularity
Speaker 1: here in the United States, like I said, in some
Speaker 1: parts of the world and in parts of Europe. It's all,
Speaker 1: it's been popular for years and in fact, electric bikes
Speaker 1: have been around for quite some time in in both
Speaker 1: Europe and the units aids as well as Asia. But
Speaker 1: these are uh, you know, we've seen a lot of
Speaker 1: development over the last i'd say a couple of decades.
Speaker 1: We've seen really some some interesting development to the point
Speaker 1: where it's become uh, something that the average consumer can
Speaker 1: can be aware of as opposed to you know, the
Speaker 1: bike enthusiasts. Part of that is battery technology. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I'm jumping ahead of you here, but but
Speaker 1: part of that is battery technology because lead acid batteries,
Speaker 1: that's the kind of battery that you typically find in
Speaker 1: an automobile, a typical and not not one of the
Speaker 1: newer ones. But um, they're big, they're heavy, they're bulky,
Speaker 1: I mean it's just it's difficult to carry that kind
Speaker 1: of weight around on a bike. You're trying to remain
Speaker 1: as light as possible with this type of setup, as
Speaker 1: we'll talk about in a moment. But um, you know,
Speaker 1: with some of the newer battery technology, like lithium ion
Speaker 1: batteries or even you know, some of the nickel cadmium
Speaker 1: batteries from you know, or nickel metal hydride batteries, or
Speaker 1: or even the seal some of these, I guess the
Speaker 1: sealed lead acid batteries. Some of them are small enough
Speaker 1: that could you know, you could potentially use them, but
Speaker 1: the lead acid batteries tend to be a lot heavier
Speaker 1: than the other types of batteries. Yeah. The other thing
Speaker 1: that uh, you know, those batteries have been a challenge,
Speaker 1: not just from a science perspective, but also safety obviously
Speaker 1: lithium ion in particular. You know, you don't you want
Speaker 1: to be really uh you don't you don't want to
Speaker 1: overheat your lithium ion batteries. Well, and it's not a
Speaker 1: great idea to also be biking around with a box
Speaker 1: of sulfuric acid. Yeah, that's that's what it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that can be a bit of a that could
Speaker 1: be a bit of a drag if things go wrong.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, I mean, like I think of here
Speaker 1: in here, in Atlanta, for example, things can get pretty hot.
Speaker 1: So imagine that you have a really hot day and
Speaker 1: you're taking your electric bike for a ride, and you've
Speaker 1: got your battery or lithium ion battery, and you're you know,
Speaker 1: you have to hit dead Man's Hill. It's the craziest
Speaker 1: hill in Atlanta, which I just made up, and uh you,
Speaker 1: so you kicked the bike into full gear to try
Speaker 1: and help you as much as it can to get
Speaker 1: up there. I can imagine that lithium ion battery getting
Speaker 1: really kind of deteriorating rapidly due to we're operating at
Speaker 1: such a high temperature. The heat is the worst enemy
Speaker 1: of batteries. I mean, I know that they die often
Speaker 1: in cold weather, but heat is where the real damage occurs.
Speaker 1: And then you don't realize it until it's cold and
Speaker 1: all those chemical reactions are slowing down, and that's when
Speaker 1: you really feel that you feel the pain from you know,
Speaker 1: the damage that was done in the summer months right now.
Speaker 1: Of course, the nice thing is that most of the
Speaker 1: systems we're talking about. In fact, all the ones I'm
Speaker 1: familiar with have replaceable batteries. So worst case scenario as
Speaker 1: you swap out a dead battery for a new one,
Speaker 1: obviously you want to preserve the life of your batteries
Speaker 1: as long as possible for multiple reasons. Financial would be
Speaker 1: a big one, but also just you know, it's more
Speaker 1: environmentally friendly to go easy on your battery so that
Speaker 1: you don't have to have I don't have to worry about, well,
Speaker 1: how do I dispose of this thing now that potentially
Speaker 1: has toxic materials in it. But let's be honest, the
Speaker 1: financial reason is the big one. That's the big one.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is the big one. I mean. Another
Speaker 1: thing we need to point out is electric bikes can
Speaker 1: be pretty expensive. Even the conversion kits where you can
Speaker 1: turn your existing bike into electric bike, some of those
Speaker 1: can be some of those can dwarf the price of
Speaker 1: your original bike. Absolutely. I've seen kits, just conversion kits
Speaker 1: that that range anywhere from you know, I think it
Speaker 1: was about seven seventy five dollars up to two thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: where you're not getting an entire bike, you're getting the
Speaker 1: kit to make your existing bike into an e bike.
Speaker 1: And and of course the two thousand dollar kit comes
Speaker 1: with everything you would ever want, all the sensors. The
Speaker 1: seven hundred and seventy five dollar kit doesn't even have
Speaker 1: a battery with it, and I think there's no controller.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just it's it's a very basic, basic
Speaker 1: kit where you're gonna have to add parts to it
Speaker 1: in order to make that even work. So it can
Speaker 1: be expensive. But maybe maybe it's better just to buy
Speaker 1: a bike right from the manufacturer. Yeah, yeah, there there
Speaker 1: are choices, right, I mean, you can get a bike
Speaker 1: that is designed as an electric bike from the beginning,
Speaker 1: and it's got the systems all integrated into it already,
Speaker 1: so it's going to Those are gonna look the nicest. Obviously,
Speaker 1: they're gonna cost a lot. They're gonna cost a lot.
Speaker 1: If you convert a bike, then depending upon the conversion
Speaker 1: kit you have, if it's one of those where it's
Speaker 1: a real d I O Y kind of approach, it'll work,
Speaker 1: but it'll probably also look kind of weird because the
Speaker 1: bike that you have was not originally intended to be
Speaker 1: an electric bike. You had to add all these different
Speaker 1: components on it. You have to put a battery pack
Speaker 1: somewhere on that thing, and sometimes that means that you
Speaker 1: have a big bulky section of the middle of the bike.
Speaker 1: But there are other types of electric bike converter kits
Speaker 1: as well that um incorporate all the elements into the
Speaker 1: hub of either the front wheel or the rear wheel.
Speaker 1: Those are kind of cool. Now, it does mean that
Speaker 1: the hub of that tire is going to look enormous
Speaker 1: compared to a normal bicycle tire. But but all the
Speaker 1: other elements are hidden away, right. You don't have, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and there're only a couple of examples of this,
Speaker 1: but you don't have like a big external battery pack
Speaker 1: that's hanging off one of the bars of your bicycle
Speaker 1: unless unless you go back to one of those kids
Speaker 1: like we've talked about, where you know that you do
Speaker 1: have a big canvas bag that has a battery attached
Speaker 1: to it, and that's a speed controller and all the
Speaker 1: other electronics that go along with this. And you know,
Speaker 1: I mean that stuff is gonna be zip tied to
Speaker 1: the frame of your bike. I mean it's not it's
Speaker 1: going to look like it's a kid that you added
Speaker 1: onto your bike. It's not going to be as as
Speaker 1: buttoned up as the as the bike that would come
Speaker 1: from the manufacturer. Look, because they you know, they drill
Speaker 1: holes in the frame and they feed the wire through
Speaker 1: there and it only exits where it needs to. It's
Speaker 1: very uh, it's very minimally obtrusive, I guess on the
Speaker 1: on the design of the bike. Yeah, as opposed to
Speaker 1: have zip ties every couple of inches pulled everything in place.
Speaker 1: And there's still kind of is that element of these
Speaker 1: even even with the manufacturer built ones, you know, the
Speaker 1: ones that come from the factory you know where I
Speaker 1: don't know how many they build a day, maybe, you know,
Speaker 1: it depends on the place, I guess, but it would
Speaker 1: I would think it's very few because these are hand
Speaker 1: assembled of course. Um, but yeah, they're they're pretty well
Speaker 1: buttoned up, but they still have a little bit of
Speaker 1: that you know, uh, a little bit of that look
Speaker 1: like it was kind of made it a work bench. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a little jankie, but a little bit, but in a
Speaker 1: good way, like kind of in that that you know again,
Speaker 1: like that d I Y sort of approach. And they're
Speaker 1: getting better and better. Yeah, and so I guess it's
Speaker 1: good to talk about, you know, the different types of
Speaker 1: electric bikes as well as to compare them against other
Speaker 1: powered bicycles. So the powered bicycle I always thought of
Speaker 1: when I was growing up, it was not electric at all.
Speaker 1: It was it was gas powered. It was the motorized bicycle,
Speaker 1: the moped mo. Yeah, so you've got the motorized and
Speaker 1: pedal p e D the moped or velociped. Some people
Speaker 1: say that's from the old term for bicycle velocopied, which
Speaker 1: dates to even earlier in the uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century. Uh that was my favorite arcade game philosophy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where you had to, you know, to shoot the little
Speaker 1: Penny Farthings as they came down the screen. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The the moped is similar in many ways to electric bicycles,
Speaker 1: except of course it's not running on electric date it's
Speaker 1: got an actual motor tiny gas engine. I should see
Speaker 1: a tiny gasolene engine. Yeah, yeah, that's right. And that's
Speaker 1: what I tend to think of too when I think
Speaker 1: of of a pedal assisted powered vehicle and I think
Speaker 1: of that, That's that's the one I go to. Is
Speaker 1: like that old moped design where you see you would
Speaker 1: see somebody pedaling like crazy to either get it moving,
Speaker 1: or more typically, you would just see the pedals, you know,
Speaker 1: remaining where they are. People would have their feet on
Speaker 1: the pedals, but it would be all you know, gasoline
Speaker 1: power that they're using. They're using just the engine to
Speaker 1: propel themselves forward. Yeah, they've got a throttle control, and
Speaker 1: the throttle control provides the power which drives the drive
Speaker 1: train and you don't have to do any pedaling at
Speaker 1: all to keep it going. It was very rare to
Speaker 1: see somebody actually pedaling a moped to the point now
Speaker 1: where the term moped, by at least some people, is
Speaker 1: used as a generic term for any non motorcycle motorized
Speaker 1: two wheel vehicle. Okay, this is where we had a
Speaker 1: little discussion about this at our desks earlier, because we
Speaker 1: sitting next to each other in the office and we
Speaker 1: were kind of throwing the back and forth a little
Speaker 1: bit like, Okay, if if this is a moped, what
Speaker 1: what is a scooter? And then how do you differentiate
Speaker 1: between that and a motorcycle? And you know, there's there's
Speaker 1: traditional ways to do that. By engine size. You can
Speaker 1: you can say that you know, a moped is between
Speaker 1: forty nine ccs and all the way up too ccs.
Speaker 1: But now I think that there's some uh what they
Speaker 1: call I want to say, they're called like maxi scooters
Speaker 1: that are bigger than that. They're capable of going faster,
Speaker 1: but they're still considered a scooter. But they're allowed on roads,
Speaker 1: but not on highways. And you do sit with your
Speaker 1: feet forward, you know, on a platform in front of
Speaker 1: the chairs, so there's like a pass through between the
Speaker 1: handlebars and where you sit. You're not on you don't
Speaker 1: have your feet on pedals in other words, or pegs
Speaker 1: as you would on a motorcycle. It's on like a
Speaker 1: little just its own little platform. But some of those
Speaker 1: maxi scooters are capable of you know, eighty miles per
Speaker 1: hour seventy five mile pur or something like that. Um,
Speaker 1: that's not the typical scooter that I think of. I
Speaker 1: think of the old vespas, you know, which we're you know,
Speaker 1: the older ones, which are creeping along at about thirty
Speaker 1: miles per hour max. But they did have that traditional
Speaker 1: seating position where you can you can picture that right
Speaker 1: with the platform in front, where your your feet are
Speaker 1: side by side in front of you, And that's what
Speaker 1: I think of. They didn't have a pedal mechanism at
Speaker 1: all like a moped does. So that to me was
Speaker 1: the break between scooters and mopeds. But now I guess
Speaker 1: there's a blurred line between what's a moped and what's
Speaker 1: a scooter. Yeah, I think it's just. I think it's
Speaker 1: just in the use of the term being very casual
Speaker 1: about it, right, I don't think it's I think if
Speaker 1: you were to nail someone down and say no, let's
Speaker 1: let's get to the technical uh distinction between these, they
Speaker 1: would agree. But I think casually people refer to practically
Speaker 1: anything that doesn't look like a motorcycle as a moped
Speaker 1: or a scooter or one of the other. And honestly,
Speaker 1: it really doesn't matter. We're just trying to to segment
Speaker 1: these different things into and just find a way to
Speaker 1: discuss them where everybody can picture the same thing. Now.
Speaker 1: The interesting thing also about mopeds to me is that
Speaker 1: some of them are designed so that, yeah, you could
Speaker 1: pedal and propel them just under pedal power if you
Speaker 1: needed to, like if the engine died or ran gas. Uh,
Speaker 1: It's not easy to do. This is a very heavy vehicle.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it looks like you're peddaling like crazy and you're
Speaker 1: not really getting anywhere some of them. Really, the pedals
Speaker 1: were more about getting the engine started right, so it
Speaker 1: wasn't about providing any form of propulsion. It was just
Speaker 1: about getting the engine to the point where you could
Speaker 1: get the ignition going and take off. So uh, that
Speaker 1: kind of separates it from electric electric bikes in another way.
Speaker 1: So you've got two big separations. One you're not using
Speaker 1: gas with electric bikes. But the other is that with
Speaker 1: a true E bike, you are supposed to be able
Speaker 1: to pedal and power the bike, or you use some
Speaker 1: form of pedal assists. That's where you get the ped
Speaker 1: alex type of bikes, So that's that's often what they're called,
Speaker 1: where they are providing some of the power to turn
Speaker 1: the wheel of the bicycle so that it offsets some
Speaker 1: of the force needed. And then you have power on
Speaker 1: demand electric bicycles where the electric motor is providing all
Speaker 1: the power you need to propel the bike forward, and
Speaker 1: you can you can cut the motor off and then
Speaker 1: continue to pedal, or if you just want to have
Speaker 1: a real easy ride of it, you just power the
Speaker 1: throttle and that gives the electric motor the power to
Speaker 1: push the bike board on it, so it's you're using
Speaker 1: it as if it was a scooter. Yeah, not a
Speaker 1: bicycle at all. Right, for the power on demand systems, okay,
Speaker 1: And the pedal X when you mentioned that, I think
Speaker 1: people might be confused by the term. But that's a
Speaker 1: combination of three words. It's pedal electric cycle and it's
Speaker 1: pedal X. It's spelled a little weird, but pedal X.
Speaker 1: I've also heard elect peds simply to say that it's
Speaker 1: similar to mo peds, so instead of motor pedals, you
Speaker 1: want to think of it that way, it's electric pedals.
Speaker 1: But pedal X is definitely the more common of the
Speaker 1: two that I've seen. And you know, these are these
Speaker 1: are pretty popular, I think in um Becaus we said
Speaker 1: in cities, you know, the pedal X systems are the
Speaker 1: ones that we see a lot of, because those are
Speaker 1: the ones that if you're peddling, you get like a
Speaker 1: and I've watched a few videos of these recently. That's
Speaker 1: why I'm kind of familiar with what's going on here.
Speaker 1: But when you when you get on them and you're pedaling,
Speaker 1: it's like you're feeling something that's pushing you, but it's
Speaker 1: like it's pushing you along because these are rear wheel
Speaker 1: design things mostly. I mean, we've seen them on the
Speaker 1: front wheels, but that's more unusual. Usually they're on the
Speaker 1: back wheel, so it's pushing you along. And a lot
Speaker 1: of times when you watch these videos of people who
Speaker 1: are reviewing them or testing them or trying them for
Speaker 1: the first time, you know, never tried an ebike before,
Speaker 1: this pedal assist type system. When they get on them
Speaker 1: and they start writing, they start to giggle. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like they're laughing because they're they're barely pedaling, but
Speaker 1: their cruising along as if they were really really pumping
Speaker 1: the pedals really fast, and you're passing every other bike
Speaker 1: on the bike path. Um, you know, top speed vary
Speaker 1: between you know, different models, but you're going move along
Speaker 1: at a pretty good rate, a pretty rapid rate for
Speaker 1: the limited amount of pedaling that you're doing. And that's
Speaker 1: really the benefit of these pedal lex systems. That and
Speaker 1: you know, let's say you're writing into a headwind, are
Speaker 1: you're riding up a hill, which would be you know,
Speaker 1: pretty important here in Atlanta because it's not a flat
Speaker 1: city by any means, um so that would be helpful.
Speaker 1: But the pedal systems can be used by law enforcement.
Speaker 1: You know, if they're on bikes, it's a great thing
Speaker 1: because it gives them kind of an edge. I guess
Speaker 1: they're trying to I don't know, catch up to somebody
Speaker 1: who's on another bike. Um, it assists them in in
Speaker 1: you know, just having to do less work to get
Speaker 1: speech exactly exactly right. And there's a lot of different
Speaker 1: variety of different types of gearings and things that you
Speaker 1: can get with the different types of motors as well,
Speaker 1: so they have their own purpose. Like if you want
Speaker 1: one to go fast, you get this type of of motor.
Speaker 1: If you want one that's gonna pull a lot of weight,
Speaker 1: let's say that you're carrying a trailer, small trailer behind
Speaker 1: your bike. Cargo bikes, Yeah, cargo bikes. That's I'm glad
Speaker 1: you said that because I had written down somewhere that
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about that. Uh, there's a different
Speaker 1: type of motor than the ones we've been kind of
Speaker 1: focusing on mostly it's it's a geared motor would be
Speaker 1: more efficient for heavy loads like that if you're pulling
Speaker 1: a trailer, if you've got a cargo bike like you said,
Speaker 1: or if you're a bigger writer, you know somebody who's
Speaker 1: who's a little heavier on the heavier side, A geared
Speaker 1: motor might be the one that you want. Yeah, mid
Speaker 1: drive motors are also really good about pulling a lot
Speaker 1: of weight or kicking into two gear for something like
Speaker 1: a real steep climb. So let's say that you live
Speaker 1: in San Francisco and you've decided that you want to
Speaker 1: bike to work because you're crazy. Uh, then you may
Speaker 1: want something like a mid drive electric bicycle because it's
Speaker 1: going to give you a lot more when you start
Speaker 1: hitting those really steep hills, those really tall steep hills,
Speaker 1: I mean they're not just steep, they go on forever.
Speaker 1: We have more to say about how e bikes work,
Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break. This is a
Speaker 1: long time ago, maybe fifteen years ago. Yeah, when I
Speaker 1: went to the San Francis called had a friend who
Speaker 1: you know, I graduated with this this person and he
Speaker 1: was now working out there with his wife, and I
Speaker 1: was in town and I had never been there before,
Speaker 1: was my first time there, and they decided that the
Speaker 1: way we were going to get around town was on bicycles.
Speaker 1: So this friend doesn't like you I don't know what
Speaker 1: was going on, but I was just huffing and puffing
Speaker 1: the whole time and would have to occasionally get off
Speaker 1: and walk my bike up the hill. And as it's crazy,
Speaker 1: well as would they, and you know, they were even
Speaker 1: accustomed to it. You know, they've been doing this for
Speaker 1: a year or two years at that point, so they
Speaker 1: were in a little better shape than then. I wasn't
Speaker 1: that bike. And honestly, even you know, back I lived
Speaker 1: in Michigan at the time, Even there, I wasn't necessarily
Speaker 1: biking all the time, so it wasn't really my thing.
Speaker 1: But you know, then we're in the you know, these
Speaker 1: extremely hilly areas. Try we we rode up to the
Speaker 1: middle of the Golden Gate Bridge and you don't realize
Speaker 1: until you're on that bridge that to the midway point
Speaker 1: is uphill. Yeah, exactly. Coming back was fine, unbelievable. I couldn't.
Speaker 1: I just could not keep up with it. Treacherous place
Speaker 1: to ride a bike. And that's that's the sort of
Speaker 1: like these bikes are really good to help for folks
Speaker 1: who want to uh use a bike more frequently, but
Speaker 1: they might encounter these issues or maybe for example, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the Little Behind the Curtain. The episode we're
Speaker 1: recording right now, you guys, is the very last full
Speaker 1: episode of any podcast in How Stuff Works to use
Speaker 1: the studio building. Yeah, this studio that we are recording
Speaker 1: and right now is going to be broken down as
Speaker 1: soon as we're done, and then moved across town. Now,
Speaker 1: when we go to that new place across town, it's
Speaker 1: closer to where I live. And I'm thinking about biking
Speaker 1: to work whenever the occasion merits. It's fantastic, idea, fantastic.
Speaker 1: I also am really thinking about getting an e bike system,
Speaker 1: a pedal pedal X system to help me if because
Speaker 1: I don't want to have the experience of biking to
Speaker 1: work and arriving at work looking like I just biked
Speaker 1: to work in Atlanta, especially in the summer. Yeah, I understand,
Speaker 1: But see, you want a little bit of exercise at
Speaker 1: the same time, right, and it's going to there's gonna
Speaker 1: be hills in between you and the office and I'll
Speaker 1: pill both ways, I'm sure. And uh with you know
Speaker 1: humidity ranging in the area, you know, you can't get
Speaker 1: around the sweating. So yeah, and we're talking about several miles.
Speaker 1: It's not it's not like it's around the corner or
Speaker 1: anything like that. So it's a good twenty five minute
Speaker 1: ride from my house. Okay, so that's a that's a
Speaker 1: reasonable distance. I can completely understand why you would want
Speaker 1: something like this now. Now me, I'm not a bike
Speaker 1: rider to begin with. Um, I have one. It's collecting
Speaker 1: dust in the basement. I think, I think I still
Speaker 1: have it after the last move. I don't even know.
Speaker 1: But it's it's just not my thing. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't live in town, so I don't really have a
Speaker 1: use to just quickly grab a vehicle and get somewhere,
Speaker 1: you know, five blocks away or whatever. But that would
Speaker 1: be a perfect use for somebody, you know, if if
Speaker 1: they did have a need like that, or like you say,
Speaker 1: to get to work, you know, on days when it's
Speaker 1: sunny and and humid, when you don't necessarily want to,
Speaker 1: uh to you know, fully exert yourself get in there
Speaker 1: as well. Right, and uh. We could also differentiate really
Speaker 1: quickly between electric bikes and electric motorcycles. There are electric motorcycles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Harley Davidson is touring around with one, showing it off
Speaker 1: the kind of a prototype electric motorcycle. Yeah, that's is
Speaker 1: that the that's live wire is in it. I think
Speaker 1: it's so it's it's very quiet, you know what. I
Speaker 1: have done a podcast about this. I should remember the name,
Speaker 1: but I believe it's the Harley Davidson live Wire. It's
Speaker 1: it was the concept. They did a tour around the
Speaker 1: nation and they were allowing people to test drive that vehicle,
Speaker 1: and people who drove it really or wrote it, I guess,
Speaker 1: really really liked it. And the difference between an electric
Speaker 1: motorcycle versus an electric bike is that an electric bike
Speaker 1: has pedals that you can pedal and you know, operate
Speaker 1: under manual power, whereas electric motorcycle does not. That's the
Speaker 1: main desert, and it's extremely powerful. It's as just as
Speaker 1: powerful as Harley Davidson motorcycle would be, only an electric forms.
Speaker 1: So you know, all the all the other stuff that
Speaker 1: goes along with motorcycle ownerships still apply and and a
Speaker 1: lot of the considerations that you would have to have
Speaker 1: for a bicycle are no longer part of the thought process, right,
Speaker 1: You don't need to have you don't need to sit
Speaker 1: there and say, well, we can't put a motor on
Speaker 1: that's ex powerful because that it adds so much weight
Speaker 1: to the bicycle that a bicyclist isn't going to be
Speaker 1: able to use it. With a motorcycle, you don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about that as much. Now you just worry
Speaker 1: about how fast that things canna go. Yeah, right, So
Speaker 1: let's talk about some of these motors some of the ones. Now,
Speaker 1: keep in mind, like I said, some of these can
Speaker 1: be bought, uh completely, like you can buy a whole
Speaker 1: bike that uses this sort of stuff, or you can
Speaker 1: end up buying conversion kits or these in hub systems
Speaker 1: where it's really an e bike inside a bicycle wheel.
Speaker 1: You literally just replace a wheel with one of these
Speaker 1: and it'll turn it into an e bike, which is
Speaker 1: pretty cool. You were talking about direct drive now. The
Speaker 1: direct drive are the ones that look like a like
Speaker 1: a pie pan in the middle of your wheel. Yes,
Speaker 1: and that's the one that everything is housed within that
Speaker 1: uh that I guess it would be a plastic outer casing, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: plastic in most cases, I believe. I think, uh, you
Speaker 1: might find a couple that do some form of metal
Speaker 1: as the outside, like an aluminum exterior. But again, you
Speaker 1: want to have generally speaking, you want to have something
Speaker 1: that's going to be able to vent heat because it
Speaker 1: is going to build up heat inside of this thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly right. Now that the direct drive is just one type,
Speaker 1: there's also the geared systems of geared motors that we'll
Speaker 1: talk about as well. But if you I found a
Speaker 1: pretty good article that that describes some of the pros
Speaker 1: and cons of both types of motors. So there's direct drive,
Speaker 1: there's gear drive. There's pros for both. Now that the
Speaker 1: pros four direct drive system the piepon type you know
Speaker 1: that has everything in cased. Uh, they're they're a lot
Speaker 1: more durable than the geared systems. Uh, they're faster and
Speaker 1: they tend to be quieter as well. There's actually more
Speaker 1: pros for the geared systems that we'll talk about in
Speaker 1: just a second. But they provide less drag, they're smaller,
Speaker 1: of course, they're lighter, but they do have more torque
Speaker 1: than the than the direct drive systems. Yeah. I thought
Speaker 1: that was kind of strange, I would think, And that
Speaker 1: has to be just based on gearing, of course, I mean,
Speaker 1: because you can make that work for you however you like. Right,
Speaker 1: But the direct drive motors that we talked about, one
Speaker 1: thing we said is that it's got to have a
Speaker 1: lot of torque in order to to work because the
Speaker 1: way it's mounted on the wheel, every one rotation of
Speaker 1: the wheel is one rotation of the motors right and right.
Speaker 1: That has to be an extremely torquy motor in order
Speaker 1: for that to work. So, uh, that's the benefit of
Speaker 1: having gears. Right. You can you can play with how
Speaker 1: many times the motor has to rotate to rotate a wheel.
Speaker 1: You can you can use the different sizes of gears
Speaker 1: to determine the actual speech, so you can you can
Speaker 1: get it for speed, or you can get it for
Speaker 1: pulling or for power, so kind of like a you know,
Speaker 1: like a transmission in a car. Uh. And so you
Speaker 1: you use these different things for different purposes, like if
Speaker 1: you want to have a bike where it's just going
Speaker 1: to be the simplest version. The direct drive makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense. Uh. It is as the fewest moving
Speaker 1: parts of an electric motor compared to the other variations
Speaker 1: that we've seen, and most of the kits that you'll
Speaker 1: find or that you'll see have have that direct drive
Speaker 1: type of sub Now I've seen some that are geared
Speaker 1: that are still all self contained, which is kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: But uh, you know it's it's where you see, like essentially,
Speaker 1: there's a gear that the motor turns, then there are
Speaker 1: maybe two gears that interlock with that, and then it
Speaker 1: goes inside a larger casing has a gear mounted teeth
Speaker 1: mounted on the internal wall of the the hub, and
Speaker 1: that that's what causes the hub to turn, thus making
Speaker 1: the wheel turn. Um. So all of that can be
Speaker 1: completely enclosed too. But you can also have what what
Speaker 1: I call mid drive motors. Where are you have the
Speaker 1: external motor. It's not inside the hub of the wheel,
Speaker 1: it's mounted to the exterior of your bike. Um. It
Speaker 1: typically uh, it taps directly into your bicycles gear drive train.
Speaker 1: So you essentially replace the chain wheel that your pedals
Speaker 1: would attach to. The cranks on your pedals would attach
Speaker 1: that I think they call that the crank set. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you would replace that with the motor, the electric motor version.
Speaker 1: You know that it has the same sort of wheel
Speaker 1: that you would have to mount the chain to, but
Speaker 1: the motor helps drive that wheel so that when you
Speaker 1: start pedaling, the motor drives the actual wheel that you're
Speaker 1: their pedal cranks are attached to. This sounds a lot
Speaker 1: closer to the like a motorcycle set up, swapping the
Speaker 1: gasoline engine for the electric motor, of course, but it's
Speaker 1: it's closer in position and the way that it drives
Speaker 1: that rear wheel, you know, with a chain or a
Speaker 1: belt in some cases. Right, that's interesting. Those are a
Speaker 1: lot less common then then, would be the direct drive motor,
Speaker 1: which is the hub one or the other one that
Speaker 1: the more complex geared system that you described. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and these also tend to get really super expensive. These
Speaker 1: are the ones that can be really efficient because they're
Speaker 1: already using the ideal gears to turn your bicycle wheel.
Speaker 1: They're using the gears that the bicycle wheel uses anyway
Speaker 1: they would use under your normal pedal. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: one thing that the direct drive motor does not provide
Speaker 1: you with. So you know, the one that looks like
Speaker 1: the pie pan again, that really turns any bike that
Speaker 1: you're riding into a single speed bike. But that's really
Speaker 1: all you need. And that was pointed out in one
Speaker 1: of the reviews. I know when the guy's right and
Speaker 1: he's saying, well, you know, I have the ability to
Speaker 1: switch gears here, but I can't do that now that
Speaker 1: this is mounted but I don't even need it because
Speaker 1: this kind of adapts to whatever whatever I need to happen.
Speaker 1: You know. If I need to go faster, I just
Speaker 1: pedal a little faster. If I need to slow down,
Speaker 1: I back it down. And you know, that's one thing
Speaker 1: that we should mention too, is that, um some of
Speaker 1: the reviewers were saying that there's that that instant where
Speaker 1: you need to stop, you know, and this thing is
Speaker 1: still powering, and it's there's a signal that's that's sent
Speaker 1: to that that that motor, that direct drive motor, and
Speaker 1: it's usually by slightly back pedaling, like you know on
Speaker 1: a tent speed where you can kind of freewheel, you
Speaker 1: can back backpedal without having to you know, hit a
Speaker 1: coaster break like you went on an older bike, as
Speaker 1: long as you're not either on a yeah, like an
Speaker 1: old single speed bike where you would you would use
Speaker 1: the pedal brakes and that didn't have any handbrakes, just
Speaker 1: pedal brakes, or or even a fixed gear bike where
Speaker 1: you could pedal backwards and that would actually cause the
Speaker 1: wheels to go. Oh yeah, you know the fixies as
Speaker 1: the bike bicycle enthusiasts like Dixies that never so, so
Speaker 1: that's so that's what's going on with this is that
Speaker 1: when you want to stop, when you want the assist
Speaker 1: part of this to stop, you back pedal slightly and
Speaker 1: then you use the handbrakes to bring yourself to complete stop.
Speaker 1: But there's that the one moment, you know, where it
Speaker 1: depends on how fast you're going, if it's you know,
Speaker 1: five ft or ten feet that you travel in that time, Uh,
Speaker 1: there's that moment where it's pushing you along you would
Speaker 1: rather be stopping, or you're you're you're trying to you
Speaker 1: have to kind of plan ahead. I guess a little
Speaker 1: more with this type of setup Bright and now they
Speaker 1: haven't quite got it exactly right where it immediately responds
Speaker 1: to the need. Well, yeah, because when they're cutting power,
Speaker 1: what you're doing is well, well I'll talk more about
Speaker 1: what's actually going on inside the motors here. When you're
Speaker 1: cutting power, you're essentially cutting electricity to electromagnets. But you know,
Speaker 1: it takes it takes a moment for that that attraction
Speaker 1: between your the magnets, the permanent magnets or potentially another
Speaker 1: electromagnets inside the hub of your wheel two um stop
Speaker 1: being attracted in that circular motion stopp being driven forward.
Speaker 1: And this isn't so bad by any means that you know,
Speaker 1: it's not worth buying it or anything like that. It's
Speaker 1: just it's it's something that everybody noted, like, oh that's
Speaker 1: a little strange. But once I adjust to that, everything
Speaker 1: works out fine. Right. So you know, let me talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about how those electric motors are working
Speaker 1: and the basis on the electromagnetism. So I've talked about
Speaker 1: this so many times on tech stuff, and I know
Speaker 1: you long term fans who have heard the electro magnetic
Speaker 1: lecture a billion times, so um, you know, go ahead
Speaker 1: and put this on two time speed and you can
Speaker 1: get through it. But I gotta I gotta cover it.
Speaker 1: So the basics of electromagnetism, if you have a coil
Speaker 1: of a conducting material, if you if you coil that
Speaker 1: conducting material around a core, like you know, the classic
Speaker 1: classroom example is you taken an iron nail and you
Speaker 1: wrap some copper wire around the iron nail, and then
Speaker 1: you run an electrical current through that wire. Uh, that
Speaker 1: electrical current will create a magnetic field and it will
Speaker 1: turn into an electro magnet. You can react with ferress materials,
Speaker 1: fairest metals, and uh so you can pick up iron
Speaker 1: filings with this thing. Because now you've got a magnet.
Speaker 1: If you put alternating current through it, then you've created
Speaker 1: a fluctuating magnetic field, which gets pretty interesting and is
Speaker 1: the basis of a lot of important technology. But anyway,
Speaker 1: if you've got these electromagnets, it creates this magnetic field.
Speaker 1: It will attract other opposite polled magnet materials. So if
Speaker 1: you have permanent magnets, let's say you've got a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of neodymium magnets. Those are very popular for a
Speaker 1: lot of applications these days, and you set them up
Speaker 1: around let's say a wheel, a free rotating wheel, and
Speaker 1: then you've got stationary electro magnets, and you can control
Speaker 1: which electrode magnets are turning on and off at any
Speaker 1: given moment, and you turn them on and off in
Speaker 1: a pattern so that it's constantly attracting and repelling the magnets,
Speaker 1: so that it creates a rotational force that will cause
Speaker 1: the wheel to rotate. Now this isn't free energy, because
Speaker 1: you're pouring electricity into those electro magnets. This is often
Speaker 1: one of the basics of You'll see people who are
Speaker 1: peddling something they're calling a perpetual motion machine, but in
Speaker 1: reality it's using electro magnets, which means that it has
Speaker 1: to get power from somewhere, which means it's not truly
Speaker 1: perpetual motion. It means it's perpetual motion as long as
Speaker 1: the electricity doesn't run out. It's funny you said pedaling, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: so uh. You know, sometimes the pun is unintended, as
Speaker 1: in this case, and sometimes it is intended. So with
Speaker 1: this rotational force, that's what provides the basics of the
Speaker 1: electric motor. By the way, the reverse is also true.
Speaker 1: If you put a conductor into a fluctuating magnetic field,
Speaker 1: then it will induce electricity to flow through that conductor.
Speaker 1: So in other words, if I have an uh, if
Speaker 1: I take that wire and I move it to something
Speaker 1: where there's a fluctuating magnetic field, meaning I'm I've got
Speaker 1: this polarity reversing over and over and over again, electricity
Speaker 1: will flow through that copper wire. So the first version
Speaker 1: I mentioned, that's the basics of the electric motor. The
Speaker 1: second one is the basics of dynamos and magnetos and
Speaker 1: even alternators. So uh, with all that in mind, that
Speaker 1: direct drive system we were talking about is the easiest
Speaker 1: to imagine. Think of the electro magnets as a a
Speaker 1: circle of these coils of wire. So the coils of
Speaker 1: wire are kind of if you're thinking of it in
Speaker 1: that pie shape. You turn the bicycle wheel on its side,
Speaker 1: and you you were to pull off the cover, you
Speaker 1: look at essentially a little columns of of coils of
Speaker 1: electric wire set up in a circle. Uh. And these
Speaker 1: would be stationary relative to the rotation of the wheel.
Speaker 1: They are mounted to the axle, they do not rotate, Okay,
Speaker 1: so they are they they're going to remain stationary compared
Speaker 1: to the rotation of the wheel. Around this, you would
Speaker 1: have a rotating uh wheel rotating or rotating chamber that
Speaker 1: has permanent magnets mounted on it. All right, Now, these
Speaker 1: are the magnets that are going to be attracted and
Speaker 1: repelled by the electro magnets in the center. And because
Speaker 1: these can rotate, that change in electromagnetism is what's going
Speaker 1: to make it move and make the wheel turn, whether
Speaker 1: it's to assist you or to completely take over and
Speaker 1: act as an electric throttle. So that's where your direct
Speaker 1: drive system comes in exactly. And there are some that
Speaker 1: I've seen that connect as both, like the mid drive.
Speaker 1: Some of the mid drives cann act as pedal assist
Speaker 1: or then you can switch it to throttle control and
Speaker 1: then it just completely takes over for you. Um. So
Speaker 1: this is, uh, this is the very basic version, the
Speaker 1: easiest one to understand with the electric motors, and that
Speaker 1: that chamber of permanent magnets when it does one full rotation,
Speaker 1: that's the full rotation of the wheel, right. And uh,
Speaker 1: usually you have a multiple phase electric motor, and that
Speaker 1: sounds really complicated, but it's actually really easy. In fact,
Speaker 1: I'll give you a very simple example. Let's imagine that
Speaker 1: we have a clock, an analog clock, round clock, regular
Speaker 1: old thing you've seen a billion times. Now, imagine that
Speaker 1: instead of a number at each space where there normally
Speaker 1: would be one, you've got one of those coils of
Speaker 1: electric or a copper wire. So you've got an electro
Speaker 1: magnet at each of the number spots. If you have
Speaker 1: a phase three motor, that means that one third of
Speaker 1: those numbers are all going to essentially switch on and
Speaker 1: switch off. Simultaneously. The other two thirds will do the
Speaker 1: same with their respective groups. So with the twelve number
Speaker 1: version for a standard clock, your twelve o'clock, three o'clock,
Speaker 1: six o'clock, and nine o'clock positions would all turn on
Speaker 1: and off simultaneously. Then you would have the one o'clock,
Speaker 1: four o'clock, seven o'clock, and ten o'clock one's doing the
Speaker 1: same and the two, five, eight, and eleven o'clock one's
Speaker 1: doing the same. And by switching between these you can
Speaker 1: have a smoother transition. To keep the bike wheel moving
Speaker 1: as smoothly as possible, it's not being up, slowing down,
Speaker 1: speeding up slowly, right right, It's to try and keep
Speaker 1: that nice and smooth. And obviously the more phases you
Speaker 1: have than at least to some point, the smoother the
Speaker 1: the experience will be. Oh you made that very easy
Speaker 1: to understand. Yeah, so, uh, you know, I I looked
Speaker 1: at this a lot to try and figure out how
Speaker 1: I was going to explain it worked. Well, thank you,
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. So, yeah, that's that makes the direct
Speaker 1: drive really easy to understand. The geared ones are a
Speaker 1: little a little more complicated, but not by a whole
Speaker 1: lot Yeah, they're they're different and they've got some parts
Speaker 1: that wear as well because they've got nylon gears and
Speaker 1: as you can imagine those those uh, you know, grinding
Speaker 1: on each other. Um, they're going to show signs of
Speaker 1: wear over time and you have to replace parts in them.
Speaker 1: So they're a little bit more complex than that. There's
Speaker 1: a there's actually quite a few different things. You know,
Speaker 1: they're a little bit noisier. Um, they have a lower
Speaker 1: top speed typically. Now that again, we can talk about
Speaker 1: gearing again if you want, but I think that everybody
Speaker 1: kind of understands that that you can play with it
Speaker 1: gearing however you want for for an increased top speed
Speaker 1: if you need to, but typically they have a lower
Speaker 1: top speed. If you buy a bike that has a
Speaker 1: set up with a geared system, it's more for um
Speaker 1: the heavy duty applications like the pulling or the towing
Speaker 1: and um, as we mentioned, durability, right, that's that's one
Speaker 1: thing that the you know, getting in there to service them,
Speaker 1: if you have to do this yourself or you know,
Speaker 1: it could be expensive. I guess probably more expensive in
Speaker 1: the long run because of because of maintenance. And you're
Speaker 1: probably talking like bucks at least to bring it into
Speaker 1: a bike shop to have a service. And honestly, the prices,
Speaker 1: I mean from the kits that I was looking at.
Speaker 1: You know, the difference between buying a kit to add
Speaker 1: to your bike. You know, the difference between a geared
Speaker 1: motor and a direct drive motor. It was just about identical.
Speaker 1: So you know, the the added expense that you're gonna
Speaker 1: have with a geared motor is something you have to consider,
Speaker 1: you know, somewhere down the road, you know, whether it
Speaker 1: be a year down the road or I don't know
Speaker 1: how often it would have to be serviced. I think
Speaker 1: it depends on use. Really, we've got a little bit
Speaker 1: more about how e bikes work after these quick messages. Well,
Speaker 1: one other thing I would mention about the direct drive
Speaker 1: systems that is a drawback, small one. It's something called cogging. Cogging.
Speaker 1: I saw a someone trying to, uh, trying to depict
Speaker 1: this on one of the reviews and I didn't quite
Speaker 1: see what it was. So, so cogging is where you've
Speaker 1: got these magnets right inside inside the direct drive. They're
Speaker 1: constantly rotating because they're in the part that moves along
Speaker 1: with the rotation force of the wheel. Yeah, if you
Speaker 1: have your system unpowered, so you don't have any pedal
Speaker 1: like going, that's the electro magnets are off. Those magnets
Speaker 1: are somewhat attracted to the materials at the core of
Speaker 1: that wheel, the stationary part. So that part of stationary
Speaker 1: with respect to the ground, like with respect to the
Speaker 1: rest of the bike, and who wouldn't be that's a
Speaker 1: good looking part, yeah, exactly. So when you're trying to pedal,
Speaker 1: that means that these magnets are slightly attracted to that
Speaker 1: stationary part the resisting moving, So you have to overcome
Speaker 1: that magnetic resistance to get them to move. It's not
Speaker 1: necessarily a significant like, it's not it's not like you're
Speaker 1: gonna be like straining to move forward a few inches,
Speaker 1: but it means you have to work a little harder initially, yeah,
Speaker 1: to to get it moving because it has this drag effect.
Speaker 1: So it's called cogging, but really you can think of
Speaker 1: it as drag in the sense that it's a magnetic
Speaker 1: drag that is listed as one of the cons on
Speaker 1: this in this article that I'm kind of following along
Speaker 1: with here and the the article I mean, it's from
Speaker 1: a site called e Bite kit dot com, so that's
Speaker 1: where you can also buy a kit. But it was
Speaker 1: a review blog post was done by somebody and um,
Speaker 1: one of the cons that they mentioned for direct drive
Speaker 1: is drag, drag when you when you pedal. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: the other ones, you know, the geared systems, I guess
Speaker 1: don't have that kind of drag, but there's more noise
Speaker 1: because those gears are constantly spining in there. Um. The
Speaker 1: other thing, the other cons I guess we should want
Speaker 1: to just list them now for the DIRECTORIZ system are
Speaker 1: that it has typically has less range. Uh there are
Speaker 1: a lot you know, a lot bigger, and they're heavier
Speaker 1: than the geared systems would because the geared systems can
Speaker 1: be much smaller. They're they're again it's just based on gearing,
Speaker 1: how efficient you want to make them. And we've talked
Speaker 1: about batteries. We've talked and I felt like I missed
Speaker 1: my chance to mention this, but the size of the
Speaker 1: battery matters as well. Uh So you want a big,
Speaker 1: powerful battery, you're gonna go a little bit fatter. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be able to power that. You know, that that motor,
Speaker 1: whether it's a direct drive or whether it's a geared system,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be able to to I guess expel expend
Speaker 1: more juice to make that thing go a little faster. UM.
Speaker 1: It's it's very similar to if you think about the
Speaker 1: like the Tesla cars. UM. You know, there's the version
Speaker 1: I think it has a sixty kill a lot. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think I'm getting these numbers right, I hope I am.
Speaker 1: Uh sixty kill a lot battery, and then there's an
Speaker 1: eight five kill a lot battery and it's the the
Speaker 1: higher performance version. So it depends on the battery size
Speaker 1: and the output of that battery, how fast you're gonna go,
Speaker 1: Also the size of the motor, the output of the motor.
Speaker 1: You know, you need to get the right pairing. And
Speaker 1: there's some other really cool things that we're starting to
Speaker 1: see paired with these electric bytes bikes, especially the wheel
Speaker 1: systems that are coming out there too, in particular that
Speaker 1: I was really interested in. But there's more than that.
Speaker 1: You actually mentioned another one when we were talking before
Speaker 1: we came in here, but the Copenhagen or Copenhagen wheel
Speaker 1: from m I T and the fly Cli wheel, which
Speaker 1: UH some have suggested might have taken more than a
Speaker 1: little bit of inspiration from the Copenhagen wheel. But the
Speaker 1: truth is, these direct drive motors all look the same.
Speaker 1: It's all the same ideas, so that's hard to say.
Speaker 1: The implementation is really what's important here because it also
Speaker 1: depends on the sensors that you include, and that's where
Speaker 1: we were starting to see more complexity like that. When
Speaker 1: you break it down, a direct drive in hub system
Speaker 1: is one of the simplest electric motors that you can have,
Speaker 1: But the complexity comes in these other sensors that come
Speaker 1: to play, Like some of these kits you uh, you know,
Speaker 1: how do they know when to kick in and help
Speaker 1: give you pedal assystem? For example, some of them, you
Speaker 1: mount a small magnet on one of the spokes of
Speaker 1: your wheel, and mounted to a stationary part of the
Speaker 1: bicycle is a sensor and every time the magnet passes
Speaker 1: the sensor, it it uh clocks it so it knows,
Speaker 1: all right, the wheels having this many rotations per minute,
Speaker 1: therefore they're pedaling this amount. Therefore I will kick in
Speaker 1: this much assistance. Yeah, you know, about thirty years ago,
Speaker 1: I had a spedometer on a bicycle that worked the
Speaker 1: same way. It's it's really simple. It's really basic and
Speaker 1: a lot of there's a lot of sensors in automobiles
Speaker 1: that work that same way as well. It's just a
Speaker 1: counter it's just counting one, two, three's well, it's just
Speaker 1: more like one one, one, But but it's just every
Speaker 1: rotation is saying, it's just registering that right as movement.
Speaker 1: And then there are other ones that are torque sensors, right,
Speaker 1: These are these are calculating how much force the bicyclist
Speaker 1: is applying to the pedal and it kicks in the
Speaker 1: electric motor to help counteract that force to keep it
Speaker 1: either very smooth or to just say, like, all right,
Speaker 1: we have a threshold here, and anything beyond this threshold
Speaker 1: we need to kick in the electronic assess so that
Speaker 1: way we're not making the bicyclist pedal too hard. And
Speaker 1: it's a bit more complex, yeah, obviously. Yeah, And then
Speaker 1: it also means that it tends to be more expensive,
Speaker 1: Like the systems that have that version of sensor are
Speaker 1: more expensive than the the ones that just count rotations.
Speaker 1: And some of these are wired systems and some are
Speaker 1: wireless systems. And we talked about earlier, We talked about
Speaker 1: the control of these these systems and some of the readouts,
Speaker 1: you know, because a lot of the kids come with
Speaker 1: an LCD dashboard and it'll tell you all the information
Speaker 1: you need to need to know about you know, the
Speaker 1: range that you know what you have left, battery power, etcetera.
Speaker 1: You know just how much help you're getting, like whether
Speaker 1: it's uh, you know, a little bit of help or
Speaker 1: a lot of help, that kind of stuff. You can
Speaker 1: put it in different modes like Eco mode, which is
Speaker 1: you know, less help and it's it saves the battery
Speaker 1: I guess you have an extended amount of range, or
Speaker 1: you can put it in performance mode or whatever they
Speaker 1: call it by the manufacturer. But some of them are
Speaker 1: controlled with your smartphone and how this is one of
Speaker 1: the downsides of this though. I mean, it's really cool
Speaker 1: that you can do that, and you can mount it
Speaker 1: right in the center of your of your handlebars, you know,
Speaker 1: right where you can see it, But you still have
Speaker 1: to avert your eyes from the traffic or wherever you
Speaker 1: are in order to look down at that smartphone, and
Speaker 1: then you have to interact with it. So it's sort
Speaker 1: of akin to texting and driving or texting and biking
Speaker 1: in a way. I know, they make the controls very easy.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's large buttons. You just touched and
Speaker 1: swipe and once you get accustomed to where that is,
Speaker 1: you might be able to do that, you know, relatively quickly.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't have to stare at stare at
Speaker 1: it for quite as long as you will when it's
Speaker 1: new to you. But you know, the more options you have,
Speaker 1: the more the more complex the interface is going to be.
Speaker 1: So for example, if you have the Copenhangen wheel, it's
Speaker 1: got a lot of different options, right, and you have
Speaker 1: an app that connects to the wheel, and it's using
Speaker 1: low energy Bluetooth, so it's not sipping a whole lot
Speaker 1: of power, although in fact, I would say that for
Speaker 1: your smartphone the most power that's been consumed is just
Speaker 1: powering the display, like that display is going to suck
Speaker 1: up more battery power than the low energy bluetooth. However,
Speaker 1: all that being said, if you've got lots and lots
Speaker 1: of options, that means you've got to swipe through stuff too,
Speaker 1: and that makes it even more complicated because your your
Speaker 1: attention is taken away from your surroundings in the road
Speaker 1: even more so that you can switch. Uh. They also
Speaker 1: have options for things like regenerative breaking or regenerating some
Speaker 1: of that electricity by putting it into exercise mode, which
Speaker 1: is where you're you're kind of working against the motor.
Speaker 1: The idea being that, uh, it's it's sort of reversing
Speaker 1: this this trend. Instead of uh, the electricity causing the
Speaker 1: motor to turn and thus giving you help, you are
Speaker 1: pushing the motor, which is causing electricity to flow the
Speaker 1: other direction and recharge of the battery. It's turning a
Speaker 1: motor into a dynamo in the words. Yeah, and now
Speaker 1: one of the one of the models that I saw, um,
Speaker 1: you know, demode I think it was maybe the Copenhagen
Speaker 1: wheel is the one that if you're backpedaling as you're
Speaker 1: in motion, if you're so so the motor, you're you're
Speaker 1: saying to the motor you don't want it to assist
Speaker 1: you in pedaling at this point, and you backpedal. That's
Speaker 1: the regenerative mode. That's what it's. It's you're gaining battery power,
Speaker 1: I guess by doing that. And you can also make
Speaker 1: a hill work for you in the same way. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you're going down the hill, you put an exercise mode,
Speaker 1: which normally would mean you'd have to pedal harder to
Speaker 1: get to wherever you were going. Let's say you're on
Speaker 1: a totally flat surface. You've got everything turned off and
Speaker 1: you and you ride across this flat surface. You're using
Speaker 1: a certain amount of energy in order to do that.
Speaker 1: If you turned on exercise mode, you'd have to put
Speaker 1: in a little extra energy because now you're working against
Speaker 1: that motor to kind of regenerate electricity. If you're going
Speaker 1: down the hill, you let gravity do that extra work
Speaker 1: for you. So you switch from pedal assist to exercise
Speaker 1: and you can regenerate some of the electricity, giving your
Speaker 1: battery a little bit extra juice that you can make
Speaker 1: it all the way to work. But that means having
Speaker 1: to switch modes in mid ride. And that's where we're
Speaker 1: getting into this, like how do you do that in
Speaker 1: a way that's not distracting the bicycle. We'll see what
Speaker 1: that one. You're not looking down at the screen and
Speaker 1: swiping through. You're just physically doing something. And I thought
Speaker 1: that was a great way to handle that. And then
Speaker 1: you know, you just slightly backpedal. Everybody can remember that,
Speaker 1: and you don't have to look down to do that.
Speaker 1: And I was thinking, why don't they start to incorporate
Speaker 1: some of these controls in the handlebars as if it
Speaker 1: would be a game controller. Because once you learn a
Speaker 1: game controller, and you know what, it takes you ten
Speaker 1: minutes or if it takes you ten weeks to learn
Speaker 1: that game controller, you know, maybe not ten weeks, but
Speaker 1: you understand where it is. You don't have to look down,
Speaker 1: you know, find out where the X button is or
Speaker 1: where the A button is. It becomes natural. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a you know, um memory, muscle memory. That's the term.
Speaker 1: So once if you if you were to have a
Speaker 1: system that was universal, you know that all design all
Speaker 1: e bike designers used it, you know, that used the
Speaker 1: same hand controls on the on the not the pegs
Speaker 1: on the handlebars, handle grips. It would be something that
Speaker 1: I think everybody could benefit from because you know, you
Speaker 1: could sure you can still have your your phone there
Speaker 1: and you could have that you know, set up so
Speaker 1: that yeah, I'm gonna I'm just gonna put it in
Speaker 1: eco mode and I'm gonna leave it there, but every
Speaker 1: other control, you know, from that point on, I can
Speaker 1: use hand controls without looking down. I think that would
Speaker 1: be great for somebody who's in traffic and crowded cities
Speaker 1: like what we're talking about now, most of them aren't
Speaker 1: as advanced as that we were talking about. That's that's
Speaker 1: the top end, really expensive ones. The ones that I'm
Speaker 1: sure that you know most of you know, the people
Speaker 1: in these crowded cities that have these kind of early
Speaker 1: versions of e bikes, they're not that complex. They they
Speaker 1: respond more to the physical commands like what we were
Speaker 1: talking about with the back pedaling for the generation and
Speaker 1: things like that. And some of them do have things
Speaker 1: like thumb throttles or thumb controls to either said on
Speaker 1: uh you know, pedal assist, or they might have a
Speaker 1: twist throttle for the fully powered electric bikes sure like
Speaker 1: a mini biker a motorbike would have. Yeah, so there
Speaker 1: there are those versions. But the ones that I've seen,
Speaker 1: like the fly Lie in the Copenhagen both of those
Speaker 1: are completely one wheel systems that then hook up like
Speaker 1: once you once you detach your existing rear wheel and
Speaker 1: then install the the Copenhagen wheel or the fly Lie wheel. Uh,
Speaker 1: then all you do is you hook it up to
Speaker 1: your smartphone and then that's what it activates. It. So
Speaker 1: it also has some interesting safety features, like you can
Speaker 1: deactivate it so that if someone were to take your wheel,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be of any use to them because they
Speaker 1: couldn't turn it back on again. You mentioned theft, right,
Speaker 1: because that's uh, that's something that a lot of people
Speaker 1: would be concerned with if their back wheel of their
Speaker 1: bike is where is now worth two thousand dollars just
Speaker 1: one wheel? Right? I mean it's just a matter of
Speaker 1: two bolts to get that thing off of there, right,
Speaker 1: So you park your bike and it's worth two thousand
Speaker 1: dollars the back end and then whatever else the rest
Speaker 1: of the bike costs probably an expensive bike, I guess.
Speaker 1: So what what prevents somebody from just either walking away
Speaker 1: with your bike, which I guess they could do anyways,
Speaker 1: or just taking that that that wheel off. I mean,
Speaker 1: you have to be very creative about how you chain
Speaker 1: this thing up or or what you do with it.
Speaker 1: But there's there's a safety in place, I guess if
Speaker 1: it does walk away, right. Yeah, there's a couple of them, right.
Speaker 1: There's one that has the electric motor turn off and
Speaker 1: it doesn't turn on again until it recognizes the handshake
Speaker 1: with your particular smartphone because you've paired it. Uh. There's
Speaker 1: also some that have GPS in them, so that should
Speaker 1: the wheel go wandering, you can track down where it
Speaker 1: is kind of similar to like where's my iPhone? That
Speaker 1: sort of stuff will alert you if it's moving when
Speaker 1: you're not near it. Yeah, which is interesting like that,
Speaker 1: and it's a useful feature. Uh. The Copenhagen one, I
Speaker 1: think is seven and I think the fly Cli is
Speaker 1: something like six hundred. Uh they're they're about a hundred
Speaker 1: dollars off, I remember that. And uh so they're both
Speaker 1: pretty expensive. I mean, if you're looking at a brand
Speaker 1: new bicycle, depending upon what market you're in, it could
Speaker 1: be the same price as your bike, and that's just
Speaker 1: a wheel. So and and the e bike Kits that
Speaker 1: I was I was mentioning, you know, that's that that
Speaker 1: I keep saying that side. I hope you don't mind.
Speaker 1: But it's the bike kit dot com because they have
Speaker 1: a lot of good information there as well. And again
Speaker 1: they range from about seven d and seventy five dollars
Speaker 1: up to about two thousand. Was the top one I saw.
Speaker 1: But you're talking about different um completely different packages like
Speaker 1: that seven seventy five kid, it doesn't. It has no
Speaker 1: battery and it has no charger. Um, so you're gonna
Speaker 1: have to add on to that thing, right. The other
Speaker 1: one has everything as I mentioned. But the difference, one
Speaker 1: of the biggest differences is in the top speed and
Speaker 1: the range of these things. So you know, the lower
Speaker 1: kids tend to have a lower top speed and in
Speaker 1: a slightly less range you know, or lower range, I guess.
Speaker 1: And as far as the distance you can travel, um,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe maybe the low end one is like,
Speaker 1: you know, twelve to fifteen miles with power assist, and
Speaker 1: the upper arrange one can go all the way up
Speaker 1: to about fifty four miles. So a fifty four mile
Speaker 1: bike ride on one charge. That's pretty good, I mean.
Speaker 1: And you know, top speed of about twenty eight miles
Speaker 1: per hour. Now you might be limited in some cities
Speaker 1: to what speed you're allowed to travel because there are
Speaker 1: restrictions on some of these things. And the UK it's
Speaker 1: an hour, which is about fifteen yeah, and here it's
Speaker 1: a little bit faster in the States here I think
Speaker 1: it was what twenty is. And then there's that odd
Speaker 1: strange thing. It's not it's not so odd really when
Speaker 1: you really think about it, because everyboy's gonna want to
Speaker 1: go a little bit faster, right, There's it's gonna be
Speaker 1: the group that wants the sport version, right. So there's
Speaker 1: the s pedal X for those people, and that stands
Speaker 1: for Speedy Pedal X. And the difference is there they
Speaker 1: have a more powerful motor. Um. You know, of course
Speaker 1: you can do unlimited pedal assists if you want, so
Speaker 1: it can be kind of like a power on demand
Speaker 1: type system. Um, oh, you know what, I'm going to
Speaker 1: take that back again. I don't know if it will
Speaker 1: do that, but it has unlimited what I'm saying it now,
Speaker 1: I'm understand it. It's a it's unlimited pedal assists. So
Speaker 1: you know, once you reach that twenty miles per hour,
Speaker 1: it doesn't kind of cut out like the ones that
Speaker 1: are limited, so you're capable of powering it further. It
Speaker 1: will continue to assist, and you would be because it's
Speaker 1: one of those things where like you, because it's a
Speaker 1: pedal assist system, you would be able to get up
Speaker 1: to twenty miles per hour no problem. And then once
Speaker 1: you continue, it's like you're putting out less energy to
Speaker 1: go faster, and then you put out just a little
Speaker 1: bit more and you can go way faster and it
Speaker 1: just carries on. And I'm sure there's got to be
Speaker 1: an upper limit. There has to be a a top limit,
Speaker 1: but really the speed cutout is set far far higher.
Speaker 1: And for this type of system, uh, you know, things
Speaker 1: like um, you know, helmets and protective gear are required
Speaker 1: because they realize that it's closer to a scooter or
Speaker 1: a motorcycle even in some phases depends on how fast
Speaker 1: you can go. But the speedy pedal X or something
Speaker 1: for you know, the people that want to kind of
Speaker 1: take it to the next level, right, I don't think
Speaker 1: I'm gonna need anything quite at that level if I
Speaker 1: if I do invest in one of these, uh, And
Speaker 1: I gotta say that something else we should mention is
Speaker 1: that the in hub systems do have other other things.
Speaker 1: You gotta remember. For one, it's going to offset the
Speaker 1: weight of your bicycle, like it's going to put a
Speaker 1: lot more weight on whatever wheel you're replacing. Yes, and
Speaker 1: we're talking like ballpark ten pounds. I mean that's right
Speaker 1: around where it is. It's that you know, I've seen
Speaker 1: nine pound systems and I've seen thirteen pound systems, So
Speaker 1: somewhere in there. Yeah, so that's gonna be something to
Speaker 1: keep in mind. The as opposed to some of the
Speaker 1: other like the mid drive systems, they kind of balance
Speaker 1: the weight out across the frame of the bicycle, so
Speaker 1: you don't have one section of the bike that is,
Speaker 1: uh is heavier than it otherwise would be. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's well, it's important for riding, you know, for
Speaker 1: the the way it feels on the road, but it's
Speaker 1: even more important when you're trying to carry it up
Speaker 1: the stairs and put it in your house at night. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'll be I'll be sure to keep all of
Speaker 1: my listeners posted if I if I invest in one
Speaker 1: of these things, I would love to see it if
Speaker 1: you were if you ride that into work, I would
Speaker 1: love to come down to the parking structure or whatever
Speaker 1: and maybe even take it for a quick sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. Yeah, it's funny because it will mean that
Speaker 1: my wheel will be much more valuable, or at least
Speaker 1: cost a lot more than my bike did because I
Speaker 1: got my bike for free, so so automatically the wheel
Speaker 1: will be more expensive a free bike. Yeah, that's nice.
Speaker 1: There's a thing called free cycle Atlanta where people give
Speaker 1: away stuff when they don't have space for it anymore.
Speaker 1: And you found a bike and the guy was given
Speaker 1: away his bike. Wow, so I got a bike. It's
Speaker 1: not it's not fancy, it's not it's not a super
Speaker 1: fancy bike, but it's it's a bike. Do they have
Speaker 1: any boats there? You know? I like a boat, but
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily want to buy a boat. The second
Speaker 1: happiest day of my life was when I bought my boat.
Speaker 1: Happiest day of my life was when I sold it.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, Scott, thank you for coming on the show.
Speaker 1: Of course, my pleasure and and in in addition to
Speaker 1: the website you mentioned, I also want to mention electric
Speaker 1: bike review dot com which has some great articles and
Speaker 1: some great videos. If you are interested in buying an
Speaker 1: electric bike or buying a conversion kit, they have everything
Speaker 1: you would need to know, and they also review them
Speaker 1: so you can actually look and see if they've reviewed
Speaker 1: the system you're interested in and see what they have
Speaker 1: to say about it. Always helpful. Yeah. They had like
Speaker 1: a fifteen minute long review of the Copenhagen Wheel for example,
Speaker 1: which was very interesting. They went into great to tail
Speaker 1: about it. I hope you enjoyed that classic episode on
Speaker 1: how e bikes work and maintain your balance all the
Speaker 1: way through. Um, I would love to get an e bike.
Speaker 1: I've talked about it a couple of times about about
Speaker 1: picking one up, just haven't done it. Back when I
Speaker 1: was making regular trips into the office, I thought man
Speaker 1: an e bike would really make things a lot easier
Speaker 1: for me to get to and from work because it's
Speaker 1: an hour long walk, which you know, I often took
Speaker 1: as a way to catch up on podcasts and sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, get into the right mindset. But it would
Speaker 1: be like a twenty minute bike ride, and just getting
Speaker 1: those forty minutes back would be really nice. However, I've
Speaker 1: been working from home for the last like two years,
Speaker 1: so I guess it really doesn't matter now, though I
Speaker 1: still kind of would like one. So maybe one of
Speaker 1: these days I'll pick one up. If you have suggestions
Speaker 1: for topics I should cover on future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: please reach out to me. The handle for the show
Speaker 1: is tech Stuff h s W on Twitter, and I
Speaker 1: look forward to hearing from you. You'll hear from me
Speaker 1: because I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff
Speaker 1: is an I Heart radio production for more podcasts from
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