Power vs Pedal: An In-Depth Look at the Maintenance Needs of Ebikes vs Bicycles
I was slumming it on Twitter today when I came across the following post: Say it isn’t so I started to really think about this chart and started to think about if I agreed with his theory that adding...
View ArticleCharging an Electric Car with a 4kW Off Grid system and an Electric Tractor...
18 months ago I bought a Chevy Bolt for about 1/2 off sticker price. The Bolt has been awesome with the sole exception that I had no way to charge it at my wife’s house which is off grid and over an...
View Article12 Ebikes that use a hubmotor as a non-hub
A direct drive hubmotor is affordable, simple, and robust. However, they turn at the same low speed as the drive-wheel. Electric motors perform best at higher RPM’s and that is why the most common...
View ArticleCompeting EV charging plugs and Voltages
If you are old like me, you remember how Betamax was a competing format against VHS, when it came to renting video-taped movies (this was during the ancient era before web-streaming, when the ships...
View ArticleValeo Mid drive with integrated Effigear 7-speed transmission
There’s not a lot of information yet on this system, but it’s pretty interesting, so I’d still like to show what I found. ___________________________________________________ So far, about all I could...
View ArticleUse a Junked Chevy Volt Pack to Power Ebikes, Electric Cars, Off-Grid homes,...
A good friend of mine, Laurence who is also ebike obsessed rode his ebike from Ithaca, NY to Washington DC last year. This trip without traffic in a car is about 12 hours round trip which got me...
View Article“Dr Chopper”, building Hot Rod Street-Cruiser ebikes
Hot Rod cruisers are a style where most people have a clear divide over whether they love them of hate them. That being said, Doctor Chopper (in Philadelphia) has wrestled with customers over what...
View Article12 Ebikes that use a hubmotor as a non-hub
A direct drive hubmotor is affordable, simple, and robust. However, they turn at the same low speed as the drive-wheel. Electric motors perform best at higher RPM’s and that is why the most common...
View ArticleCompeting EV charging plugs and Voltages
If you are old like me, you remember how Betamax was a competing format against VHS, when it came to renting video-taped movies (this was during the ancient era before web-streaming, when the ships...
View ArticleValeo Mid drive with integrated Effigear 7-speed transmission
There’s not a lot of information yet on this system, but it’s pretty interesting, so I’d still like to show what I found. ___________________________________________________ So far, about all I could...
View ArticleUse a Junked Chevy Volt Pack to Power Ebikes, Electric Cars, Off-Grid homes,...
A good friend of mine, Laurence who is also ebike obsessed rode his ebike from Ithaca, NY to Washington DC last year. This trip without traffic in a car is about 12 hours round trip which got me...
View Article“Dr Chopper”, building Hot Rod Street-Cruiser ebikes
Hot Rod cruisers are a style where most people have a clear divide over whether they love them of hate them. That being said, Doctor Chopper (in Philadelphia) has wrestled with customers over what...
View ArticleFive hubmotors with the controller built inside.
If you have ever seen the inside of a direct drive (DD) hubmotor, the thought might have occurred to you that there is a surprising amount of unused space in the middle of it, and that it is also just...
View ArticleUsing ebike batteries to power your RV or travel van
Many years of my life I have spent living in vans. My first travel van was an old 2001 Honda Odessey that I outfitted with a bed to sleep in. I put over 200,000 miles on that van and traveled all over...
View ArticleI just can’t stop: Best brakes for ebikes
Nothing sucks worse than wanting to stop quickly on your ebike and not being able to. In the last 5 years, I’ve tested dozens of different brake systems and developed some pretty strong opinions about...
View ArticleI’ve got the power: Using the Cybertruck to power my off-grid Tiny House
I watched the Cybertruck reveal and knew I had to have one because it was everything I had always wanted in a car but never been able to have. I grew up lusting after the Lamborghini Countach and the...
View ArticleElectric vs Gas vs Diesel: When is a horsepower not really a horsepower?
I’ve driven every single fast car, fast motorcycle, big truck, and electric anything I can get my hands on in the past 30 years. I’ve always made a mental note of how many ‘horsepower’ whatever device...
View ArticleSwitched Reluctance motors, an old design is suddenly important now
Reluctance is an engineering term that (as far as I can tell) means that when you create an electromagnetic field (in the shape of a loop)…any steel part that is located near that field is “reluctant”...
View ArticleBafang Ultra Max, the new big dog on the porch
The Bafang Ultra Max mid-drive has the biggest motor you can buy in a factory turn-key ebike right now. It is labeled as a 1,000W drive, but…it is capable of MUCH more. Not only that, it has ISIS...
View ArticleMaking a Resistance Soldering Unit, and maybe a spot-welder too…
Most ebike builders have never seen a resistance soldering unit, so they don’t know that it’s an option when you are moving up to soldering larger connectors. If you want to buy one, they are...
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