Actions
Forum Thread Details
  • Replies 6 replies
  • Subscribers 34 subscribers
  • Views 608 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Related

Electric Bike motor

Former Member

I think it would be cool if someone a bike motor the you charge up the electricity by paddling that way when you are tired you can start the motor and then whoosh

Parents Reply Children
  • in reply to Former Member

    Are you thinking that while peddling to move the bike, you are also charging a battery that will completely pedal for you later?

     

    I don't think that will work the way you want it to.  Think of it this way, lets say you wanted to pedal around the block, that uses a certain amount of energy, but you also want to charge a battery so you can go around the block another time without peddling.  That energy can't come from nowhere, in a perfect world with no losses, you'd have to pedal twice as hard the first time around the block because half of your energy is going towards getting you around the block and the other half is charging your battery for your second time around the block without peddling.  It would be very difficult and not worth it.  I think a standard electric bike that gets charged from the wall and regenerative braking are a better bet.

     

    Or are you thinking that sitting at home you can pedal while not moving and charge the battery and then when you want to actually go somewhere you turn on the motor with that stored energy?  Generators and charging systems are not perfectly efficient, so you'd be losing energy and thus have to spend more energy peddling than you would get back out, thus just peddling the bike without the motor would be the more efficient path.

  • in reply to colecago

    (Slightly unrelated, so apologies for hijacking)  I saw at some train station (maybe in Amsterdam) mobile phone charging points which looked like exercise machines and you had to sit and peddle, It was very cool :-)

    Something like that for charging the laptop while you work would be a great way to burn calories.

  • in reply to colecago

    You could use regenerative braking when going downhill to store the energy for the trip up the next hill.