On Thu, 29 Aug 2013 02:50:10 -0500, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

On 8/29/2013 1:56 AM, Wes Groleau wrote:
On 08-28-2013 10:45, The Daring Dufas wrote:
Is it the Copenhagen Wheel bicycle? The guys and gals over at MIT came
up with a very interesting electric add-on for a bicycle. ^_^

http://senseable.mit.edu/copenhagenwheel/

I'm more inclined to side with this guy:

http://behoovingmoving.livejournal.com/103580.html


Wasn't The Segway supposed to change the world too? ^_^

TDD

It's an interesting idea but I'm inclined to agree that the
engineering isn't there yet. More exactly, battery power. I use a Trek
Valencia+,
http://www.outdoorgearlab.com/Electr.../Trek-Valencia

It's mostly an accurate review, except I can easily do my 25 mile r/t
commute without recharging - I mostly leave the bike in the lowest
assist mode (25%) and just bump it up when hitting big hills. I
sometimes go 40 miles and have plenty of battery left over, but I do a
lot of the work myself and rarely go over 15mph.

The copenhagen wheel simply can't store enough power to make it
worthwhile. My battery is only 6.6 ah, which is vastly underpowered
according to most EBike standards. And it weighs 6.6 lbs, which sort
of gives an idea of what the battery alone needs to be to handle a
real commute. Most people use 10-15ah batteries, which are of course
10-15 lbs. It isn't really that much, I mean I weigh almost 190 so
what is another 10 lbs?

Still, integrated into a hub, I just don't see how it can work without
being one monster hub.