http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1904334,00.html?iid=digg_share

This is all very interesting to me because I ride an electric bike and it’s made in China.

Giant Lite with Extracycle extension

I originally built this bike as a camera car. I was shooting the Marathon de Medoc in Bordeaux and wanted to shoot the host of my show in amongst the marathon runners. This is strictly forbidden for motor vehicles but my production manager talked the race organizers into allowing a bicycle on the course. So I built this Giant electric with an Xtracycle back end. The bike carried a rider, myself and all of our camera and sound gear for the whole marathon, just under 400 pounds or 200kg. I was sold. When i returned home with the bike it pretty much replaced my car and keep in mind that I live in Los Angeles. My Giant with two batteries has a range of about 60miles and a top (assisted) speed of about 28mph. It can easily carry two people and a weeks worth of groceries. The bike all in cost me around 2,500 USD. Of course the bike uses a bit of generated energy but according to what I’ve read (sorry no footnotes) it works out to over 800 mpg. If you are really industrious you could invest another $600 in a rooftop solar kit and your bike would be completely off the grid.

I find it kind of astounding that the electric bike or electric scooters haven’t become popular in North America. I think it’s partially due to the fact that electric vehicles are not considered to be a practical form of transportation here. An affordable electric car is definitely a ways off (unless you have 90k burning a hole in your pocket to buy a Tesla Roadster…drool). But here’s the thing, electric bike technology is totally capable of providing us with low cost zero emission transport right now. Especially for those of us who live in warmer climates. The only thing that’s really holding back the manufactures of e-bikes are the laws governing the bikes themselves. Most countries require that the top speed of any assisted bicycle be around 17-19mph. I think that’s ridiculous considering the fact that anyone in reasonably good shape can pedal a normal road bike a lot faster than that. Now, I’m not suggesting that legislation should allow unlicensed e-bikes an unlimited top speed, but something closer to 30 mph would be more reasonable and way more practical. That’s about as fast as your average rider would want to go on a bike anyway and is a totally reasonable speed for urban transport. Fortunately there are ways around these limitations and that’s what this article is about. Hacking the electric bike!

Disclaimer:

O.K. This is the part where I need to cover my ass. During the course of this article I may be giving you advice that would allow you to make or build your e-bike in such a way that it may go faster than your local laws allow. If you do this and have some kind of horrifying accident where you are dismembered, maimed or in anyway injured. Don’t come crying to me. Also if you are not completely comfortable on a normal bicycle, I would not recommend going this route first. Buy a nice slow stock e bike and ride it until you’re really ready to speed things up a bit.

The important thing to understand is that any bike can be made electric and it’s not a difficult process if you are using a ready made kit. I would argue that an e-bike that you construct for yourself will not only be a far superior ride in terms of stability and speed, but way cooler. Off the rack e-bikes are dork-mobiles for the most part, and those that aren’t are far too expensive for the level of performance they deliver.

O.K. Step one HACKING THE GIANT LITE

The Giant Lite was by far the best e bike built in it’s time. It still stands up pretty well next to what’s out there right now. Granted the motor at 350 watts is a bit underpowered but on the whole it’s one of the lightest and most efficient off the rack bikes that has ever been made. You can still find new ones on line and they usually about USD $1000. Which is a STEAL compared to other off the rack e-bikes bike out their today.

If you’re going to try a mod like mine try to find a step through model. The step through makes more sense if your going to extend the back end and make it a two seater. Throwing your leg over the back of a bike that’s 7 feet long isn’t so easy. Also I think the step through model is easier to find.

If you are truly in need of step by step advice on how to covert a Giant Lite to a faster viable urban transporter then send me an email and I’ll send you detailed instructions. I’m not going to post them here. I’ve had great success with this bike but I think there are better and cheaper alternatives that have developed since I built it. There are some links to said alternatives at the end of this article.

Batteries:

The Giant uses NiMh batteries and like all rechargeables, they have a finite life-span. The good news is they are easy and inexpensive to refurbish. The even better news is that when you refurbish your batteries you can buy new ones that have a higher storage capacity and will give you more range. The process of upgrading your batteries is called re-celling them. You can buy the kits on-line. The original battery packs for the Giant are around $400. The re-cell kits are half that price.

For any other kit avoid old school led acid batteries. They are cheap, but can’t be recycled and have a very poor power to weight ratio. There is a good on-line distributor for battery tech:

http://www.batteryspace.com/?SSAID=297581

I’m currently investigating LifePO4 batteries as the power source for my next bike. Lithium seems to be the way to go now.

Currently I think the best and also the easiest option is to go with a high output hub motor combined with some advanced battery technology. Just make sure you match the battery voltage to the motor your are powering. Most e-bike systems are either 24 or 36 volt technology. Hub motors can be configured to drive either the front or rear wheel and can be fitted to pretty much any standard bike.

http://www.falconev.com/E-Bikes.html

http://www.wildernessenergy.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=1

For an in-depth DIY concept and overview

http://www.electricycle.com/ebike2.htm

Dear Mr. or Miss 6,000 Year Old Earth Believer,

I’m not here to attack your religious belief system — you believe what you believe, for whatever basis, and that’s that. I’m not even here to point out that there’s supposed to be a separation between church and state in this country.

I am here, however, to say that it is one thing to stand firmly on one’s belief system, but it is a wholly other kettle of fish to deny something and still insist on using the fruits of that thing which you are denying. It would be like my having a fundamental belief that bridge trolls are responsible for creating donuts but then still driving over to Krispy Kreme to shovel their freshly made donuts into my gaping maw.

One of the more frequent tools used in judging the age of organic objects found on our planet is called “radiocarbon dating” which allows the dating of objects back about 60,000 years; the process relies upon judging the amount of a radioactive isotope of the element carbon which remains in the object and which changes over time due to radioactive decay. By your choosing to say that this form of measurement is invalid, you must also say that our understanding of radioactive decay is incorrect. If so, with regards to these other technologies which rely upon the same understanding:

• If part of your power grid is supplied by nuclear generating plants: please stop using our electricity
• The radiology facilities at the hospital: please stay broken-boned and unknowingly tumored
• The bridges and buildings whose metallurgy is verified and made stronger: please stay off, and out, of them
• Nuclear weapons: ¿pretend that all of those tests and attacks never happened?

If you also think that the universe is not billions and billions of years old, then let’s look at that. Our understanding of that age relies upon a number of things too esoteric to provide for clear cutting examples here; there is one verifying, simple, concept though: the way ‘light’ behaves. With that in mind, if you’d like to claim that we have no idea what we’re doing concerning the behaviour of light – that the distances, and therefore the time and age, which we’re looking at is mistaken calculation, then let’s look at what else you should be giving up:

• Airplanes, which rely upon GPS for navigation: please stop boarding them
• The GPS navigation systems in your cars: please go back to printed maps and driving aimlessly lost, too proud to ask for directions
• The hikes through forests and mountains relying upon hand held GPS units: please get lost with your compasses and maps
• Land line telephones, cell phones, the internet, …, basically all modern forms of telecommunication (which are relying both on satellite communication and fiber optics): please stop using them
• Modern stores, UPS/FedEx/DHL/the post office, and any other place using laser barcode readers: please limit your shopping to farmers markets and your shipments to 19th century implements

In conclusion, this isn’t my viewpoint, this is simply the facts being laid out in a manner which demonstrates the fragile house of cards in which you live. I can see how you might not like that, but at the end of the day, and this is the beauty of science, no amount of legislation will change what is a provable fact regardless of what county, state, or country you live in.

Sincerely,
Loki der Quaeler

As much as i would wish quietude on my thought processes and to simply enjoy the silence, there is something nagging which i’m unable to shake: there’s something suspicious concerning the state of terrorist attacks in the US and in Europe — an equation which doesn’t appear to add up when written out.

There are certain terrorist groups which advertise themselves as being quite angry at the US and at European countries; voluminous rhetoric in written, aural and visual form is easily encountered on the internet, for example. Judging from their widespread messages, as well as their claimed actual acts: these same groups don’t appear to be of lazy people, nor people without financial means, nor people without access to instruments of destruction.

Meanwhile, in the US and Europe, the public face on anti-terrorism efforts seemingly verges on buffoonery; whether it be employing rules after the fact¹, or instituting policies largely ineffectual in capturing people of forethought², the resulting impression is of a force by which no determined person of moderate intelligence could be deterred.³

In addition to force in numbers at organized country entry points, there exist the tremendously permeable land and sea borders. Historically, these haven’t succeeded as obstacles to traffickers of humans/drugs/cigarettes/alcohol/…; if any given country can’t stop these traffickers at its borders, then there’s very little reason to believe that these same borders aren’t porous to any other type of arriving party.

So, we have angry groups of people already displaying a propensity towards violent acts against certain other peoples; at the same time these other peoples both live in a very travel-open space and display Clouseau-esque defense postures. And yet: there have been basically no terrorist attacks in these countries over the past 7 years.⁴

What’s going on with this apparent imbalance? It could be that the advertised ineptitude is simply a ruse engineered by what is actually a very savvy and wired-in intelligence community, though continued policy decisions in other branches⁵ would have to mean that the ruse is a coordinated effort across several generally notoriously independent government offices.

As a bigger picture, it all continues to make little sense.

1. From training the stink eye on shoes only after someone tried to blow their’s up, to banning a very arbitrary amount of fluid only after it was found that people had nefarious plans that employed fluids, and so forth.
2. Such as confiscating media storage devices at borders, when any person serious about getting terrorist data (i don’t even know what this would be) into a country would simply put said data on an internet connected server and then walk physically-empty-handed into the country.
3. For further reading: Bruce Schneier has written and spoken extensively about the logically inconsistent, and unsafe, policies instituted by the TSA in the US.
4. I don’t mean to minimize the impact the London and Madrid attacks have had on the lives of people, but if we were to spin some custom metric of unit ‘(potential-area)(person)/(time)’, it would be damn small.
5. For example, choosing a bizarre moral stance over security as a national policy.