I would totally take an ebike everywhere if I could find a place to park it where it wouldn’t get stolen.
The ebike transmission looks interesting with low maintenance. Here’s to more of this!
Where do you live?
I have a very highly rated fuck off lock and insurance for a full year is around €200 here and the city is kind of known for bicycle theft and I ride it everywhere. My ebike is hard to tell that it’s an ebike, and I’m rough on my bicycles and let the paint chip etc, so it looks beat up (when I keep it in very good mechanical order)
Canada. The Greater Toronto Area … I have the Kryptonite lock, I think the Lock Picking Lawyer recommended it. I have trouble taking either my road or mountain bike with it despite the lock. Too many incidents in the past with people stealing my bike has scarred me.
I used to have a heavy AF bike that got stolen and was rusting and all that … certain parts of the city back then you couldn’t leave anything.
Sheesh sounds pretty rough…
What I’ve learned from dutch people is that you need to have at least two lock to really lower the chance of getting your bike stolen.
A solid U lock plus a frame lock should be enough to make the next bike more attractive to steal.
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Have you considered a pannier?
I throw my locks (one chain, one cable/u-lock combo) in my pannier and forget about em. They’re also much nicer than a backpack for carrying anything because of the hot, humid climate I live in.
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I used the Abus Granit for the U lock. It had a clip that you put on the bike so it stays there while but in use.
Something like that https://static.lceassets.com/thumbnails/88/8884da9e831e159d899421af611ffa907fae5973/150-support-ush-460-abus-square-1000x1000.jpg
I feel like the inconvenience of locking the bike twice every single time you want to stop somewhere almost negates the convenience of having a fast convenient personal vehicle.
Personally I find that the way I have mine make it more convenient than when I had a single cheaper lock.
The keys are captive on the frame lock while it’s open, so I can leave the keys on it while riding and I know I’ll never forget them.
When I stop I push the lever of the frame lock, get the keys, unclip the U from the frame and attach the bike.
It’s faster this way rather than having to look in my bag or pocket for the keys.
There is a reason bikes normally use chains, they are very efficient. More than theory allows shaft drive and gears. Granted we are only talking a couple percent ,but chains are what most bikes use for good reason. They are old technology that still works great.
Chains are efficient for transmitting power but this doesn’t speak to the gear ratio. Not a mechanical engineer but I have a decent understanding of this so forgive bad terminology… but if you have a huge input gear and small output gear, you get a lot of leverage to apply torque to to wheel, while you’re able to more effortlessly apply work (?) at higher speeds when it’s the other way around, that’s the basic spectrum. The individual gears emulate a continuously variable transmission, but as a step function instead of a continuous function, so there’s the space in between two consecutive gears that’s more optimal than either surrounding gear for most speeds/inclines/acceleration/etc., but inaccessible. A continuously variable transmission (on a car, bike, w/e) fills in those gaps by using actuators to change the position of a chain on conical pieces in the transmission so you have perfect efficiency in that department. It’s still a chain transmitting the actual power. Mostly it comes down to being able to control the gear ratio in a way that’s ideal for the user - cars get that part wrong a lot, resulting in some infuriating side effects. The whole reason they’ve been adding them to cars is because they help squeeze out another ~3 mpg versus a traditional manual/automatic transmission which relies on imperfect gear ratios. With some serious fallout because CVTs are pretty complex and some of them are not well designed (Hyundai/Kia comes to mind).
The individual gears emulate a continuously variable transmission, but as a step function instead of a discontinuous function, so there’s the space in between two consecutive gears that’s more optimal than either surrounding gear for most speeds/inclines/acceleration/etc., but inaccessible.
Both rear cassettes and internal gear hubs these days can come with a ridiculous fuck-ton of gears (they literally go up to eleven!*). And that’s before you add a front derailleur and multiply by three! How many more ratios in between those do you need?!
(*Or more, now. The ridiculousness has surpassed Spinal Tap!)
I bike a lot and the traditional gear systems, while they’re pretty rock solid, easy enough to service, etc., definitely leave a little room for improvement. When you’re exerting a ton of force uphill and have to shift, for example, it can be a total disaster (especially if your derailleur stops are bad and your chain slips, which I’m dealing with this moment after a rebuild).
The CVTs in hybrid applications in Prius and (Toyota designed) Subaru gas electric hybrids are very different from traditional CVTs.
There aren’t any belts or chains for changing ratios, they have a clever used of a planetary gear with the outer ring gear connected to the electric motor. This allows the output ratio to be continuously changed (which for the gas end of hybrids, allows the engine to be held at its most efficient RPM, while the vehicle speed changes as the driver wants).
I’m not sure when it comes to pedaling cadence, that maintaining a constant speed is as helpful. Though being able to adjust that continuously would be nice-on demand.
I don’t know about the efficiency claims. Chain drive is the most efficient power transfer method we have for bicycles far and away. Changing to a shaft drive with a bunch of gears in between is not as efficient and heavier. Certainly maintenance and durability will be much better, but that’s not what they’re claiming.
Neat.
This might be the first shaft-driven bike to actually go on sale? Companies have only been showing us prototypes of those thus far. This is probably going to be really expensive though…
No chain!
Edit: put image in spoiler
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This might be the first shaft-driven bike to actually go on sale?
No, missed it by 140+ years : )
